VOA慢速英语2019--Using Either, Or and Neither, Nor

 

Today on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Mehdi in Iran. He writes:

Question: Please explain about either/or and neither/nor. – Mehdi, Iran

Answer:

Dear Mehdi,

The words either, or and neither are kinds of conjunctions¹, or words that join parts of a sentence together.

Either…or

English speakers use either … or to talk about a choice between two things. On a beautiful spring day, one can say, "I will either ride my bicycle or walk to work." In this example, the structure with verbs is:

EITHER verb OR verb

You can also use either…or with nouns³. For example, when it is time to eat lunch, I may tell my coworker, "I feel like eating either Chinese or Indian food today. The structure is:

EITHER noun² OR noun

We understand that the speaker will choose only one of the two things.

Neither…nor

We use neither … nor when the speaker will not choose from the options given. My friend is getting married at a seaside town in New Zealand. She says, “Neither rain nor snow will ruin the wedding.” The structure is the same here:

NEITHER noun NOR noun

You can use neither…nor with verbs, too. One can say, "My brother is very healthy - he neither smokes nor drinks." The structure is:

NEITHER verb NOR verb

But if a sentence already has a negative word like "not," it is more common to use either. For example, “Sandy does not play either football or cricket⁴.”

There are two ways of pronouncing either and neither. People in both the United States and Britain may say either with /i:/ at the beginning, as in "EE-thur" or with /ai/ at the beginning as in "EYE-thur." Choose one pronunciation and stay with it, so you will say the pair of words as "ee-thur" and "neethur" or say this pair: "eyethur" and "nyethur."

And that's Ask a Teacher.

I’m Jill Robbins.

Words in This Story

option – n. the opportunity or ability to choose something or to choose between two or more things

1 conjunctions   

n.连词( conjunction的名词复数 )；结合；联合；（恒星、行星等的）合

参考例句：

• "And", "but"and"whereas" are conjunctions. and，but和whereas是连词。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Prepositions and conjunctions are particles. 介词和连词是小品词。 来自《简明英汉词典》

2 noun   

n.名词

参考例句：

• What kind of noun is this?这是哪类名词？
• This word is a collective noun.这个词是个集体名词。

3 nouns   

n.名词；名词( noun的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns. 法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Nouns join to form compounds. 名词和名词结合构成复合词。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 cricket   

n.蟋蟀，板球运动；adj.公平的

参考例句：

• The England cricket team scored quite a useful total.英格兰板球队得分总数令人满意。
• We could hear the shrill of the midsummer cricket.我们可以听到仲夏时节蟋蟀的尖叫声。
• Your behaviour isn't cricket.你的行为不光彩。