🛑 elder, eldest vs. older, oldest 🛑


🔶 We ONLY use the adjectives elder and eldest before a noun (as attributive adjectives), and usually when talking about people / relationships within a family (within a familial context):

✅ Let me introduce Siga. She’s my elder sister.
❌Not: … She’s my sister. She’s elder.

✅ It’s Catherine’s eightieth birthday on Thursday. She is the eldest member of the family.


🔶 We also use elder and eldest as nouns:

✅ Jack is the eldest of four brothers.


🔶 Older and oldest are used in similar ways:

✅ My older sister is coming to stay with us at the weekend.
✅ Matt is the oldest of our children and Simon is the youngest.


🔶 Older and oldest can be used to refer to the age of THINGS more generally. Elder and oldest are not used to refer to the age of things:

✅ The town hall is by far the oldest building in the whole region.
❌ The town hall is by far the eldest building …


🔶 We can use older and oldest after a linking verb (as predicative adjectives):

✅ I think her grandfather must be older than her grandmother.
❌ I think her grandfather must be elder than …


To sum up:
❌ He is elder than me.
✅ He is older than me.

❌ He is the eldest man in the village.
✅ He is the oldest man in the village.

Elder and eldest can be used to talk about the order of birth of the members of a family. NOTE that they are only used before nouns. After a verb, we normally use older or oldest:

✅ My elder/older brother is a writer.
✅ His eldest/oldest son is in the Army.


✅ He is older than me.
❌ He is elder than me.
Elder and eldest can’t be used in the predicative position (after a verb).


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🛑 Correlatives 🛑

When the correlatives either...or, neither...nor, both...and, not only...but also are used, you must see that they are placed before words of the same part of speech.

❌ The car either dashed against a dog or a goat. (verb-noun)
✅ The car dashed against either a dog or a goat. (noun-noun)

❌ Neither he would eat nor allow us to eat. (noun-verb)
✅ He would neither eat nor allow us to eat. (verb-verb)

❌ Neither he smokes nor drinks. (noun-verb)
✅ He neither smokes nor drinks. (verb-verb)


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🛑 neither / either 🛑

■ After neither and either, you use a singular verb:

- Neither candidate was selected for the job.
- Neither answer is correct.



■ Neither of and either of are followed by a plural noun or pronoun and a singular or plural verb. A plural verb is more informal:

- Neither of my parents speaks/​speak a foreign language.
- Neither of them has/have a car.

■ When neither… nor… or either… or… are used with two singular nouns, the verb can be singular or plural. A plural verb is more informal.

Source: OXFORD Dictionary


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🛑 Class A Determiners 🛑

Articles (a/an, the), possessives (my, your, his, her, their, our etc.) and demonstratives (this, that, these and those) are called Class A or Group A determiners.

Note that we cannot put two Class A determiners together. We can say:
✅ my cat
✅ the cat
✅ that cat
but not
❌ the my cat
❌ my that cat.

In order to put together the meanings of a possessive and an article or a demonstrative, we use a structure with of:

✅ He is a friend of mine.
❌ He is a my friend.

✅ These shoes of mine pinch me terribly.
❌These my shoes pinch me terribly

✅ Those dirty fingers of yours have stained the walls.
❌ Those your dirty fingers have stained the walls.


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