In the first section about negation, we looked at cyn, an article which modifies nouns, and né, an adverb used with verbs. In this second part, we will look at two other common and important ways to negate in Celinese: two common prefixes (an-/am- and né-/nê-) that modify adjectives, adverbs and sometimes verbs; and a set of negative pronouns.
Essentially, any adjective or adverb can be negated with the addition of an- (which usually becomes am before b and sometimes before r and l), and né (which becomes nê in front of a word that has an acute-bearing syllable.) However, when a word has a common antonym that does not derive from negative-affixing, using a negative affix is considered inelegant - much like the use of "unfast" for "slow" in English. Some examples of antonyms distinguished by use of an/ne: cluthol (hearing) vs angluthol (deaf), nédwyl (short) vs dwyl (long), cafrast (clothed) vs négafrast (nude) and ainerchig (keen) vs anainerchig (unenthusiastic.) Both né and an cause mutation, which since the last raft of spelling reforms is suggested to be denoted in writing: caiðeg (happy) becomes angaiðeg (upset), padatheg (complete) becomes nébadatheg or ambadatheg (incomplete).
There are no rules governing whether an or né is used as a modifier - but an is nearly always used before vowels, and tends to be favoured in neologisms and colloquial speech, so if one is not sure how to make an adjective or adverb negative, it is better to err on the side of probability with an. Né/an can sometimes be attached to a verb, but sometimes has a slightly distinct meaning than using the adverb né: compare né safaseoío (s/he didn't vote - for whatever reason) with ansafaseoío (s/he actively abstained), or nym throchoín (they didn't persuade me) and mé r-anðrochoín (they dissuaded me.)
Celinese is typical of Tygenoci languages in having an almost complete set of negative pronouns and negative inflected prepositions to compliment its positive ones. To the learner, the most useful to note are the negative direct and indirect object pronouns. The former are nym, nyth, nys, nywyr, nynot, nysot. The latter are nêmoir, nêthoir, nêsoir, nêwyrir, nanair, nêsyrir. "I don't see you" can be translated as nyth nyrí (literally not-you I see), or né nyrí-th/ané né nyrí (not you I see). There is no real distinction in nuance between using a negative verb or a negative pronoun and both are acceptable in all circumstances - but in both written and spoken Celinese, the negative direct forms tend to be preferred.