Nimeni nu fură cartea.

not

Breakdown of Nimeni nu fură cartea.

• cartea: the book
• nimeni: no one
• a fura: to steal

Questions & Answers about Nimeni nu fură cartea.

Why does Romanian use both nimeni and nu here? In English, nobody steals the book already sounds negative without an extra not.

This is because Romanian uses negative concord.
When you use a negative word like nimeni (nobody / no one), the verb is also normally negated with nu.

So Romanian says:

Nimeni nu fură cartea.

Literally, it looks like Nobody does not steal the book, but grammatically it simply means Nobody steals the book.

Without nu, the sentence would be ungrammatical in standard Romanian.

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What exactly is nimeni?

Nimeni is a negative pronoun meaning nobody or no one.

A few useful things about it:

• It is used for people, not things.
• It is grammatically treated as singular.
• That is why the verb is in the 3rd person singular form here.

Compare:

• nimeni = nobody
• nimic = nothing

So if you are talking about people, nimeni is the correct word.

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Why is the verb fură?