A is not B, but/and...

You now know both the negative form of i-adjectives (=～くない[です]), which we saw in an earlier lesson, and the negative form of です (=じゃない、ではない、ではありません、etc.).

When we want to put these negative forms into て-form, *all we need to do is drop the last い of ない and add くて.

So:

～くない → ～くなくて
～じゃない → ～じゃなくて

(↑ An exception to this rule is ～では［じゃ］ありません, as it doesn't end in ～ない. In this case, we could just change it to ～ではなくて or ～じゃなくて.)

An example:

天気が良くなくて残念でした。
てんき　が　よくなくて　ざんねん　でした。
Unfortunately, the weather was bad. // The weather was bad, which was disappointing.
Literally: "weather + が + not good (and) + disappointing + でした (=was)."

 

I'm not sure if we mentioned this before, but if you want to write いい (good) using kanji, it's 良い. However, the reading with kanji is typically よい, not いい. 

Furthermore, the て-form, past tense, negative form, and adverbial forms of いい all use the よい form as their base:

いい／よい → よくて
good → good (and)

いい／よい → よかった
good → was good

いい／よい → よくない
good → not good

いい／よい → よく
good → well; often


In our example sentence above, we had:

良い → 良くない → 良くなくて
よい → よくない → よくなくて
good → not good → not good (and)


Let's say that your friend Nagisa is picking you up at your house so that you can go to lunch together. You're walking out to the street, and you see a car parked right in front of your house, so you ask:

これがなぎさの車？
これ　が　なぎさ　の　くるま？
This is your car?
Literally: "this + が + Nagisa + の + car?"



Nagisa corrects you, saying:

ううん、これじゃなくてあれ。
ううん、　これ　じゃなくて　あれ。
No, not this one, that one.
Literally: "no, + this + isn't (and) + that (over there)."



Make sense?

I hope so because this lesson is over! *_*


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