English Grammar - Either & Neither

Hey guys, this is Alex.

Thanks for clicking and welcome to this lesson on negative agreement using neither and either.

Now this will help you in your conversations, especially if you want to give short answer

agreements to someone who says a negative statement, who makes a negative statement.

So for example, if you have a friend and your friend says, I don't like to drive, you agree

with your friend that you also do not like to drive.

How can you agree with him?

Well, you can do it in three ways, three very, very common ways using neither and either.

The most common one, and this works for all negative statement situations where you agree

with the person, you can just say me neither.

This means again, I don't like to drive me neither.

I also do not like to drive.

Now what are two other ways that you can say this, that you can agree with a negative statement?

You can also say in this case, I don't like to drive, the auxiliary is do and do not.

So we can also say, I don't, still don't either.

I don't either.

Now the reason we use either and not neither in this case is because the auxiliary do not

is already negative.

So if the auxiliary is negative, you have to use either.

Okay?

Now there's one more way, and it's with neither, similar to this one, but you have to change

the auxiliary from a negative to a positive, and you have to put neither at the beginning

of the sentence.

So you can also say, neither do I. I'll put an I there like that.

Neither do I. So as in this example, you have I don't, negative auxiliary, you use either

at the end.

In this case, neither is a negative, so you change the auxiliary to a positive.

So you have three options here.

You have me neither, you don't have to worry about auxiliaries, it works for every negative

agreement situation.

You have I don't either, and neither do I. Okay.

If you're not getting it just yet, or if you're sort of understanding, let's do one more sentence

and see if you guys can figure it out.

So here we have, I can't skate.

So as we mentioned, me neither works for every negative agreement situation.

So we can agree with me neither.

We can also agree with this structure.

So in this sentence, I don't like to drive, the auxiliary was don't, right, do not, negative.

So here we had I don't either.

Here the auxiliary is can't, okay?

So here, where you say I don't either, here you would say I can't either.

I can't skate, I can't either.

And by this point, I think you're comfortable with it, and you probably know the answer

to this, right?

So if your friend says I can't skate, you can also say neither can positive I.

That's, sorry about that guys.

Okay, so as mentioned, you have three options here.

You can say me neither.

You can say I negative auxiliary either.

I don't either, I can't either, I haven't either, I shouldn't either, I couldn't either.

Or you can have neither positive auxiliary I, or the subject.

You can talk about another person, right?

You can say neither does he, neither does she, neither can he, neither can she, neither

do I in this case.

Okay, so you have those three options.

Now we're going to look at one of the trickier verbs to work with when you're talking about

neither and either.

Okay, now the verb have is a little special and can confuse some people when they're trying

to make a negative agreement with someone.

So if you look at the first sentence on the board here, I don't have a car.

What is the auxiliary and what is the main verb in this sentence?

Well, if you've studied the basics a little bit, you would know that don't is the auxiliary

and have is the main verb.

So when have is the main verb, you do not have to say I haven't either.

What you have to focus on is the auxiliary, okay?

So if you want to agree with your friend who says I don't have a car, you want to say I

also don't have a car, you have to use don't as the main auxiliary.

So you can say, again, me neither, you can also say I don't either or neither do I.

So again, focus on the auxiliary, not on the main verb.

In this situation, we have something a little different.

So we have I haven't seen Titanic.

Now, seen is the main verb, haven't is the auxiliary in this case.

So when you have the auxiliary like this, you use the auxiliary in your agreement.

So if your friend says I haven't seen Titanic and you want to say I also haven't seen Titanic,

you can say me neither, I haven't either, or neither have I.

Okay, so as you can see, what you're doing is using the auxiliary in your negative agreement

sentence.

You're not saying I don't either for Titanic, I don't seen Titanic, doesn't make any sense,

okay?

So pay attention, usually it's the auxiliary that comes right after the subject.

And for haven't, like I haven't either, neither have I, the majority of the time or all the

time, you're going to be listening to the perfect tenses, right?

So the past perfect, present perfect, et cetera, when you're agreeing with a negative statement.

How about the final sentence here?

Gin can't have peanuts.

Gin has an allergy, okay?

He cannot eat peanuts, he can't have them.

So you say, well, Gin can't eat peanuts, I also can't eat peanuts.

The focus is on can't, the auxiliary.

So you can agree with this and say, well, neither can I, I can't either, or neither

can I.

I just realized I wrote the same sentence two times.

So again, the most popular verb here, this should say me neither.

Sorry about that, guys.

Me neither, I can't either, neither can I.

So again, the focus is on this auxiliary.

All right, if you want to test your understanding of negative agreement with neither and either,

check out the quiz at the bottom of this video on www.engvid.com.

Good luck and take care.