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My question does not have to do with the correctness/incorrectness of 'neither do I'/'me neither', but with the presence of the 'yes' (or 'yeah', which is how it most often 'comes out' for me) at the beginning.

If someone were to say:

I love chocolate.

I'd naturally answer (orally) one of the two:

Yeah, so do I. / Yeah, me too.

But if someone were to say:

I don't like driving.

Would it be normal to answer:

Yeah, neither do I. / Yeah, me neither.

Or with it be best to say:

No, neither do I. / No, me neither.

I do not understand why my question was marked as a duplicate. My question is not about the personal pronoun (I or me) but about the adverbs (Yes/Yeah or No). I do state in the first paragraph that my question concerns "the presence of the 'yes' (...) at the beginning.", whereas the question I'm supposedly 'duplicating' is clearly focused on the personal pronoun.

I shall edit to make the words I'm concerned with in bold to see if that clarifies that I'm not interested in the pronouns.

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  • Nice question! I don't know if it is normal to use 'Yeah, neither do I. / Yeah, me neither.' but I have seen some people use it with full confidence. It does feel a bit awkward but yeah I do and will use it.
    – Ashutosh Dave
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 13:14
  • --I don't like driving. (Do you?) --No, neither do I. <- maybe in formal English it should be like this.
    – Stan
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 13:24
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    The "yes" in "Yeah, me neither" is actually saying: Yes, I agree with you. I don't like driving either. (That's my personal interpretation).
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Jun 16, 2013 at 11:55
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    Perhaps it's just me, but I would find yes quite confusing here. Yes is quite a strong and affirmative word to use, unlike yeah. If I say, “I don't like driving” and you reply, “Yes.”, I would assume you're telling me that I do like driving (how dare you?), or possibly that you've been waiting a long time for me to say that I don't (“Yesss! He finally said it!”). That same feeling would persist even if you add, “me neither”.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 7, 2014 at 21:16

2 Answers 2

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The short answer is yes, it would be normal to respond with either statement.

As was mentioned already in the comments, the "yes/yeah" parts of your example sentences are simply agreeing with the original speaker. It would become awkward if they'd followed their statement with a question ("I don't like driving, do you?" "Yeah, me neither.") and sounds more like you'd formulated your response before they'd finished speaking, but as it stands it's not awkward and definitely not incorrect.

I know you didn't ask about the difference between responding with "me" or "I" but in formal speech they should both be "I" since you are the subject of your own statement. "Me too" and "me neither" are both fully accepted in conversational speech, though.

Having grown up in England and then moved to the States I will say that I have (on incredibly rare occasions) encountered people who are amused by my "formality" when I say "neither do I" but have never encountered the opposite with "me neither."

So, while both are fully acceptable statements in both the English speaking countries I have any experience with, the States appears to have a (very, very) slight leaning towards "me neither" in an informal setting.

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    They should both be ‘I’? Are you actually suggesting that it ought to be “I neither”? That is, as I hope you'll agree, utterly ungrammatical.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 7, 2014 at 21:10
  • Sorry, yes. Bit of a necropost here, but you are totally right @JanusBahsJacquet. I meant that regardless of whether you are answering in the positive or the negative, you should be saying "I" and not "me."
    – Emmabee
    Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 1:40
  • @Emmabee "Neither do I" is idiomatic, but I agree with JanusBahsJacquet that "I, neither" isn't. (I think that's also what you're saying with the last two paragraphs in your answer.)
    – Lawrence
    Commented Aug 24, 2016 at 1:59
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As I know if you pretend to agree with a negative statement, there are two different ways:

1) Neither + auxiliar verb + Subject 2) Subject + negative auxiliar + main verb + either

note: pay attention with be verb.

Example 1: I don't watch comedy movies.

If you pretend to agree with this statement, you can say:

1) Neither do I 2) I don't watch either

Example 2 (Be verb): I am not a bad person.

1) Neither is he, neither are we, ........., neither am I. 2) I am not either, he is not either, we are not either.

About "Me neither" for me it doesn't exist in formal english. It is only something that people use in informal english that doesn't follow the proper rules.

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  • What does pretending have to do with this? And what, pray tell, are these “proper rules” that determine that ‘me too’ and ‘me neither’ “[don’t] exist in formal [E]nglish”?
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Sep 7, 2014 at 21:13

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