This week’s column is in response to two queries on English usage. The first query deals with the difference between ‘what’ and ‘which’ and the second one is about the order of adjectives.
Can ‘what’ and ‘which’ be used interchangeably as in: i) What is your favourite dish? ii) Which is your favourite dish?
The answer to the question is ‘No’. Both ‘what’ and ‘which’ are interrogative words (question words) which are used to ask questions. ‘What’ is used to ask questions when we need specific information from a open-ended possible range as in the
following examples:
i.What is your name?
ii. What is your nationality?
iii. What are your hobbies?
For the questions above, the answers are open-ended. ‘What’ is used to ask questions when the answer is from infinite possibilities. When you ask someone the question What is your name? you do not know what answer the person is going to give you. There are millions of names and the answer could be a name which you have never heard of.
In contrast, ‘which’ is used to ask questions when we need specific information from a restricted range of possibilities. Look at these examples:
i) Which is your favourite item of clothing in the wardrobe?
ii) A: There are seven bags in the room. Which is your bag?
B: The green one.
iii) X: There are five brands of watches in the showroom: Citizen, Timex, Titan, Casio and Omega. Which one do you want?
Y: I want to buy a Casio watch.
What is the difference in meaning between i) ‘What is your favourite dish?’ and ii) ‘Which is your favourite dish?’ The first question (What...) implies that the specific information required is from an unlimited range of dishes and the person who answers the question may give any dish as the answer and the second question (Which...) implies that the information required is from a limited range of possibilities. Assume you take your friend to a restaurant and after showing him the menu on which ten different dishes are listed you ask him: “Which dish can we order?” In this case, the answer is one of the ten dishes.
Which of these two sentences is correct? i) We bought a green wooden table. i) We bought a wooden green table.
The answer to the question above is: The first sentence: We bought a green wooden table. This query is about the order of adjectives. This question arises when we use more than one adjective before a noun. In the example above, the noun ‘table’ is preceded by two adjectives: ‘green’ (colour) and ‘wooden’ (material).
Adjectives usually come in this order: 1) general opinion, 2) specific opinion, 3) size, 4) shape, 5) age, 6) colour, 7) nationality, and 8) material. Here are examples:
i. We ate nice delicious chicken biriyani. (general opinion, specific opinion adjectives)
ii. They have two lovely gigantic black dogs.(general opinion, size, colour adjectives)
iii. I met a handsome young American guy at the airport. (specific opinion, age, nationality adjectives)
Usually not more than three adjectives are put before a noun.
rayanal@yahoo.co.uk