Meaning and use of “weeder …. nach”

IN Level A1

In this lesson we will have a look at the meaning and use of a useful combination in Luxembourgish:

weeder… nach…

Suppose you have a bad day and you are grumpy. People might offer you things to make you feel better and yet this is just making you even grumpier. If you know what I mean, then you will find lots of joy with weeder… nach… . They will make your rejections sound much more definite.

Beispill – example

Mir ginn den Owend an de Kino, wëlls du matkommen.
Nee, ech hu keng Loscht.
Wëlls du léiwer eppes iesse goen?
Nee… weeder Kino nach Restaurant!

Even without translation, you might have guessed it from context… weeder… nach is the Luxembourgish version of neither… nor.

So it’s the perfect answer to entweeder … oder… (either … or).

And as far as structure goes, weeder … nach works pretty much the same as neither nor.

We can use weeder … nach

to negate two nouns or two verbs and then weeder can be on position 1 or on position 3 – respecting the rule: verb is the 2. element in the sentence.

Beispiller – examples

Ech wëll weeder Kaffi nach Téi.

Weeder wëll ech e Kaffi nach en Téi. – I want neithercoffeenortea.

Vill Leit kënne weeder liesen nach schreiwen.

Weeder kënne vill Leit liesen nach schreiwen. – Many people can neitherreadnor

write.

2. to negate two subjects but then weeder is on position 1

Weeder ech nach mäi Mann konnten him hëllefen. – Neither I nor my husband could help him/her.
Weeder d’Noperen nach mir hunn eppes Anormales gemierkt. – Neither the neighbours nor we have noticed something abnormal

So now you know what the combination weeder nach means a pretty much the same as neither nor.

That doesn’t apply to the words by themselves, though.

Nach is actually super common by itself and has quite the range of uses. I invite you to check the different meanings under the Lëtzebuerger Online Dictionaire www.lod.lu

Weeder by itself means… nothing. You will only see weeder in the combination with nach. And the big question now is how to translate neither.

How to translate neither

So, the English neither as a standalone can be boiled down to two concepts.

Let’s talk here about the most common concept of neither in Luxembourgish: the one which is about “joining a negation”.

The best example is “me neither‘” which is basically “Me also not“. And that’s exactly how it is said in Luxembourgish . We say:

ech och net – me neither

Ech hu Rosé net gär. – I don’t like Rosé.
Ech och net. – Me neither.
D’Maria huet seng Hausaufgaben net gemaach. – Maria didn’t do her homework.
Den Tom och net. – Neither did Tom.

Let’s look at a few more examples for weeder … nach.

Ech hu weeder Schockela nach Glace gär.- I like neither chocolate nor ice cream.
Weeder wëll ech Fussball kucken, nach hunn ech Appetit op Pizza. – Neither do I want to watch Soccer nor do I feel like eating pizza.