Niks bly ewig nie.

A literal breakdown is:

• Niks = nothing
• bly = stay, remain
• ewig = eternally, forever
• nie = the negation particle used in Afrikaans negative sentences

So word-for-word, it is something like Nothing remains forever not, but natural English would be Nothing lasts forever.

Because standard Afrikaans usually uses a double-negation pattern.

With a negative word like niks, niemand, or geen, Afrikaans still often adds a closing nie later in the clause. So:

• Niks bly ewig nie = correct, standard Afrikaans

This does not create a positive meaning the way a double negative sometimes can in English. It is just how Afrikaans normally marks negation.

Yes. Bly basically means stay or remain.

In this sentence, it means continue to remain that way. That is why the whole sentence comes across as Nothing lasts forever or Nothing remains forever.

So bly is not exactly the same as English last, but in context it gives a very similar idea.

Afrikaans can express this idea in more than one natural way.

• Niks bly ewig nie = Nothing remains forever
• Niks duur vir ewig nie = Nothing lasts forever

The version with bly focuses a bit more on remaining or continuing to be, while duur focuses more directly on duration. Both are natural, but duur is often the closest match to English last.

Here, ewig is functioning like an adverb, meaning forever or eternally.

It can also be an adjective in other contexts. For example:

• ewige lewe = eternal life

But in Niks bly ewig nie, it describes how long something remains, so it works like forever.

Yes. Vir ewig is also possible and means forever.

For example:

• Niks bly vir ewig nie
• Niks duur vir ewig nie

Using ewig by itself is shorter and very natural here. Adding vir can sound slightly more explicit, closer to English for ever / forever.

In a normal Afrikaans main clause, the finite verb usually comes second.

Here:

• Niks = subject
• bly = finite verb
• ewig = adverb
• nie = final negative marker

So the structure is very regular for Afrikaans:

subject + verb + rest + nie

That is why bly comes right after niks.

Yes. Bly is in the present tense.

Afrikaans often uses the present tense for:

• general truths
• sayings
• timeless statements

So Niks bly ewig nie is a general truth, much like English Nothing lasts forever.

A simple English-friendly approximation is:

niks blay EE-uh-vukh nee

A few notes:

• Niks sounds a lot like English nicks
• bly rhymes roughly with say, but starts with bl-
• ewig begins with a sound like ee-uh
• the final sound in ewig is a guttural g/ch sound, not an English g
• nie sounds like nee

If you do not have the guttural g/ch yet, that is normal for beginners. You can approximate it softly at first and refine it later.

Yes. Niks is the subject.

It is a pronoun meaning nothing, and it is the thing the sentence is talking about:

• What remains forever?
  Nothing.

So grammatically, niks is doing the job that nothing does in English.