Breakdown of Nei, hann er hvorki skemmdur að ofan né að neðan.
vera
to be
nei
no
hann
he
skemmdur
damaged
hvorki
neither
né
nor
að ofan
from above / on top
að neðan
from below / underneath (with að)
Questions & Answers about Nei, hann er hvorki skemmdur að ofan né að neðan.
Why do we use að ofan and að neðan here instead of just uppi and niðri?
The prefix að in these adverbs describes a surface or a perspective viewed from a certain direction. While uppi and niðri mean a location is statically up or down, að ofan and að neðan mean on the top part and on the bottom part of a specific object. We use the að forms here because we are inspecting the upper and lower surfaces of the item itself.
Why does the sentence use hann if the English translation says "it"?
In Icelandic, pronouns match the grammatical gender of the noun they replace. Even though we translate it as "it" in English, the speaker is referring to a masculine noun (for example, bíll for car or sími for phone). Therefore, they must use the masculine pronoun hann.
Why is the word for damaged spelled skemmdur here?
The word skemmdur is an adjective describing the subject hann. Because the subject is a masculine, singular pronoun, the adjective must take the masculine singular nominative ending, which is -ur. If the object were a feminine noun, this would be skemmd, and if neuter, skemmt.
Does this sentence need the word ekki to make it negative?
No, it does not. The pairing hvorki and né translates directly to "neither" and "nor". This structure makes the statement negative all by itself, so adding ekki is unnecessary and would be grammatically incorrect here.
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