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what's the difference between とか and や?

Earthliŋ
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anonymous
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    I'd say that the biggest difference is that you can use とか in a list of only one item, but や needs to be used in a list of two or more items. – HAL Jan 02 '15 at 06:33
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    Like almost all of these questions of the form "What is *the* difference..." this is asking for the impossible. There is never a single 'difference'. – Brian Chandler Jan 06 '15 at 08:12

1 Answers1

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Abridged from Routledge's "Japanese: a comprehensive grammar":

  • とか and や both list representative items, so are usually best translated with "and (among others)" or "or".
  • とか is a combination of と (quotation particle) and か (question particle). As such, it can quote: "生意気だとか態度が悪いとか言われ、傷ついた。" (Read: "「生意気だ」とか「態度が悪い」とか...")
  • とか can be used more than once in a sentence; や must be used no more than once. But や can be used together with punctuation to list more than two items: "歯形や指輪、持ち物など".
  • Both can be used with など, and often are: "A とか・や B など".
  • とか can also be used to mean など, in phrases of the form "A とか" or "A とか B とか": "日本の新聞とか読むの？". It can have particles attached when it does this: "アメ横(a place)とかで売っている".
Billy
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    Hmm, I'm not sure や can only be used once in a sentence. The first example in [大辞泉](http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/220994/m0u/%E3%82%84/) is 「赤**や**黒**や**青が混ざり合っている」 –  Jan 02 '15 at 01:17
  • But the book you're citing definitely says it can only be used once: *"**toka**, a combination of the quotation **P to** and the **Q P ka**, can join nouns in the same way that **ya** does in the sense of 'and', 'or' (see 241), but unlike **ya** it can be used more than once in a sentence."* (p.542) And *"**ya** joins items in the sense of 'and (among others)' or 'or'. It is used (once) between items only."* (p.593) –  Jan 02 '15 at 01:22