Page 355 - Basic Japanese

In everyday English we often use ‘if’ with about the same

meaning as ‘whether’—‘I don’t know IF he’s come yet.’ This
IF of course does not mean the same thing as the IF in ‘if it
rains, I won’t go.’ We know the two IF’s don’t mean the

same thing, because in the former case we can substitute
WHETHER and get the same meaning, but in the latter we

cannot. Here are some more examples of alternative
questions with dō ka:

あの人は赤坂さんかどうか分かりません。
Ano hito wa Akasaka-san ka dō ka wakarimasen.
I don’t know whether that person is Ms. Akasaka

(or not).

屋根を修理したかどうか覚えていますか。

Yane o shūri shita ka dō ka oboete imasu ka.
Do you remember whether he fixed the roof (or

not)?

家賃は高いかどうか調べてみます。
Yachin wa takai ka dō ka shirabete mimasu.

I’ll check whether the rent is expensive or not.

7.9. よう yō

The adjectival noun yō, which is always followed by some

form of the copula (da, na, desu, etc.) or by the particle ni,
has the meaning ‘appearance, state, shape, way.’ There are

several uses of this word, and these are summarized here:

(1) …no yō da
A NOUN PHRASE + no + yō + COPULA means something is LIKE
the noun phrase—it IS (or HAS) the APPEARANCE of the