"Han talar inte heller engelska."

Translation: He does not speak English either.

[snabel-a]

About the word order. Would "Han talar inte engelska heller" be grammatically fine?

[Lundgren8]

Yes, that also works. Which one is used often depends on the context and what the speaker wants to emphasise etc.

[Jewgoslav]

How does emphasis work?

[Arnauti]

I'll give it a shot, I think Han talar inte heller engelska means 'Just like (somebody else), he does not speak English', and Han talar inte engelska heller means 'Just like he does not speak (another language), he does not speak English either'. Something like that.

[Jewgoslav]

So "heller engelska" means the emphasis is on "heller," and "engelska heller" means the emphasis is on "engelska?" Also, how did you do italics?

[stephenbal4]

Star characters around the text like so.

[mawileboy]

Could you also say "Heller han talar inte engleska"?

[annika_a]

Nope, you can't (unless you're writing poetry or lyrics or something).

What you could say, but which sounds a bit poetic and stilted, is "Inte heller han talar engelska.". This is specifically the kind of heller which means that there's also another person not speaking English.

On the other hand, "Inte talar han heller engelska." (there's another person) or "Inte talar han engelska heller." (there's another language he doesn't speak) are perfectly fine. Starting with "inte" maybe makes the whole sentence feel a bit stronger.

[stephenbal4]

Talar is in the third position there and not the second. Sounds weird to me anyway, but then again I'm just a learner too.

[YuliGunn]

Why is 'Neither does he speak English' wrong?

[flatpack]

Should "He also doesn't speak english" be accepted?

[Panzerhan43]

Can we say "Han talar heller inte engelska"?

[BillyQuills]

What does "Han talar inte null engelska" mean?

[annika_a]

Null is not a word in Swedish.

[BillyQuills]

Then poor Duo was confused.

[stephenbal4]

Null is a programming term that basically means "does not exist". Perhaps the software glitched.

[dcounts]

So "either or" would be "heller eller"?

[annika_a]

Nope, antingen ... eller.

Han svarar antingen på tyska eller på svenska.

He answers either in German or in Swedish.

Neither ... nor is varken ... eller.

Han talar varken engelska eller finska.

He speaks neither English nor Finnish.

[Dylan600886]

So where and how does "heller" enter this equation?

[DonnaSchob]

This one needs some attention. I wrote He "doesn't" speak English either, which means exactly the same thing as he "does not"