Saying What Something Is Not in Kazakh

Kazakh grammar for beginners · One extra word, and the personal ending moves onto it

Kazakh says what something is without a verb: a personal ending goes onto the noun, and that is the whole sentence. Negating one of these needs no verb either. It needs one extra word, emes (емес), placed after whatever is being negated.

Every ending the course has added so far has been a suffix, written onto the word itself. emes (емес) is not one — it is a separate word, and the noun in front of it is left untouched.

The ending moves onto emes (емес)

Men balyqşymyn (Мен балықшымын) "I am a fisherman" carries the ending on the noun. Negate it and the noun returns to its bare form, balyqşy (балықшы), while the ending reappears on emes (емес): Men balyqşy emespın (Мен балықшы емеспін).

The third person adds nothing here either, so emes (емес) ends the sentence on its own.

Always the same word, so always the same endings

The ending never lands on a noun here. It lands on emes (емес), the same word in every sentence, so each person has exactly one form to learn: emespın (емеспін), emessıñ (емессің), emespız (емеспіз) and nothing else.

The s (с) of emes (емес) is voiceless, and that is why we use p (п) in the first person rather than m (м) or b (б).

Adjectives are negated the same way

Turkish negates a sentence with değil

değil stands exactly where emes (емес) stands and takes the personal ending in exactly the same way, so the two languages line up word for word: Ben balıkçı değilim against Men balyqşy emespın (Мен балықшы емеспін), O balıkçı değil against Ol balyqşy emes (Ол балықшы емес).

Keep going

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All Kazakh lessons

• The Alphabet — Read Kazakh without learning Cyrillic
• How the Letters Behave — The things spelling does not tell you
• Turkish ↔ Kazakh Sound Laws — Six rules that unlock hundreds of words for free
• Vowel Harmony — The same system as Turkish — with one simplification
• Numbers — One to a thousand, and what a number does to the word after it
• Days of the Week — Saturday, and the days counted off it
• Months — Twelve names to learn outright
• Seasons — The four, and the weather that comes with them
• The Plural — One suffix, six written shapes
• Body Parts — From the top of the head to the sole of the foot, and the organs in between
• Personal Pronouns — Four ways to say "you", one word for "he" and "she"
• Possessive — The ending goes on the thing owned
• Family and Kinship — Lineages, generational ties, and reciprocal kinship
• The Copula — Saying "I am a teacher" with no verb at all
• Asking a Question — One small word at the end, and nothing else moves
• Having and Not Having — No verb "to have" — only "there is" and "there is not"
• Where: the Locative — Location and time: one ending
• Where to: the Dative — Direction, destination, recipient, and purpose
• Where from: the Ablative — Starting points, origins, and standards of comparison
• Whose: the Genitive — Possession, definite noun phrases, and relationships
• What: the Accusative — The thing an action is done to — marked only when it is a particular one
• With: the Instrumental — Who you did it with, and what you did it with
• All Seven Together — What each ending marks, and every shape it takes
• Spatial Postpositions and Relational Nouns — Expressing position, direction and time with postpositions and relational nouns
• Verbs, Infinitives and Commands — From dictionary forms in {{-у}} to bare stems, commands and polite requests
• Simple Present Tense — Habitual actions, general facts and future intentions in {{-а / -е / -й}}
• Simple Past Tense — Witnessed and completed past actions in {{-ды / -ді / -ты / -ті}}
• Distant Past and Past Participle — Experienced past actions in {{-ған / -ген}} and conversational negation with {{жоқ}}
• Habitual Past and the "Used-To" Aspect — Expressing past routines in {{-атын / -етін / -йтын / -йтін}} and habitual participles
• Reported and Narrative Past — Hearsay, indirect evidence and surprise discoveries in {{-ыпты / -іпті / -пты / -пті}}
• The Present Continuous Tense — Ongoing actions and the four auxiliary verbs of physical stance
• Future Tenses — Definite intentions in {{-мақ / -мек}} and probable futures in {{-ар / -ер / -р}}
• Desires, Intentions and Optatives — Expressing wishes in {{-ғым келеді}} and making proposals in {{-айын / -айық}}
• Ability and Inability — Expressing "can" and "cannot" using converbs in {{-а / -е / -й}} and {{алу}}
• Conditionals and "If" Clauses — Real and hypothetical conditions in {{-са / -се}} and counterfactuals with {{еді}}
• Sequential Converbs and Action Chains — Linking consecutive actions in {{-ып / -іп / -п}} without repeating conjunctions
• Causative, Passive and Reflexive Verb Voices — Grammatical voice derivations in {{-дыр / -қыз / -т}}, {{-ыл / -іл}} and {{-ыс / -іс}}
• Necessity, Obligation and Possibility — Expressing "must", "need to" and "might" with {{керек}}, {{қажет}} and {{мүмкін}}
• Verb Differences & False Friends — How common Kazakh and Turkish verbs parted ways over time

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