Breakdown of Nigdy nie wejdę do piwnicy w nocy.
nie
no / not
w
in / on (a day)
do
to
nigdy
never
noc
night
wejść
to come in, to enter
piwnica
basement
Questions & Answers about Nigdy nie wejdę do piwnicy w nocy.
Why does the Polish sentence use both Nigdy and nie?
Polish requires double negation. When you use a negative word like nigdy (never), you must also make the main verb negative by putting nie in front of it. While it translates literally as 'I will never not go', in Polish, this is the standard and required way to say it.
Wejdę looks like a present tense verb. Why is the translation 'I will go'?
Wejdę is the perfective verb for 'to go in' or 'to enter'. Perfective verbs focus on the completion of an action, so they cannot be used for ongoing things in the present. When you conjugate a perfective verb using standard present-tense endings, it automatically creates the future tense.
Why is the word for basement spelled piwnicy instead of piwnica?
The preposition do (into / to) always forces the noun following it to take the genitive case. Because piwnica is a feminine noun ending in -a, the ending changes to -y in the genitive, giving us do piwnicy.
What case is used in the phrase w nocy?
It uses the locative case. We use the preposition w plus the locative case for certain time expressions. Noc (night) is an unusual feminine noun because it ends in a consonant instead of -a, and its locative form becomes nocy.
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