と～と、どちらが - Grammar Discussion

Grammar Points
#1

between ~ which one

Structure

  • Noun1 + と + Noun2 + (と) + どちら・が
  • Verb1 + の/こと + と + Verb2 + の/こと + (と) + どちら・が

Second と can be omitted or swapped with a comma

View on Bunpro

#2

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but can’t どっち also be used instead of どちら, especially in speech? It seems as though it is marked wrong currently.

2 Likes
#3

Hey :grin:

You are right!
It should have been accepted, but I have noticed that there were few examples where どっち weren’t added as alternative answer.
It should be working now :+1:

Sorry for the inconvenience! :bowing_man:

3 Likes
#4

In the video series from Japanese from Zero, George uses a similar construction except using か like so:

AかBどちらが

I assume this is just another way of phrasing it?

1 Like
#5

@Johnathan-Weir

Hey and again, sorry for the slow answer (I will try my best to answer questions faster from now on!) :bowing_man:

Yes, you are right!
This is another way of phrasing the same thing.

All below are correct alternatives:
サスケとナルトとどちら（のほう）が強い？
サスケとナルトとではどちら（のほう）が強い？
サスケとナルトではどちら（のほう）が強い？
サスケかナルトかどちら（のほう）が強い？
サスケかナルトどちら（のほう）が強い？
サスケとナルトのどちら（のほう）が強い？

If you want to say it more casually, どちら can be replaced with どっち, though it’s better stick to どちら if you are referring to humans.

I hope it helps,
Cheers!

4 Likes
#6

In this sentence…

に階立てのマンションと普通の家とどちらが住んでみたい？
Which one would you rather live in, between a two-story apartment and a house?

I noticed that 立て, being affixed to 二階, changes the counter from ordinal to a cardinal number. Can this be done with other counters? Whats occurring here?

#7

Seems like that should be provided as alternate option

#8

Does を ‘block’ the が here or is something else going on?

犯人（はんにん）は逃（に）げるのと、警察（けいさつ）に行（い）くのとどちらを選（えら）ぶでしょう。

#9

There is no “blocking” going on. You are just using どちら with the を particle instead of the が particle.

With 選ぶ, が marks who is making the choice and を marks what is being chosen.

Edit: This might not be the entire story though. Take for example this example sentence from bunpro:

二階（にかい）建（だ）てのマンションと 普通（ふつう）の家（いえ）とどちらが 住（す）んでみたい？

Normally, に marks where you are living and が marks who is the one living. In this example it is using が with a location. Searching twitter どちらに住む is much more common than どちらが住む for choosing between two locations. Maybe this is just a case of どちらが being so common that people accidentally use it like this and common accidents eventually become standard use.

2 Likes
#10

It looks like there’s a mistake in the Structure block? There should not be (1) next to こと.
I think it meant to say that you can nominalize options expressed by verbs using both こと and の. And instead of どちら, どちらのほう, どっち, どっちのほう can be used.