The topic of this lesson is vocabulary, different words and phrases used to express similarity.

Read the following text:

Two women recently met by chance at Bremen University, in Germany. One was English, and one was Irish, and they were both on Erasmus scholarships.
Nothing unusual here, except for one thing. The two girls look identical. Their hair is the same colour and length, they’re the same age and size, and when you see them together, in the photo they put on social media, you would think that they were identical twins. In fact, Cordelia Roberts and Ciara Murphy are unrelated.
It seems that it is not uncommon for people who are unrelated to look almost identical. Niamh Geaney, from Dublin, and two friends were so interested in trying to find their “twins” that they set up an online project called Twin Strangers. Very quickly, Niamh found a remarkably similar-looking stranger who lives just a few miles away. I’ts perhaps not so surprising, as both young women look typically Irish, with dark hair and very pale skin, but then Niamh found another lookalike - Louisa Guizzardi, who is from Genoa in Italy!

So, Neither + auxiliaries

“So do I” and “Neither do I” are expressions that, when we speak in english, serve to show our agreement with what someone is saying.

Let’s start with an example:

  • I really hate cauliflower.

There are several options to agree with that: “Me too,” “I agree with you,” or “So do I”.

What if the sentence is negative?

  • I don’t like cauliflower at all.

To signal that we agree with a negative statement is a little more complicated. You could say: “I agree with you”, but not “Me too”. However, we can use “Neither do I”

When do we use those expressions?

As we have seen already, both “So do I” and “Neither do I” basically mean “I think the same.”

We use “So do I” to show that we agree with what is being expressed in an affirmative sentence, and “Neither do I” to agree with a sentence whose verb is in the negative form.

There are a LOT of variants, and they follow the same scheme.

Rules? For real?

These expressions are formed by “ so” (affirmative) or “ neither” (negative) with an auxiliary verb and, after it, the subject:

So / Neither + auxiliary verb + subject

The auxiliary verb and subject to use will depend on the sentence we are responding to. If we refer to our own opinion, we can always use the subject “I”. If we are talking about another person, we will have to select between “you”, “he”, “she”, “we” and “they”.

The auxiliary verb that we use must agree with the subject, which means that, for thesimple present, we will have to use the third person singular form when the subject is “he” or “she”. For past tenses, we will have to use an auxiliary in the past (did, was, were, had), and for the future, an auxiliary in the future (will, shall).

Examples:

Statement So / neither + auxiliary verb (must agree with the subject) + subject
I love chocolate. So do I.
I don’t like that colour. Neither to I.
He likes this restaurant. So do I.
She doesn’t want to go to the cinema. Neither does he.
I have seen this film before. So have I.
I haven’t ever been to London. Neither have I
I am listening to music. So is she.
He isn’t very well. Neither am I.
They went to the beach yesterday. So did we.
She didn’t do her homework last week. Neither did we.
They hadn’t eaten sushi before. Neither had I.
We had always liked the beach. So had we.
They were late for the meeting. So were we.
She wasn’t happy to see him. Neither were they.
They will come round after dinner. So will we.
He won’t be happy. Neither will I.

Extra

“Nor” means the same as “Neither”, and is used exactly the same way.

Dave hasn’t seen this film before, nor have I. Dave hasn’t seen this film before, neither have I.

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