How to use SO & NEITHER in English: "So do I", "Neither am I"...

I will teach you how to use “so” and “neither” to show you agree with or have had the same experience as someone. For example, if your friend says, “I like pizza”, you can answer, “So do I” to agree with them. If your friend says, “I can’t whistle”, you can answer, “Neither can he” to refer to someone else. As you can see, “so” and “neither” can be used with different verbs and different subjects. Watch the video to learn the grammar behind this concept and get many examples. After watching, take the quiz at https://www.engvid.com/english-grammar-so-neither/ to practice what you have learned.

TRANSCRIPT

Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I'm going to teach you about something we use a lot in conversation, and that is the words: "So" and "Neither". So, how do we use these in conversation? Well, I want you to think about a conversation you've recently had with somebody. A lot of the times when we talk to people, we want to contribute something to the conversation and we want to show that we agree with someone. Okay?

So, for example, maybe I'm talking about pizza. "I like pizza." If you want to tell me that you agree with me, you can use the word: "So do I." Okay? So, you can use this expression; it starts with "So", then we have a verb, a helping verb, and then we have the person; in this case, it's "I". Okay, so: "So do I."

Let me ask you another question. Well, not a question. Let me say something that I believe. "I really like music." Do you like music, too? If you do, when I say: "I like music", you can say: "So do I" because you agree with me; you like music, too. Okay? Now... So, that's when we use "So", and we'll have a lot more examples in a moment.

Let's just talk a little bit about "Neither" for a moment. We use "Neither" when we're talking about something negative, so something that has the word "not" in it or... You know, for example: "I do not like pizza. I don't like pizza." If I say something like this in a conversation, you can agree with me, and you can say: "Neither do I". "I don't like pizza." You say: "Neither do I", if you agree with me.

So, let's do some examples together. "I speak English." If you wanted to add to the conversation and show you agree and you have the same experience, you can say: "So", then we can add: "do", and then you can say: "I".

Okay, let me think about something else. "I don't speak Klingon." This is a language from Star Trek. "I don't speak Klingon." If you wanted to add to this conversation, you can say-so, we have here it's a negative; it has the word "not"-"Neither do I." So, we use "So" and "Neither" when we want to show agreement with what somebody's saying in a conversation. So, let's look at some more examples of that.

So, so far we've talked about: "So do I" and "Neither do I". Okay? To show agreement with what somebody's saying. What about if we want to talk about somebody else? Well, we have "So" here, but we can actually change the pronoun we use when we're talking about someone else. So, if you're talking to somebody, you can say: "So do you." Or maybe, you know, I say: "I love traveling." And maybe you have a sister who loves traveling, you can say about your sister: "So does she." Okay? We can also do, if there's you and somebody else, you can use the pronoun "we"; or if you're talking about a group of other people, you can use the pronoun "they".

So, before I had "I", but you can actually use any of these or you can use somebody's name. For example: Drake. Okay? So: "I live in Toronto. So does Drake." We both live in Toronto. I never see Drake, but we both live in Toronto, so I can say: "I live in Toronto, and so does Drake."

Now, did you notice I did something different with the verb? Okay? The verb has to be in agreement with the pronoun. So, when we use "you", this goes into "do": "I do", "you do". For "he" and "she", the verb, in this case we call this a helping verb - the helping verb goes into "does": "she does", "he does", so we invert it. "So does he.", "So does she.", "So do we.", "So do they." Drake is "he", so we would put: "So does Drake." The point is: It needs to match. The pronoun and the verb need to match. Okay?

What about "Neither"? Well, it's the same. Okay? "I don't live in Australia. Neither does Drake.", "neither do you", "neither does he", "neither does she", "neither do we", "neither do they". Okay? So, it's important that the verb matches the pronoun. But notice that "So" and "Neither" are at the very beginning of the sentence. So, they always have the same place. Okay, so let's look at some other examples of ways we can use "So" and "Neither" in conversation. […]