Another nicht/kein question!!
Hello

I hope someone maybe able to help with (another!!) question.

Which is the correct way to write the following sentence;

‘The man is not in the park’

1. ‘Der Mann ist nicht im Park’

2. Der Mann ist in kein Park

The first sounds to me much more appropriate, but if I apply grammatical rules to it, ‘Park’ is a noun, then surely it would require ‘kein’ to negate it, as in the similar sentence;

Der Mann liest keine Zeitung?

Hope someone can maybe explain this to me????????

Thanks

Laura

Question

Another nicht/kein question!!
Hello

I hope someone maybe able to help with (another!!) question.

Which is the correct way to write the following sentence;

‘The man is not in the park’

1.	‘Der Mann ist nicht im Park’

2.	Der Mann ist in kein Park

The first sounds to me much more appropriate, but if I apply grammatical rules to it, ‘Park’ is a noun, then surely it would require ‘kein’ to negate it, as in the similar sentence;

Der Mann liest keine Zeitung?

Hope someone can maybe explain this to me????????

Thanks 

Laura

Answer

Hi Laura,
this is a tricky problem, isn't it?

1. ‘Der Mann ist nicht im Park’
The man is not in the park.

2. Der Mann ist in kein Park. better: Der Mann ist in keinem Park.
The man is in _no_ park. (we searched all four parks, and he is definitely in none of them/in no park).

Think of it like this:
Wo ist der Mann? -                 im Park
Wo ist der Mann nicht? -        nicht im Park
Ist der Mann in einem Park? nein, in keinem Park, sondern in einem Café

Der Mann liest keine Zeitung? ... sondern ein Buch

It always depends what part is said no to: the acivity reading or the item newspaper,
the activity being somewhere or the item park

Answer

Not at all! Der Mann inst nicht im Park.
Kein = not a
The difference is clearly obvious!