Neither/nor

I am working through Lesson 12.10. The examples used to illustrate the use of neither/nor are as follows: El viaje no fue un éxito ni un fracaso. The trip was neither a success nor a failure. Diego no es ni muy inteligente ni muy tonto. Diego is neither very intelligent nor very dumb. No quiero ni quedarme aquí ni ir. No sé que quiero. I don’t want to stay here or go. I don’t know what I want. The second and third make sense to me and comport with the information in the lesson. The first, however, seems wrong to me. It seems like it should read El viaje fue ni un éxito ni un fracaso. Where am I going wrong here?

These are the times when I just memorize them. I hope Steven, Rich, Robert and Christian will explain what I am memorizing/, The first and the second looks good to me. The third is more complex.

I think it is either a missing 'ni' in the Spanish or a bad translation to English. It seems as written, the 'ni' is 'not even': El viaje no fue un éxito ni un fracaso. The trip was not a success and not even a failure. That is not very good English and I can't imagine it being good Spanish either.

There are much worse examples than this in the course! I try to keep in mind that RS is about attaining conversational fluency - and this is how people talk (think for a minute how ungrammatical we are when we speak in English). Take the following example: - Speak: "The trip wasn't a success or (!) a failure." - Write: "The trip was neither a success nor a failure." I've longed since stopped sending in these "corrections" to RS Support.

Thanks for the clarification, guys. Now that I have some experience and can recognize that there can be more than one way to say something it is not as frustrating as it was when I first started. When questions like this arise I am glad that I have my tutor to ask. She will often say, "we wouldn't say it that way."

So is it a "ni" for neither and also a "ni" for nor. Or a "no" for neither?

As I understand the lesson, you use o/o for either or, and ni/ni for neither nor. But I also understand that you need to use no with ni/ni, to make what we call a double negative in English. Podemos o tomar café o té. (although I understand that in spoken language, the first o is often omitted as it is in English.) No quiero ni café ni té. (I think I understand that both ni's are supposed to be used in this construction.) Clarification from advanced speakers appreciated! Dan

perfecto

Gracias, Esteban!

Esteban. Sounds exotic. I like it. :-)