TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: 'English Grammar Lesson: Whether and If - How To Correctly Use & Understand Essential English Grammar'

Hi everyone, it's Nicole, and I'm here today to answer a question which has recently been asked here in the group, and it's about the difference between whether and if.

Now, this is an area which even native speakers have difficulty with, and they get wrong quite a lot of the time, so I wanted to break it down for you and make it as simple as possible so that you know the difference in usage between whether and if, and you can use them correctly and confidently.

Let's start with WHETHER, and this one is used when you are giving two or more options, or two or more alternatives.

You always use it with a negative construction before it. So, before the word whether, you've got a negative sentence, or part of a sentence, then you've got your whether, and then you've got your two or more options that come after the whether, and you connect them with the word or, so it will always be whether blah blah blah or blah blah blah.

if there's more than two, then it will be negative construction, whether blah blah blah or blah blah blah, or blah blah blah, or blah blah blah etc, but that's just giving you the pattern.

So, for example, I think it's easy if I give you an example, we might say ‘she can't decide whether she should take the job or travel overseas’. Can you see there that I said she can't decide, that's the negative, then I used whether, then I used option one, she should take the job. Then I threw in my or to show that there's option number two coming, and I said option number two was or travel overseas, so she can't decide whether she should take the job or travel overseas.

I hope that makes sense and makes it a little clearer.

So, whether we're using one, two, or three options, sorry, let me say that again. We can't use one option with whether, you always need to have two or more options. So, I can't say: she can't decide whether she should take the job. Doesn't work because the sentence isn't finished.

After whether you need to have at least two options. We can't finish the sentence there. We would have to finish the sentence with another option.

So, she can't decide whether she should take the job or travel overseas.

Okay. Now, the difference here is if you've only got one option, or no options, I suppose. That's when you use if, so if you only say one thing, for example, ‘she can't decide if she should take the job’. Can you see there that I'm only talking about one thing. She should take the job. That's when I'm going to use if, I'm not going to use whether because I don't have more than one option.

If I have more than one option, whether she should take the job or travel overseas, perfect, but if I've got one option, then it's if. I definitely am not using whether, I'm just using if, she can't decide if she should take the job.

So I hope that makes sense. It's used grammatically the same as whether, you've got your negative construction at the beginning, then you've got your if, and then you've got your one point, whereas with whether, you've got your negative construction, then you've got your whether, then you've got your option 1, and then you’ve got or, and then option 2 3 4 5 etc.

So, I hope that that makes it a little clearer for you, whether and if - it isn't really that hard, if you know that particular point, so, both negative constructions - whether is if you have two or more choices, link them with or, and if is if there's only one point that you want to make. Excellent.

Ask me any questions below or even write some example sentences below and I'll check them for you. And if you do need more detail, I’m more than happy to create a more detailed learning video on that topic area. Have a lovely day. Bye!