‘Me neither’ just sounds better. It rolls off your tongue thanks to that nice friendly ‘n’ in the middle. ‘Me either’ requires an awkward pause to distinguish the two words. 
Nanobyte, I’m having difficulty following your argument here, but I’ll give it a go:
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have repeately used logic in an argument on an Internet Message Board.
Of course, the fact that you didn’t understand them doesn’t mean that the fault is theirs. I doubt that I would understand, for example, an erudite discussion about engineering. I wouldn’t assume from this that the engineers were inherently incomprehensible [good word, better in this context than “ununderstandable”]. However, what I took Mr Z to be meaning here was something more like “articulate” than “erudite”.
I’ll grant you the second point, it is basically a dictionary of British English, although it contains a fair number of American terms. On the other hand, to say that it doesn’t represent “much reality in today’s world” is a cop-out, and a lazy one at that. You can’t just reject the recognised authority because it suits you to do so. If you have any evidence or supporting argument as to why the OED isn’t “relevant” any more, let’s see it.
You then go on to provide some links which illustrate the use of “me either” and “me neither”. The first three, supporting “me neither” are all sites which purport to be offering advice on English usage. In other words, where advice is actively being offered on this subject on the Internet, “me neither” is the favoured form.
The second two seem to be transcripts of Internet chat rooms or some such. In the first one, someone uses “me either” where “me neither” is meant. In the second one, both versions are used, so we can dismiss it as having equal probative value for both sides (to the extent that it has any) and therefore not advancing the argument in either direction.
So, supporting the use of “me neither” we have the OED and three Internet sites offering advice on English usage. Supporting the use of “me either” we have an example of somebody using it in an Internet chat room.
[I have already said that I don’t think the *American Heritage Dictionary* says what **moriah** claims it does. Of course, if it provided any *examples* of “me either” being used in this way, as the OED does for “me neither”, that would be a different matter]
At this point, many people would concede that the argument is over, but you go on to mount a heroic defence of the abominable “me either”. This defence is all the more heroic given your obvious discomfort with some of the grammatical terms which you use. The opposite of nominative is accusative and of object, subject. The effect of your rather clunky and highfalutin discussion of the correct case of the pronoun is further spoiled later on when you use the genitive singular of “double negative” where the accusative plural is intended.
You start with the canard that will not seem to die in this thread about the pronoun being in the wrong case. That is, of course, not the issue here: the issue is about the word which follows the pronoun. I think everyone agrees that “me neither” would be pretty sloppy in formal, written English. But the original question was about its use in vernacular or demotic spoken English, in which it is well-established as (and I keep saying this) the OED demonstrates.
Your argument on this point is marred by your apparent lack of familiarity with some of the terms you are using. The opposite of nominative is accusative and of object, subject. The effect of your rather clunky and highfalutin discussion of the correct case of the pronoun is further spoiled later on when you use the genitive singular of “double negative” where the accusative plural is intended.
You then go on to make the crashing error of asserting that
No, it doesn’t. You provide no evidence for this assertion just as, earlier, you provided no evidence for your rejection of the OED’s account. It is not the case that every utterance has to be a contracted version of a well-formed sentence. Demotic English contains a huge variety of idiomatic expressions which are not and never have been derived from “proper” sentences. If you are going to insist that this particular idiomatic expression is a contraction of a longer expression, you need to provide some argument or evidence for it. This, you conspicuously fail to do.
The “at home” example is ludicrous. “Home”, in relation to a person, means his or her home. We don’t say “at house” because it begs the question of whose house, but “home” already contains the sense of propriety which you are suggesting was once-upon-a-time carried by an additional genitive pronoun. Arrant nonsense!
Then we have the “double negative’s” (sic) argument. You seem to be arguing that the fact that the initial statement is negative somehow implies that the response will be negative. A negative response is somehow a “double negative” and therefore wrong. Have a look at this:
Q1: “Do you not like Celine Dion?”
A1: “No, I don’t.”
Q2: “Do you like Celine Dion?”
A2: “No, I don’t.”
Q3: “Do you not like Celine Dion?”
A3: “Yes, I do.”
Q4: “Do you like Celine Dion?”
A4: “Yes, I do.”
Now, by your account, A1 should be “Yes, I do [not like her]” and A3 should be “No, I don’t [not like her]”. Both these responses actually have the opposite meaning of what is intended. It should be fairly obvious from this that a negative response is always negative, irrespective of whether the question is negative or not.
Even setting aside this argument, the central flaw is in the assumption that “neither” is just the negative form of “either”. It isn’t, as you can see for yourself by comparing the dictionary entries for the two words in any decent dictionary.
Let us turn the example round and assume that everybody likes Celine Dion (shudder!). If someone were to say “I like Celine Dion”, the correct (demotic) response would be “I do too” or “me too”. I believe (though I could be wrong about this) that in American English, “me also” would be acceptable, in that “also” is sometimes used where “too” or “as well” would be used in British English. The point is that “me either” would never be used to agree with a positive statement.
My challenge still stands: if anyone can provide an example from a reputable source of “me either” being used to signify concurrence with a negative statement (as Nanobyte and I have done for “me neither”), let’s see it.
Hehehehehehehehe! I guess we now have the full-screen view of TomH. From the “favour” and “defence”, I assume he’s “over there”, or otherwise, a transplant from there to here. Until I got onto a few Internet forums, I had never really accepted the fact that those peculiarly inflated personality types famed to exist on those shady isles really do fully bloom there. Only in “Jolly Old” would a standard for what he refers to as a “demotic” grade of English be deemed in need of prescription. (I even had to look up that word, although then I was reminded of the fact that I had heard it in reference to Egyptian hieroglyphics.) I’m sure the others here have wiped out, out of sheer (or any other kind of) boredom, and Annie has tired of feigning fright at the Pandoramic (I never said that one was in the OED.) mess we have here. . .but it’s one of those very rainy days we never have in California today, the surf is not up and the snow is mushy, so. . .we must needs drive this thread hereby into GD:
TH Son, your sin is forgiven. . .and thank you for crediting engineers with engaging in “erudite discussions”; some souls reject such notion. And, well, yes, I do prefer more artickle-ate discussions. So, we’re going to hold up the OED as “the recognised authority” on “demotic” English language. I doubt any poor souls left here would want me to get even more Pandoramic by unloading here arguments against the supremacy of this dictionary in all matters of the English tongue. In actually, I’ll let it be known that I have only infrequently viewed a set of the OED in the law library at Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley. On those occasions, it was simply my impression that the complement of word definitions given were not very up to date, but that the etymologies were incredibly extensive and scholarly, to the extent of keeping little British gnomes going for centuries in little dusty back rooms, with quill in hand.
Yes, my links were of two kinds, one of an advisory nature and the other of a de-facto nature. I agree that neither (or is that ‘either’) was conclusive on our controversy. I think it interesting, though, that you favor the advice giver over the implementer, without worrying about the former’s credentials. You realize, in the engineering persuasion, implementers get quite a bit of credit over pontificators, but then we often at a loss for words (but sometimes the more/less the better).
Hey, well, thank you for knighting me as a hero in the “defence of the abominable.” May I now refer to myself as Sir Raymond, the Incorrigible? However, we have to set straight this accusation of yours regarding my “grammatical” “discomfort”. I sit on grammar all the time and she’s not hard or rough at all. Exactly what is your authority on 'accusative’s being the “opposite” of ‘nominative’ – and necessarily, therefore, 'objective’s not opposing same? English is not Latin, but I even question whether a student of Latin would term such a relationship one of opposition. You know, after grade school, I knew enough not to waste my time with all these pedagogic toys. You can’t blame an engineer for that, now, can you? But, even in my California grade school (admittedly this state’s schools were never far from marginal), the teachers knew that English had dumped pretty much all of those useless Indoeuropean cases still found in Latin when it was around, so they referred to any noun, pronoun or noun phrase that was the object of a verb or preposition as being in the ‘objective’ case. My personal dictionary [Amer. Heritage, 2nd Coll. Ed., 1982] is not exactly "the authority on this issue, but it lists this case under the word ‘objective’, less reference to the prepositional inclusion. Since, without looking therein, you have expressed your disbelief in things printed in American Heritage dictionaries, I’m sure you won’t accept this reality. Well, since I’m now thoroughly on your case, I’m clearly accusative (of you). Shouldn’t that make you grammatically happy?
I only used ‘double negative’ in the genitive singular where one grammatical school, out of two, says it should be. Are you grabbing me by the genitives here? I have no idea why you say that term, in that case, should’ve been used in the plural, but I used it in the genitive, where I did, because that is one way of relating a following adjectival gerund phrase (OK, there’s better terminology available for this, so run me through) to the noun it modifies, in this case the singular ‘(double) negative’ (which is otherwise the object of a preposition (dative?), but that’s irrelevant). I realize that another school says to leave off the '‘s’ genitive suffix and think of the word it would be on as the subject of the then gerund clause (or whatever the proper term for it would be). There’s certainly no explanation for pluralizing ‘negative’ there.
Hmm, now I have to look up what a ‘canard’ is. Ah, I see it has something to do with a French person’s half-selling a duck (according to Amer. Heritage). OK, so I’ve never forgiven the French for totally wrecking the English language, which is now sort of a duck and a half. OK, let Pato Donaldo fly away; I agree the issue here does not deal with the case of the first word of the disputed two-word phrase forming the object (or would you say ‘accuse’) of this Pandoramic mêlée.
Now, on to the “crashing” error (which I believe we’d refer to as ‘crushing’ over here). I can’t understand at all why you say ‘at home’ may not be seen as an abridgment of ‘at one’s home’, where ‘one’s’ may be replaced by any genitive (as to the English language, we normals say ‘possessive’; but that wouldn’t suit your “highfalutin” tastes, I guess) pronoun.
I certainly didn’t make any statement about “every utterance”. I thoroughly agree with this statement of yours.
Likewise, there’s no way in which I would disagree with this statement. However, I certainly claim that ‘at home’ may be rationally seen (I wasn’t at the site of the crime and neither were the pedants.) as a shortened form of expressing a functional location relative to someone without using an additional pronoun referring to that person. And likewise, I don’t think many people would argue with me (at least outside of the land of fox hunting) that the “demotic” expressions under discussion here are rationally seen as abbreviated responses to a statement voiced by another person, and that such a take does not affect the wishes of anyone who may wish to refer to this shortened form as an idiom. Any idiomatic idiot can see that! Sheesh! There’s free speech on this side of the puddle, you know!
Ah, c’mon! You have no sense of the logic you advertise yourself as having. Back to kindergarten, nay preschool: In Monopoly, you buy a bunch of houses. Nobody cares where you live. You may live in a dumpster (well, over here, at least). Same in the real world. Some people make a home under a bridge. (You mean like us trolls?) A home is where you hang (out) when you’re not hanging (out), or something like that. Yes, it may be in a house. . .or a garage. . .(cyberspace may not qualify). . .or a castle with a moat around it, as in the case of Sir TomH, Baron of Barre
BTW, I think the OED should put my ‘howeither’ in itself, because, people tend to think of ‘ever’ as referring to time, whereas, ‘however’ refers to alternatives.
Ray (whateither)
Nanobyte, does the rod up your ass have a rod up its ass?
J
“We should have as high a regard for the church so as to keep it out of as many things as possible”
Fluther Good -the Shadow of a Gunman.
Sean O’Casey
Now gentlemen, let’s keep this on the up-and-up. I had no idea this had degenerated into a pissing contest - those belong in Great Debates. Please be nice so Gaudere and/or David won’t have to gang up on you.
A pissing contest about grammar, yet. This 'un may even end up in the Pit, from the looks of it. Mind your manners, guys, if you want it to stay in GD.
Hmm, well I say meather. Is that correct?
PeeQueue
A sensible response in agreement to “I don’t like so-and-so,” is either, “Neither do I,” or, “I don’t either.”