かどうか・Question-word + か：More on Interrogatives

Introduction

Welcome to your very first Lower Intermediate lesson! Err, actually I'm a little unsure as to whether or not this is your first one. Is it? I'll have to get back to you on that. To be honest, I've been unsure about a lot of things lately. So I figured, why not make this lesson about expressing unsureness!

Let's get to it! Or... should we?

I'm unsure as to whether or not this is a header

Structure

• 

  Noun/Verb/い-adjective/な-adjectiveかどうか
  Example:
  → これはピザかどうか、よくわからないです。
  ”I'm not really sure if this is a pizza or not.”

Today we'll be covering かどうか, which is a pretty awesome little phrase because it can attach to pretty much anything! So yeah, you can use it to be unsure about all sorts of things. Let's start off with some examples.

Scenario: you and some friends are about to head out on an excursion, and you're looking out the window trying to figure out how warm you should dress.

Scenario: you're setting up a surprise party for your dad, and you're trying to figure out how much beer to put in the fridge.

Scenario: Mike just whipped up some pasta, and he's trynna be humble.

Scenario: You forgot to bring your shorts to soccer practice, you ask your friend if you can borrow theirs. They say:

As you can see, all three of these examples used かどうか followed by the verb わからない, to express that the speaker is unsure. But this isn't always the case. In fact, there are several other words that commonly follow かどうか. Here are some examples:

• 

  聞きく, as in "to ask whether or not..."

• 

  知しる, as in "(do you) know whether or not..."

• 

  悩なやむ, as in "(I'm) troubled about whether or not to..."

That's right, 聞きく, 知しる, 悩なやむ as well as other verbs related to being unsure also often follow かどうか. Easy as pie right?

Oh! One more thing. For any sentence that has かどうか, you can also optionally drop the 「どうか」 and simply use か, like this:

It's essentially the same, it just loses the "or not" nuance.

This singular か will become very important when we talk about whether or not there are...

Any cool rules I should be aware of?

Funny you should ask. Yes, there are! かどうか has one big rule: it can't be used with "question words" like, who, where, what, or when.

I'll show you what I mean.

This would be like saying "Do you know if when the game is?"

So instead, we MUST use that singular か instead.

Let's talk about this more in the next section!

かどうか but this time, かどうか

Structure

• 

  (だれ・どこ・なに・いつ)Question Wordか
  Example:
  → 場所ばしょはどこかわからない。
  ”I don't know where the place is.”

Don't get confused, this isn't the same as the indefinite pronouns we covered back in Beginner. Back then, I taught you how だれか = someone, いつか = sometime, etc. But this time, 「pronoun + か」 will function a bit differently. Let's take a look.

VS

As you can see, the meaning of いつか completely changed due to the context of the surrounding sentence.

Let's see what this looks like with the other question words.

Sometimes か will become separated from its question word but it won't change the meaning of our grammar point. Just like in 3.4 above, or like this:

Alright, now let's illustrate the difference between 「"question word" + か」and 「かどうか」with some more examples!

Nothing like some side-by-side examples, amirite?

I'll give you some example pairs of かどうか and か to wrap things up. Check out how each sentence differs!

Finally, let's have just two more side-by-side examples to really tie this lesson up in a neat little bow.

You may have noticed that かどうか questions tend to be "yes or no" questions as well. This is a perfectly good way to think about it too! But if you find that more confusing than helpful, don't worry about it.

And that's it for now! Just remember that if your sentence has a question word, you can't use かどうか and well... bob's your uncle. I-I think?

Summary

• 

  The phrase かどうか can be used to express uncertainty about something.

• 

  かどうか is often paired with verbs such as 分わかる, 知しる, and 聞きく.

• 

  どうか can be dropped from かどうか with no big change in meaning, only the loss of the "or not" nuance.

• 

  If a sentence involves a question words, such as who (だれ) / where (どこ)/ what (なに) / when (いつ), you can't use かどうか!

• 

  Instead, simply use か. This か + pronoun combo is different from the basic indefinite pronoun that we covered in beginner, due to the surrounding context of the sentence.