Neither... nor....

In French how do you say 'Neither__, nor__'

I want to say "When I am older I will neither smoke nor drink"

Would that be 'Quand je serai plus agee je ni fumerai ni boirai' ??

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Permalink Reply by Erwan on March 25, 2011 at 7:57pm

In fact, you should say "Quand je serai plus âgée, je ne fumerai et ne boirai jamais"

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on March 26, 2011 at 1:10am

However, the ni.... ni construction is useful, especially in ni l'un ni l'autre.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 26, 2011 at 3:48am

If you want to use ni it would be "Je ne fumerai ni ne boirai".

However, I think Erwan is right to point out an alternative, because ni really belongs to quite formal French, especially in this construction.

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Permalink Reply by Erwan on March 26, 2011 at 9:27am

It's possible to put jamais at the beginning of the prepostion: Quand je serai plus âgée, jamais je ne fumerai ou ne boirai. This construction looks more like the English one.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on March 26, 2011 at 4:02pm

Incidentally, I think this order (putting "jamais" or other negative elements at the beginning of the sentence") is more common in French than English.

In English, it is possible to say: "never will I smoke or drink" (notice the inversion of "will I" that also occurs when negative elements are placed at the beginning), but it sounds quite literary whereas in French I think a sentence such as the one you mentioned is much more usual.

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Permalink Reply by Erwan on March 27, 2011 at 12:43pm

I have not writen what I wanted to say when I spoke about the construction of the phrase.

I wanted to say that we have the construction ... jamais ... ou... as, in English, you use ...neither ... nor...