しかない vs. より他ない。Where is the Difference?

Japanese
#1

I come across different sentences with しかない and よりほかない in my daily reviews, but don’t understand where the difference is. Both seem to mean “have no choice, but A”, as in there is no possible other solution, but some sentences only take one or the other. What am I missing?

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#2

しかない is in the 同義語 section of よりほかない. In other words, the meaning is the same. よりほかない is probably more formal / old fashioned / intellectual or whatever.

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#3

I looked inside my “Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar” and it says that よりほかない is very close to ざるを得ない and can pretty much be replaced by it in almost all situations without a change in meaning. When you look through the “Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar” it says that ざるを得ない is used in written Japanese to express “cannot help -ing”. So I would reckon that it’s simply a more formal, mainly written form of grammar.

As for deciphering which sentences are which, I do find this issue with bunpro sometimes. It almost forces you to memorize the sentence rather than the grammar point just to keep the repeats from constantly showing up.

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#4

I asked a native and they said that, in their opinion, より他ない sounds more negative. Makes sense if you think about the literal meanings.

Just anecdotally I hear しかない a lot more so I think going out of your way with より他ない or より仕方がない or some variation is really emphasising how little choice you have.

I think this is all a bit close to splitting hairs though.

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#5

Thanks a lot for all your replies.
Really helped to clear things up for me.

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#6

@CursedKitsune brings up a good point about what the native speaker said. If I had to guess why they thought it was more negative I would say probably purely because it’s rarer, so by default adds a feeling of gravity. In cases like with this grammar point, it’s almost exactly like English in the way that the longer/less common variation will just sound more serious due to the listener assuming that the speaker is trying to emphasize something with their language choice. If we look at them both literally:

(A) ___しかない
I can only ___

(B) ___よりほかない
There is no alternative but to ___

The meaning is almost identical, but any English speaker would think the person who said (B) was being more dramatic/really trying to drive a point home.

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