Negating with Laysa - negating nominal sentences

There are two types of sentences, they are verbal sentence and nominal sentence.

Verbal sentence is the sentence that has verb as the predicate.

Nominal sentence is the sentence that the predicate is not verb (it can be an adjective, noun, etc)

Type of sentence in the nominal sentence

In the nominal sentence, there are three kinds of sentences, they are:


a. Positive sentence (affirmative sentence)

b. Negative sentence

c. Interrogative sentence



In this article, we focus on negative nominal sentence.


After reading this article, you will know how to change positive/affirmative sentence into negative sentence, particularly in nominal sentence.

Negating a nominal sentence

Changing positive to negative in nominal sentence is by putting the negation word laysa (

لَيْسَ )


For example:

Positive sentence:

My father is an Egyptian.
أَبِيْ مِصْرِيٌّ


Negative sentence:

My father is not an Egyptian.
This sentence in Arabic:  لَيْسَ أَبِيْ مِصْرِيًّا

Laysa Grammar rules

1. لَيْسَ  is used to negate nominal sentences.


2.  لَيْسَ  agrees with the noun in gender.



For example:

male singular:

Ahmad is a student
أَحْمَدُ طَالِبٌ

Ahmad is not a student
لَيْسَ أَحْمَدُ طَالِبًا



Female singular:

Aisha is a student
عَائِشَةُ طَالِبَةٌ

Aisha isn't a student
لَيْسَتْ عَائِشَةُ طَالِبَةً


Recap:

لَيْسَ  is for male  (laysa agrees with gender)

لَيْسَتْ  is for female


3. The use of  لَيْسَ makes the predicate accusative.


See the examples above.

In the positive sentence, the predicate is طَالِبٌ (double damma)

In the negative sentence with laysa, the predicate becomes طَالِبًا (double fatha)


- noun that are accusative is called المنصوب (manshuub).

- when لَيْسَ  follows the noun/pronoun, it should agree with it in number and in gender.



For examples:

They are Egyptian.
هُمْ مِصْرِيُّوْنَ

They are not Egyptian.
هُمْ لَيْسُوا مِصْرِيِّيْنَ

Notice that لَيْسُوا  is for plural male.


Thing to remember:

When لَيْسَ  follows the noun/pronoun, لَيْسَ  has an agreement with number and gender, so you must know the conjugation of laysa.


Below are the conjugation of laysa

هُوَ لَيْسَ

هُمَا لَيْسَا

هُمْ لَيْسُوا

هِيَ لَيْسَتْ

هُمَا لَيْسَتَا

هُنَّ لَسْنَ

أَنْتَ  لَسْتَ

أَنْتُمَا لَسْتُمَا

أَنْتُمْ لَسْتُمْ

أَنْتِ  لَسْتِ

أَنْتُمَا لَسْتُمَا

أَنْتُنَّ لَسْتُنَّ

أَنَا لَسْتُ

نَحْنُ لَسْنَا

Recap

Laysa is used for negating the sentence especially nominal sentence.

After learning the materials above, I hope you understand Arabic negation laysa.