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I can make this sentence in three different ways.

A)We neither got to see the castle nor did we see the cathedral.[Neither .... nor]

B)We didn't get to see the castle neither did we see the cathedral.[just ''neither'']

C)We didn't get to see the castle nor did we see the cathedral.[just ''nor'']

İs there any difference in nuance in the meaning between these 3 sentences or are they completely in the same meaning?

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  • There's really no difference. The not–neither/nor versions tacitly imply an afterthought, something like and also this, while in the neither–nor version your mind is already made up; you know what you're about to say. The first example is very textbook-like and thus perhaps a bit more formal. There are other versions as well, such as We didn't see the castle, and we didn't see the cathedral either. The basic meaning is the same, and I wouldn't worry about this at all. Further (this might just be my opinion as a non-native speaker) the 2nd example would sound better with and neither.
    – user3395
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 10:56
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    @userr2684291 As a native English speaker, I agree with your comment. In a normal English conversation, I would expect to hear, "We didn't get to see the castle or the cathedral."
    – James
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 15:21

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None of these sentences sound right to me as a native (US) English speaker. That is because the usual phrase construction is

Neither [noun] nor [noun]

So you could say something like

We saw neither the castle nor the cathedral.

Or you could say

We didn't get to see either the castle or the cathedral.

Notice that when you use 'didn't' you already have a negative, and so using didn't with neither/nor is incorrect because you're using a double negative.

Neither/nor can be thought of as the opposite of either/or or both/and.

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