“To be, or not to be…”
If you want to negate a sentence in Greek, that is, to say ‘I am not ___’ or ‘it isn’t ___’, then you’ll need the word δεν.
Word order
In Greek, δεν is used before the verb: Δεν είμαι από την Ελλάδα. (I am not from Greece).
In responses, it’s often used with the Greek word for ‘no’: Όχι, δεν ειμαι από την Ελλάδα.
Δεν is used in almost exactly the same situations as ‘not‘ in English. The only exception is when you are issuing a command, i.e. telling someone not to do something: ‘Don’t touch!’. In this situation, μην is used instead.
You can see and hear lots of examples in these videos from the Online Greek Tutor:
And Crazy for Greek:
Try the activities on page 24 of Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1.
Once you have a feel for how the verb είμαι appears in both positive and negative forms, try declining (that is, writing out all of the different versions for the different people, είμαι, είσαι, είναι, είμαστε… etc.) in Activity 1 on p. 5 the Ελληνικά Τώρα (Greek Now) 1 workbook.
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