274 CHAPTER 6. LANGUAGE PATTERNS
the word
, literally ”direction”, in the following questioning paĴern:
X [Y] [ / ] [some judgement call]
”Which is (more) [something]: X, or Y?”Note that this uses a two-item inclusive list, with either two par-
ticles, or a comma after the second choice item (though typically commas
are avoided). Because of the use of or (the first being
more formal than the second) this paĴern literally asks ”A and B; which
direction is [more] [something]?” and can be applied to virtually anything:
”Which do (you) like best, hamburgers or chicken sandwiches?””Which is faster? The train or the bus?”Remember that adjectives in Japanese act both as normal predicate
as well as comparative, so the translation for this last line, for instance,
could also be ”which one is fast, the train or the bus?”, but it is far more
likely that the speaker means ”which one is faster” because of the fact that
a choice is being used in the question.
There is always the possibility that the answer to this question is
”both” or ”neither”, which use the same words in Japanese: , or
the more colloquial followed by a positive or negative evaluation
(recall this from the section on interrogatives paired with ), or alterna-
tively the noun
meaning ”either [option]” suffixed with :
A:
B:
C:
D:A: ”Which music do you like best, jazz or classical?”
B: ”I like either.”
C: ”I don’t particularly like either.”
D: ”I don’t (really) know either of the two.”