Lesson 8.3 · The rest of the sentence
Negation
Saying “not”, and the two different words for it.
There are two words for "not", and which one is used tells you something about the sentence:
ouk | denies a fact — used with plain statements (Lesson 6.1) |
mē | everywhere else — commands, wishes, "so that" clauses, participles |
The word goes in front of what it negates:
tos mē agaparōtos ouk ginōskata ton theon
the one not loving did not know God (1 John 4:8)
Both appear in that half-verse, and each is doing its own job:
mē before the participle "loving", ouk
before the plain statement "knew".
ouk mē is an emphatic denial — "shall never at all".
It is not a double negative that cancels out.
tos akoloutharōtos mi ouk mē peripatateia en ta skotia:
"whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness" (John
8:12).In the Greek — οὐ and μή
These are Greek's two negatives, and the split is Greek's own: οὐ (spelled οὐκ or οὐχ before a vowel) denies facts, μή denies everything else. The pair οὐ μή with a subjunctive is the emphatic "never" above.
Because the two negatives divide up this way, a Greek question can signal the answer it expects: a question with οὐ expects "yes", one with μή expects "no" — a nuance English can only get by tone of voice.