Page 354 - Basic Japanese

Sometimes Japanese add the expression sore to mo ‘(also

with that =) or else’ like an adverb before the last
alternative suggested in an alternative question:

千葉で働いていますか。それとも，東京で働いていま

すか。

Chiba de hataraite imasu ka. Sore to mo, Tōkyō de
hataraite imasu ka.
Are you working in Chiba? Or, are you working
in Tokyo?

The expression sore to mo only emphasizes the fact that
you are presenting alternatives—the sentence would mean

just about the same without the expression.
Often the last alternative is generalized to just dō ka ‘(or

how is it =) or what?,’ which seems to correspond to the

English translation ‘whether…or not.’

車で行ったかどうかわかりません。
Kuruma de itta ka dō ka wakarimasen.
I’m not sure whether he went by car or not.

In this case, dō ka might represent basu de itta ka ‘or went
by bus,’ uchi ni ita ka ‘or stayed at home,’ or any number of

other expressions. When you don’t have any particular
contrasting alternative to present, in order to say ‘whether

something happened (or not)’ you still use dō ka. To say, ‘I
don’t know whether he’s arrived yet,’ you have to say

something like Mō kita ka dō ka wakarimasen, that is, ‘I don’t
know whether he’s arrived or not.’ In English we feel free to

drop the ‘or not’ without changing the meaning, but
Japanese almost always put in the dō ka to get the meaning

‘whether.’