Word
Das Muster ist weder gestreift noch kariert.
Meaning
The pattern is neither striped nor checkered.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Das Muster ist weder gestreift noch kariert.
sein
to be
weder
neither
weder ... noch
nor
das Muster
the pattern
Questions & Answers about Das Muster ist weder gestreift noch kariert.
How does the two-part conjunction weder ... noch work in this sentence?
It translates to neither ... nor. Here, it connects two adjectives, gestreift and kariert. You place weder right before the first option and noch right before the second option.
The lesson mentions inversion with weder ... noch. Why isn't the word order inverted here?
Inversion only happens if you put weder in position 1 at the very beginning of the sentence. Because this sentence starts with the subject Das Muster, standard word order applies: subject, then the verb (ist), then the rest.
If I wanted to practice inversion, how would I rewrite this sentence?
You would move weder to the front, which forces the verb to come before the subject: Weder ist das Muster gestreift, noch ist es kariert. Notice that when you split the sentence into two full clauses like this, you have to repeat the verb and a pronoun for the noch part!
Why don't the adjectives gestreift and kariert have endings like -es?
They are used here as predicate adjectives, meaning they come after a linking verb (ist) to describe the subject, rather than sitting directly in front of a noun. In German, predicate adjectives stay in their base form and never take endings.