Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 March 23

= March 23 =

Use of 'whether' with or without 'or'
I am somewhat confused about the use of 'whether' in English. A typical sentence fragment would be "whether you like it or not", alternatively "whether or not you like it". Another example could be "whether to turn left or right", where it seems to imply that 'not' is not an alternative, so that 'whether' is somehow about a bínary choice, like in "whether 'tis nobler ... to suffer ... or to take arms".

In some cases it seems to me that 'or not' is unnecessary. In my ears, the sentence "I am not sure whether to do it." sounds perfectly OK, and the addition of "or not" would be redundant. That might follow from the binarity of 'whether'. But on the other hand it seems possible to have more than two alternatives: "We are discussing whether to paint it red, blue, or yellow." Can anyone illuminate? --T*U (talk) 12:33, 23 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The Wiktionary entry for whether as a conjunction discusses several senses, of which the most relevant are the senses numbered 2 and 3:
 * 2. Used to introduce an indirect interrogative question that consists of multiple alternative possibilities (usually with correlative or).
 * 3. Without a correlative, used to introduce a simple indirect question.
 * The usage notes state the following:
 * There is some overlap in usage between senses 2 and 3, in that a yes-or-no interrogative content clause can list the two possibilities explicitly in a number of ways:
 * Do you know whether he’s coming or staying?
 * Do you know whether he’s coming or not?
 * Do you know whether or not he’s coming?
 * Further, in the first two of these examples, the “or staying” and “or not” may be added as an afterthought (sometimes indicated in writing with a comma before), such that the whether may be uttered in sense 3 and then amended to sense 2.
 * The or not can be placed after whether or after the verb, although in senses 2 and 3, or not is not required.
 * So the common usage allows all variations you mentioned. --Lambiam 14:31, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * In speech (English usage), people will often use the "or not" as additional emphasis for a point being made usually after some verb action, more difficult to do in a forum sense, obviously. American usage might vary a bit, probably in favor of omitting "or not" most of the time.Selfstudier (talk) 15:05, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I had an aunt who habitually asked questions in this manner: "Would you like a cup of tea, or not?" I usually said no, since it gave the impression that she really didn't want to make one. MinorProphet (talk) 02:08, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Correct spelling of music genres with euro- prefix
What is the correct spelling for the genre: "euro house", "euro-house" or "eurohouse"? And the same for euro disco and eurotrance. Eurobeat, eurodance, europop are mostly written without a space or a hyphen. The spelling should probably be the same in all cases? But in fact, all three variants may be found on Wikipedia. (Going to fix them) Solidest (talk) 13:09, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * There is no hard-and-fast rule. All three variants are acceptable, the key is to be consistent. --Viennese Waltz 13:28, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * And some sources show it's treated as a proper name, so you may find "Euro" as well. Bazza (talk) 13:42, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * There is no authority for deciding the correct spellings of English terms; publishers may have a style manual preferring one style for these terms over another. On Wiktionary, all are spelled with an upper-case E as an unhyphenated word, written together: Eurobeat, Eurodance, Eurodisco, Eurohouse, Europop, Eurotrance. --Lambiam 14:15, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The general rule is only to employ a hyphen if it is necessary in order to understand or disambiguate the term. Compare for example, release and re-lease, reread and re-emerge. So the hyphen is probably unnecessary unless you want to write something like euro-opera.--Shantavira|feed me 08:55, 24 March 2021 (UTC)