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Neither Team A or Team B played well.

could be translated as

Weder Team A noch Team B hat gut gespielt.

(is it "hat" and not "haben", similar to in English?)

What about

Neither team played well. / Neither of the teams played well.

How would we express "neither" in this situation?

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  • No, you'd use the plural here, i.e.: "Weder A noch B haben gut gut gespielt." That said, "Keines der Teams hat ... " would also work.
    – Ingmar
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 4:03
  • 2
    Regarding "hat" vs "haben". The short answer: both are correct. See this article and here for a summary.
    – Em1
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 7:28
  • Keine Seite spielte gut works, because Seite ‘side’ implies that there are exactly two of them, which kein+ doesn’t.
    – Crissov
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 10:43
  • Am I the only one who would use "Mannschaft" instead of "Team" in German?
    – Robert
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 20:21

2 Answers 2

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Colloquially, you might say:

Keines der beiden Teams hat gut gespielt.

However, if your context demands that the teams be specified in the same sentence, the suggestion you've made works well.

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  • What exactly is colloquial about this? I find it to be proper high German, especially with the "eines"
    – Emanuel
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 13:47
  • @emanuel Colloquial doesn't necessarily mean dialectal. Here, I meant that it is a less formal option than giving the two teams by name as in the "Weder A noch B" formulation.
    – Noktasizi
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 23:00
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In German there's no equivalent to the determiner neither, which limits the amount of objects to exactly two instances.

That is, you need to translate "neither team" as "Keines der beiden Teams", as suggested in the other answer. If you'd only say "Kein Team" or "Keines der Teams", it would be unclear how many teams were playing.

Of course, you could express the same thing by saying "Both teams didn't play well" which is "Beide Teams haben nicht gut gespielt".
I dare to say that this is more common; however, I don't have any proof.

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