This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2095.
How to avoid this common English grammar trap.
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We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American host, Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
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Today, we answer a listener question about neither nor in English.
We share a simple pro tip for avoiding this English grammar trap, so you have one less thing to worry about.
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Hey there, Aubrey.
How's everything going today?
I am great.
I'm loving this painting behind you.
If you guys aren't watching on YouTube, it's so colorful and fun.
It's true.
It's true.
I am podcasting today from a different office in the city of Pittsburgh.
So super excited to be here, traveling the country and making my way back home.
So Aubrey, would you say that either of us are lazy?
No, neither of us are lazy.
I feel like I know you well enough to know that like you're a hustler.
You're always working, working long hours, very busy.
And I'm the same, right?
We are cramming everything we can into every moment of the day.
It's very rare that I even have a chance to just like sit and do nothing.
Oh my gosh, it's just not a thing anymore Aubrey, it's not a thing anymore.
We, we like to stay busy, we like to get things done and just keep moving.
You know the pace of things.
But Aubrey, I have a question for you here about our opening today.
All right, so when you answered, when you answered me, answered my question, why didn't you say neither you nor I are lazy?
What would you say?
Really good question, right?
It's too formal.
It's too long.
I almost never use that structure.
It's correct grammar, sure, but I don't hear it often.
I don't say it often.
Maybe if I were trying to impress during a presentation or in a job meeting, something like that an interview, maybe I would use it.
But in day-to-day conversation, we don't very often, right?
Yeah, it's true.
You know, we, again, our whole motto, our philosophy is connection, not perfection.
So what we want to do is bring our English to a place where the goal is connection.
And if we sound too fancy, too formal, too disjointed, we're not going to connect, right?
Exactly.
We got a really good question about this, you guys, that we are going to share.
And the tricky thing is, intentionally or not, native English speakers often avoid this construction, also because we're avoiding an English grammar trap that we are going to share with you and pro tips on how to avoid it.
Um, so let's dive into this question and then we'll share what we're talking about.
Like what's the trap?
Why is this tricky?
So we can help you guys avoid it.
All right.
So I'm going to go ahead and read the question from our listener.
Are you ready?
Yes.
All right.
So the listener says dear Lindsay, Michelle and Aubrey, I hope this message finds you well wanted to express my deep appreciation for your podcast.
Your conversations and role plays have made learning english so much fun and have greatly enhanced my language skills outside the classroom.
Uh aubry, i love.
A lot of our listeners say that they love our role plays.
That is so good.
Yes, i know, and i can understand why, because they, when we write them, it's exactly how we would speak.
We're just writing it very much like.
This is how I would have a real conversation with this vocabulary.
I think it's so helpful.
It's so true.
Okay, I will go ahead and read the rest of the question.
I have a question regarding English grammar that has been puzzling me, which is about using neither and nor in sentences.
For example, I've been taught to say, neither you nor I am responsible for this.
But recently I've been corrected by Grammarly and Chad GPT saying Neither you nor I are responsible for this is right.
So I asked one of my native English teachers and he said R is actually the way to go.
I even checked the Longman dictionary and it mentioned that AM is more formal, while R is more casual.
That got me confused.
I would appreciate it if you could talk about how to use neither nor correctly.
Your advice would mean a lot to me.
Thank you so much for your time and for providing a fantastic resource for English learners like me.
Warm regards.
And this is from Stephanie from Taiwan.
Shout out to Stephanie for this amazing question.
It's so great when you guys send something specific, where you send what you heard, maybe a correction that a native speaker did.
This makes it so easy to build a very clear, concise episode around this.
So by the end, you guys will know exactly how to use this structure.
Yes.
And I love that our listeners are using all the tools available to them.
A native English tutor, Grammarly, Chad GPT, the Longman Dictionary.
That's kind of how you figure something out is by consulting multiple sources and bringing the answers together and comparing them.
Don't you think, Aubrey?
Absolutely.
But, just like Stephanie found, sometimes all this does is confuse you more, because with this grammar point.
It's very difficult because even grammar experts don't all agree, just like Stephanie found.
Different.
You know the AP Stylebook or Longman.
Like there are different experts grammarians, who will give you different advice.
Interesting.
So we are going to give you insight into this grammar and share how you can avoid this problem entirely.
One good thing is that both work, both are accepted, even though Grammarly is correcting sometimes.
I put these both into Grammarly and both were accepted as correct.
So this is tricky.
It can be tricky where you're like, wait, I see both ways, which is correct.
And sometimes the answer is both are correct.
Yeah, that's where we want you guys to be is in a place at that near native level, that almost 99 fluency, where you know the rules, but you also know there are places where the rules are.
There are a few options, right.
Or that you can break the rules in some cases if you are going for connection and native fluency.
So, all right, Aubrey, then let's get into it.
I guess we have two options here when it comes to- Exactly, right?
Because we wanna look at this, our conversation at the top of the episode where you know you were saying why didn't you say neither you nor i are lazy?
The question is one will sound more correct to us based on what we're used to hearing.
So which sounds more correct to you, lindsay?
Neither you nor i are lazy, or neither you nor i am lazy?
Oh, i think the first one feels feels more natural to me.
Aubrey, what about you?
Do you have a doubt?
And they?
I feel like they really both sound correct to me.
There's Neither of these.
It's funny because we go Americans go back and forth from saying neither and neither.
You're going to hear both from Lindsay throughout.
I've heard you say both.
I've said both because both are like equally correct to us.
We hear both.
So we apologize if that's confusing.
Neither and neither are both acceptable terms, pronunciations of that word to us.
So you'll hear us say both right yeah, and I'm glad you just said that Aubrey, because I want to make sure our listeners know that is not the topic of today's episode.
Right, it's not about that confusion of neither, neither.
That would be much easier and that is also either.
One is okay exactly, both are okay in the States, I think.
In England neither.
I've heard that.
Some some British English speakers have corrected me, been like it's neither and either.
So I think those in other English-speaking country but in America can use both.
No one's gonna bat an eye yeah, anyway.
So to get back to this really quickly, it's really interesting because there is no wrong answer, right?
Some grammarians will say option one is the correct way.
So let's go into that first.
These two options that we gave you and you're like okay, the first one sounds kind of right to me and i'm like they kind of both sound right.
Both are acceptable, depending on which grammar resource you're looking at, which expert you're talking to.
So let's look at option one first.
Okay.
So option one is what it is.
Neither you nor I are responsible for this.
Right, Aubrey?
Yep.
And you will hear that that is correct because neither you nor I is taken as a whole unit.
And because it's two people, the verb should be plural, are.
Neither you nor I are responsible.
So that is not wrong.
A lot of resources will tell you that that's correct.
But option two other grammarians, grammar experts, will argue what, Lindsay?
What is option two, grammar wise?
They will argue that you can.
You should say neither you nor I am responsible for this.
And what is the rationale behind that?
Aubrey tell us about this is a grammar principle called proximity concord that governs this and that means that the closest subject to the verb determines whether it is singular or plural.
So because i is closest to the verb, you should say i am, and so we'd say neither you nor i am responsible for this.
So Grammar experts don't agree.
That makes it really difficult in English when we can't just say this is the correct grammar rule, do this right.
Like you said, Lindsay, the good news is both are correct.
You don't need to stress about it.
But at the beginning of the episode, I called it a grammar trap.
Why is that?
Well, I think a lot of native speakers don't necessarily know, right?
And so they probably do things to kind of move around this and avoid it.
Is that what you mean?
Because even grammar experts disagree.
So, whichever you use, someone might tell you you're wrong if they're using prescriptive grammar and trying to correct you because they think one or the other is right.
They're used to hearing one or the other is right.
Right.
Grammarly might even or chat GPT might correct you because that's been programmed by someone who thinks one or the other is right, right.
So i plugged it into grammarly and both were accepted as correct.
The grammarlycom sentence checker accepted both of these as correct.
So it all depends on who plugged the grammar rule that they agree with in, because grammar experts don't agree, and i think this is a great you know, on this show guys, we will show you when grammar is important to be correct.
There's a lot of examples in which you have to be correct.
We are not trying to say you can say anything and everything is fine.
There are times when you have to say it correctly.
And if you don't, it will prevent connection.
But this is one example where, yes, it's a little bit more loose.
You do have two options.
And if you get stuck on which is correct, you are preventing connection.
Exactly.
You don't want to get stuck.
So we have a pro tip for you guys.
To remove the problem.
And I saw a lot of grammar experts suggesting this online as well, because the reason it's a trap is, depending on who you're talking to, they might think you're wrong.
So you can easily remove the problem, which I did naturally, in that conversation at the top of the episode.
It's a little too formal.
It's kind of too long.
And so often we just remove it entirely.
Also because...
We're not sure what the grammar is, right?
Are we removing neither or neither?
Is that what we're taking out entirely?
The structure, neither nor?
Exactly, right?
There are other ways to say this.
We're going to give you two options to just remove that entirely.
You don't need it.
It's kind of long.
It's kind of formal.
Natives really don't use that structure that often.
And so use these other ways instead, so that you don't risk having someone say you're saying that wrong.
And then you have to say, actually, grammar experts disagree.
Nobody agrees about that.
Right.
And these are the tricks that native speakers do use.
So let's give our listeners two ways they could do this.
All right.
So the first is to use a compound subject.
Right.
Instead, you can say you and I are not responsible for this.
You and I is a plural compound subject.
So you see you're removing the neither nor and just instead making you and I a compound subject.
And then because it's compound subject, you and I are.
So let me say the example of how it would be using neither nor and you can correct it or tell us a better way.
Give you the better option.
Yes.
All right.
So here is the old way, the difficult way.
Neither Maria nor I are able to make it to the meeting.
Aubrey, what would it be?
You can say instead, right?
Maria and I are not able to attend the meeting.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
Remove the problem, right?
I love it.
So here's another example.
You correct me, Lindsay.
Well, not correct me, but you give us the easier option.
Yes.
Neither he nor I can hear the speaker.
So we could say he and I both can't hear the speaker.
And would you say there's a slight meaning difference between the two?
What do you think, Aubrey?
I don't think so.
I mean not negligible difference.
Let's say right, not big enough that you can't use this interchangeably.
Right, it's the same meaning.
He and i both can't hear the speaker means the same as neither he nor i can hear the speaker.
Yeah, i think the first one has maybe a slight meaning difference, in the sense that maybe maria and i are considered more of a unit and together we were planning to attend.
Uh, in this, Maria and I are not able to attend the meeting, whereas neither Maria nor I are able to make it to the meeting.
It may have been that we would have attended independently, but I think in terms of the practicality of this, it doesn't matter.
That's what I would say.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I agree.
And you can see from that first example, right?
Neither Maria nor I are able to make it to the meeting.
There's that chance that someone would be like you should be saying neither Maria nor I am able to make it to the meeting.
So just avoid it.
This meaning is definitely close enough that instead you can use a compound subject.
I love it.
Okay.
So that is the first strategy to just follow this pro tip from Aubrey and remove the problem.
What would be the second pro tip strategy?
Yeah, so the second one is if the subjects are known, right?
If we already know you're talking about you and Maria, or you already know you're talking about this other, like if people are named, then you can just use the pronoun we and say we aren't responsible for this right.
Yeah, so for example, here's the neither nor, neither you nor I can make it to the meeting.
What could you say instead?
We can't make it to the meeting, right?
The meeting is the same.
It is, I wouldn't say less.
Let's certainly formal enough for any situation, but you can see how the neither you nor I is a little more formal and definitely longer, and therefore there are multiple reasons to avoid it.
Yes, I love it.
And here's another example neither he nor I like fish and say we don't like fish, or we both don't like fish.
I love simple things.
Simplicity is what we all want in our lives, isn't it, Aubrey?
Exactly, right?
And every time we talk about grammar like this, it's so interesting to think about like what is the best way to learn grammar?
It really is, Aubrey, for sure.
So the way that we learned, you know.
For example, when I learned French in school, I was memorizing grammar rules.
I was getting stressed out walking into the classroom.
I was writing verb conjugations over and over.
It didn't work for me.
And what really worked was, you know, being immersed and using a different method.
Exactly.
Right.
There are so many resources available to us, so many other methods we can use now.
Like.
The more I use the Rosetta Stone app, the more I realize that this is a much better way to learn grammar.
Yes, because it's woven into lessons, right?
So you learn grammar on Rosetta Stone as you learn how to actually speak.
And I think that is a much more organic way to do it, Aubrey.
Exactly, right?
You guys don't want to be memorizing grammar rules and verb conjugations when you have the option of using an app like Rosetta Stone instead, where you're seeing pictures and you're learning the language along with the grammar in a proven, effective way.
I love it.
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Good stuff.
All right.
Awesome.
Let's dive into a role play here so we can show this grammar in a very natural conversation in this role play.
You and I have just arrived at a friend's party.
Okay, here we go.
Here we go.
All right.
I'll start us out.
Yeah.
We both didn't bring anything.
At least it's not just me.
I wasn't sure if this was a potluck.
Jason told me they were catering all the food, so we didn't need to bring anything.
Oh, good to know.
And you and I both didn't dress up.
I was hoping it was casual, wasn't sure either, but it looks like everyone else is casual.
Thank goodness.
Aubry, have you ever done that?
Have you ever arrived at a party?
Yes, absolutely.
Actually this happened to me very recently where some friends and i were gonna go to this fun new bar it's called station 18 in phoenix.
It was really fun.
It's like you step on and it's like you're on a train.
They have like sort of um, you know the video on the screen.
So it looks like the countryside is going by.
It was really fun.
But when I showed up at my friend's house, they were all in these really cute cocktail dresses.
And I was in like a t-shirt and jean shorts.
It is the worst feeling.
I was like, oh, I am severely underdressed.
It is the worst feeling in the world.
It's i mean my partner was so mad at me i was so mad at myself it was just bad we were immediately like where can we go right what do we do where do we go find me a dress yeah luckily my friend had just a little dress she had gotten on amazon that i was able to put on that fit really cute i was like okay luckily oh it's so bad that is the worst social moment all right let's go back through this and let's see you know what we did here to avoid this neither nor this pro tip strategy yeah so the very first i used that second tip i just said oh we both didn't bring anything and it would feel too formal and too long for me to see neither say neither you nor i brought anything so i just eliminate it right we both didn't bring anything all right so it this is not just about avoiding grammar that you're not sure about or that there are two correct ways to do it it's also it's too formal and too wordy and too just jointed right it feels like a textbook and we're trying to get away from the textbook aubrey exactly that's the main thing right i get this question i'm like well first of all i i almost never say i can't even think of the last time i said neither you nor i because it's just really formal for day-to-day conversation oh my gosh yes and then same thing for me right it would have been too formal For me to say, so what did I actually say?
I said, Jason told me they were catering all the food, so we didn't need to bring anything, right?
So it was the we that I used here, Aubrey?
Exactly.
Use that second option to say we, because that would be so formal to say neither you nor I needed to bring something.
No, throw that out the window.
What else?
Instead, just we didn't need to bring anything.
Perfect.
Yes.
And what did you do?
And then I said, oh, good to know.
You and I both didn't dress up.
And I could say neither you nor I dressed up, but it's just that little bit too formal for day-to-day conversations.
I wouldn't use that.
Instead, I'm going to say, we both didn't dress up or, oh, you and I both didn't dress up.
All right.
I love it.
This is a great... I love your pro tips, Aubrey.
They are such great shortcuts to connection.
Yes.
Yeah.
And that's the key, right?
If you can have just a way to avoid really tricky grammar that even grammar experts don't agree on.
And it makes you sound more native and natural.
Win-win.
Yeah.
And do we really want to spend our social opportunities for connection that time debating over grammar?
Or do we want to spend that time getting into asking the person what they care about in the world?
What are they passionate about?
What do they do with their lives?
I personally want to spend my time talking about passions.
Such a good point, right?
Yes, English grammar does contain some traps like this that you can just avoid.
And though it's unlikely that a native speaker is going to stop you and be like, I think you should have used am instead of are.
That's very unlikely, but there is a chance someone will hear it and just think it's wrong, because that's not the way they're used to hearing it.
That's not the way they were taught.
So use this pro tip and just avoid it entirely.
Yeah, I know we'll get some comments on this episode, Aubrey, from teachers, but you know what?
We know our value here at All Ears English.
Like we know where we are driving our listeners.
We're driving you guys towards connection, not perfection.
So we're changing the goal here on this show.
We want you to connect.
And that's where this advice is going to take you to connection.
And that's happiness in life.
Exactly.
That's the goal.
And actually I'm really curious.
If there are English teachers listening to this, there's a chance that they will go and research this, like I did, and see that different grammar sources, grammar experts disagree, and they might sort of rethink what they've always taught as correct.
Because when grammar experts disagree, who's to say who's right?
Yeah.
So we're challenging our industry here and helping our listeners.
I love it.
Guys, don't forget to go and get the special deal that we've arranged just for you over at Rosetta Stone.
So go to rosettastone.com slash A-E-E and get started with that special deal.
Good stuff, Aubrey.
Thanks for hanging out today.
Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay.
See you next time.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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