h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Grammar: whether or if? - A37670367
Author: KZ - the abbreviation formerly known as WG - U8183342

I find grammar interesting, and this topic is one that many people may not have considered.

It's fine. Personally, I think bolding a word rather than capitalizing it makes it easier to read, but that's just a personal preference.

Also, the title isn't horrible, but I'd have a bit more fun with it. "How to tell whether to use 'Whether' and if you should use 'If'". Or whatever is grammatically accurate. But, then, sub-editors change my titles all the time

A couple of good points there. I think I'll adopt 'em both!

although it should be

"How to tell whether to use 'Whether' and WHETHER you should use 'If'", although I know that spoils the humour of it

I've just noticed that you took this out of PR but I posted a comment there.

I like the idea for the entry, and would love to see it expanded!

However, I do have reservations about the examples.

You are correct about the two proferred sentences having different meanings. However, I believe that you've parsed sentence one well, but number two poorly.

[(1) "Tell me whether you can come."]
truly means "Tell me if you can come, or if you cannot come."
[(2) "Tell me if you can come."]
actually means (in my mind) "If you can come, then tell me so; otherwise no further communication is necessary on the subject.

Strangely, neither would not address the point, 'Do you intend to come at all?', not in the scope of this entry.

The next example:
["I share your concerns about China but I'm not sure if not watching it will make a difference."
The writer presumably means, "I'm not sure whether not watching it will make a difference." ]

I agree that this is what the speaker might, most likely, have in mind.

[But what she's written implies that her being unsure (about something, possibly to do with saucepans or kangaroos) is conditional upon whether watching it (the Olympics in this case) will make a difference.]

I take this to mean 'I don't know that the not-watching of the Chinese Olympics will have any effect', but leaves open the possibility that the speaker has definite opinions on whether the watching of 'it' might have an effect.

So, again, You are Correct that the word 'whether' is far more likely what the speaker should have used.

Now, applying my interpretation of 'if',
["I was just wondering if this is a very local Northern Ireland expression, or if it's more widely used." ]
would mean: "It occurs to me to wonder about this expression in this way, might it be a local expression or might it be more widely used."

But this is also ambiguous in that it assumes that only one of the two could be 'true'. It could be a local expression AND be more widely used.

Just another way of looking at it all.

And here I humbly admit that I parsed the first part of the first example poorly.

I opined:
[(1) "Tell me whether you can come."]
truly means "Tell me if you can come, or if you cannot come."

Actually, it would only mean :
"I want to know that you have the ability to come, or that you do not have the ability.

How you coming with this K?

Very slowly. About the same rate at which glaciers move.

"In fact I'm familiar with Michael Swan's book, having referred to it frequently in my work."

So you disagree with what he has to say about 'whether' & 'if' on page 620 (2nd edition)?

Incidentally, you might also mention that only 'whether' is possible after prepositions, and only 'whether' is used before to-infinitives (same page).

Having but glanced at the entry an skimmed through the comments, doesn't it come down to:

whether or nor

agin

if

???

They don't mean the same thing.

Wheather the wether be .......

This entry is a bit clumsy and has quite a narrow scope. It might be better if it were expanded to cover other common grammatical errors, such as 'I'/'me'/'myself' (such as 'Tufty and I/me/myself went home').

Alex

Fair points there.
Part of the problem is that I got so far and then sort of ran out of steam.

I know I ought to have another look at this and polish it up a bit.

Re post 10 and "I'm familiar with Michael Swan's book".

Whether or if Dr Michael Swan is rightly regarded as one of the doyens of English grammar, is not a matter of debate. However, when I found myself teaching English and had to read such tomes as written by him, I found it mighty odd that he uses the word ‘cough’ to define the pronunciation of one of the phonemic characters.

The combination ‘ough’ can be pronounced in nine different ways and is - to my mind - hardly the the sort of thing to use as a definition for anything. On that basis - as George Bernard Shaw pointed out - ‘fish’ might just as well be spelled ‘ghoti’

Anyway, the following sentence contains all nine of them:

"A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

Whether, the following bit of doggerel contains all the words that contain ‘ough’ - I don't know, but they were all that I could come up with (at the time). If you can think of any more, please let me know:

It’s Pronounced ‘ough’

We fought with all but nought,
In the trough of the drought in Slough,
And although the throughput of dough,
We’d enough to see us through,
Thus living rough was tough
And this brought on a cough,
Together with hiccoughs,
Which I could not slough off,
Such that I felt as though,
I'd swallowed a doughnut whole
And croaked like a chough
Sitting high on a bough,
And thus we thought that we ought,
To travel to Loughborough,
Where, with my doughty wrought iron plough,
Which I'd bought on the way in Wellingborough,
I sought work throughout the borough,
Cutting peat in the sodden groughs.

PS FISH = GHOTI

(Gh = ‘f’ as in enough - o =’i’ as in ‘women’ - ti = ‘sh’ as in ‘condition')

That's cool.
All those -oughs. How are foreigners supposed to cope?

There's a wonderful pome entitled 'Dearest Creatures of Creation' (by Dr Gerard Nolst Trenite - a Dutchman - I think) about English pronunciation.

Only about 4% of English native speakers are able to read the entire thing correctly! When I tried it with 'English Teachers' at a language school in Casablanca - NOT ONE could read it remotely correctly.

English is a completely daft language, especially when it comes to pronunciation.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13435/Chaos

I'd like to propose Back to Entry as the author has ed.

<BB<

gh = f only after a vowel.
ti = sh only before another vowel.

if/whether confusion is one of my own interests*. But the entry as written is too much prescriptive grammar. I might try taking it and rewriting it.

TRiG.

* By which I mean, one of my own pedantic bugbears.

"But the entry as written is too much prescriptive grammar. I might try taking it and rewriting it."

That should be interesting.

*AGHast at the prospect*

Moved to Flea Market