Breakdown of Zdrowe korzenie ani nie usychają, ani nie gniją.
nie
not
zdrowy
healthy
ani ... ani
neither ... nor
korzeń
the root
Questions & Answers about Zdrowe korzenie ani nie usychają, ani nie gniją.
What does ani ... ani ... mean here?
It is the standard Polish pattern for neither ... nor .... It links two negative parts of the sentence:
- ani nie usychają
- ani nie gniją
You can think of it as the negative counterpart of i ... i ... = both ... and ....
Why is nie repeated after both ani?
Because in Polish, the verbs themselves stay negated. So ani nie usychają, ani nie gniją is the normal structure.
This is standard Polish, not a mistake. Polish often uses multiple negative elements in one sentence, for example:
- Nikt nic nie wie = Nobody knows anything
A useful comparison:
- when ani... ani... joins full verb phrases, each verb is usually negated
- when it joins subjects, you often get one nie with the main verb, for example Ani Jan, ani Maria nie przyszli
What form is korzenie?
It is the nominative plural form of korzeń = root.
Here it is the subject of the sentence, so nominative is the expected case.
- singular: korzeń
- plural: korzenie
Why is it zdrowe korzenie, not zdrowi korzenie or zdrowy korzenie?