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I am trying to say "Neither of you was my student", but placing myself as the subject, i.e. "I was neither of _____ teacher. I can't figure out what goes in the blank.

"I was neither of your teacher" is my best guess, but it sounds weird. Is there something that fits in the blank that makes grammatical sense?

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  • "I didn't teach either of you".
    – The Photon
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 1:50
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    You can't say "I was both of your teacher," either. Or "I was both of your teachers." The problem is that both (neither) automatically modifies teacher and not your.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 1:56
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    So I was neither of your teachers means that you had two teachers (in whatever context we're talking about), and I wasn't either of them. And I was neither of your teacher is ungrammatical because teacher needs to be plural.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 10:06
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    Well, if I were uttering this sentence in spoken English, it would be perfectly natural for me to say "neither of y'all's teacher," but I acknowledge that that is a non-standard regionalism, even though it happens to be quite common where I live.
    – shoover
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 16:11
  • @shoover Yeah, "neither of you's" feels like the right form even though it doesn't exist, I guess "neither of y'all's" fixes that by making it clearly nonstandard.
    – rosstex
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 17:06

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There is nothing you can put into the exact sentence you have that makes sense.

If you have to use I as the subject and use the word neither, your only choice is to rephrase the sentence.

You could say:

I taught neither of you.
I was a teacher to neither of you.
I had neither of you as a student.

You could even do something with multiple clauses (although it sounds a bit odd):

You each had a teacher, but I was neither of yours.

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  • This is great info, thank you! Especially the multiple clauses, that's an interesting form.
    – rosstex
    Commented May 6, 2019 at 5:19

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