Tuesday, July 11, 2017

conjunctions - What is the difference between "me neither" and "me either"?


I want to know the difference between "me neither" and "me either", are both correct?




Answer



In colloquial spoken language some people use me neither in place of neither do I.



A- I don't like getting up in the morning.
B- Neither do I. /Me neither.



In the US some people will also use me either in that case:



A- I don't like getting up in the morning.
B- Me either.




But this is very informal and not to be used in a learning environment where I would stick to neither do I.


You could find "me either" used in a sequence in a sentence like:



A- This does not seem very clear.
B- It doesn't seem clear to me either.





To answer subsidiary question asked in comment about the pronunciation of either and neither:
The letters [ei] in both words can either be pronounced /aɪ/ or /i/. And to my knowledge this is not a UK vs US difference, although I think /i/ is more frequent in the US, /ˈaɪðə/ and /ˈnaɪðə/ can both be heard in the UK. The question was asked a few years ago on ELU with lots of detailed answers.



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