Él no vio a nadie ni escuchó nada
- Thread starter Quiendijo
- Start date
He neither saw anybody nor heard anything.
Sí, esta es la forma usual. Yo estoy preguntando por 'inversion'.
Gracias de todas formas
No podemos empezar la oración con "Neither..." si no hay algo antes. Por ejemplo:
He didn't hear anything. Neither did he see anyone.
Pero la traducción de "Él no vio a nadie ni escuchó nada" sólo puede empezar con "He..."
Here is a page with several examples of "Neither...nor...", including...nor he heard anything
"Neither did he take his profession seriously, nor considered enhancing his skills to do well in his career."
To my ear, this also sounds wrong.
In my opinion it could be made grammatical (but still literary and old-fashioned) by saying "...nor did he consider..."
On the same page we have—also literary and old-fashioned—
"Neither had a safety-cum-risk assessment been undertaken[,] nor had the authority granted product approval."
Your sentence could become "Neither did he see anybody nor did he hear anything. "
P.S.: On the same page, similarly with inversion of the auxiliary verb, we have
"Neither was his case politically motivated nor the party leader a victim of political vendetta."
In my mind I can make this grammatically acceptable only by inserting "was": "...nor was the party leader..."
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I agree with you.
Should I invert the second part too?
In the page you have provided me, there's an example with no inversion in the second part:
Neither did he take his profession seriously, nor consedered enhancing his skills to do well in his career.
Now I'm confused
I did see what he said, but after reading a lot of examples in the site I forgot it . Thanks for pointing it out!
Summing up, this should be the right sentence:
Neither did he see anybody nor did he hear anything.
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I know, but the point is that we have to learn inversion to pass grammar exams.
Thanks for pointing it out though
I find it hard to believe that an exam would ask you to create such an unnatural sentence. If it is testing your knowledge of inversion (changing the normal order of words), then this is something we might say:
Él no vio a nadie ni escuchó nada.
He didn't see anyone, and neither did he hear anything.
That is an inversion of the normal order "he neither heard."
I don't really see how you can have a natural-sounding inversion in that sentence using neither/nor.
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