"The girl is not eating a tomato."
Translation:Das Mädchen isst keine Tomate.
13 Comments
Because 'a' is indefinite and 'die' is definite. Your translation would imply a special, present tomato. The english sentence doesn't though, so you use the indefinite 'keine'.
I think it is a rule to use keine whenever a noun with indefinite article is negated.
Like yaqo said, you will never say "[verb] ein [noun] nicht"; you will always say "[verb] kein [noun]".
You can use "nicht" you just have to pay attention to the word order. "Das Mädchen isst nicht eine Tomate" is correct
"kein" is inflected as "ein". If you negate a noun with "ein" then use "kein". Similarly, if you negate noun with "eine" or "einen" then use "keine" or "keinen", respectively.
I am trying to understand where "nicht" comes and where comes "kein"....
For example:
"Ich esse nicht"
"Nicht" is with "essen" which is an infinite verb and not anything we can see or touch...
But in this example: " ich esse keine tomate"
"Keine" is related to "tomate" not "essen". And tomato is a thing we can touch, see, etc...
Is my judgement right? Is there any rule like this? Plz confirm
