niemand or keiner?
a2Both translate as nobody, but they point differently: niemand means not a single person at all, keiner picks out of a known group and really means none of them.
niemand
Nobody in the world, with no reference to a particular group. It inflects weakly: niemanden, niemandem.
Niemand hat die Tür abgeschlossen.Nobody locked the door.
keiner
The negated form of einer: none from this set. It agrees in gender with the word it refers to: keiner, keine, keins.
Ich habe drei gefragt, aber keiner wusste es.I asked three people, but none of them knew.
The mistake
Von meinen Kollegen war niemand von ihnen da.
Von meinen Kollegen war keiner da.
Once the group is named, keiner refers back to it and niemand becomes redundant. The wrong sentence says both twice over.
Rule of thumb
If the group is already in the sentence or in mind, take keiner. If it is nowhere, take niemand.
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