Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[shirlyone2005]

could you tell me which sentence is right?
i don't know what to choose.
i don't know what to choose from. or

i don't know which to choose.
i don't know which to choose from.

[dragn]

Hi Shirley,

Here's my take on it:

I don't know what to choose. Fine.
I don't know what to choose from. Maybe...depends on context.
I don't know which to choose. Fine.
I don't know which to choose from. Maybe...depends on context.

Ordinarily, we tend add the word from when the emphasis is more on the group from which a selection is being made, rather than on the thing selected itself. For example:

My goodness, there are so many delicious dishes to choose from!
Raquelle is such a pretty girl that she has many boys to choose from.
You need one more course to complete your semester schedule; you can choose from this list of electives.

That's why the second and fourth sentences sound a little odd out of context.

Hope this helps.

A note to students in general:

Shirley, this is certainly not aimed at you. It goes out to everybody. I hope a number of students see this, because this seems to be a common problem.

When you post a question that is comprised of a laundry list of slight variations of some sentence and just ask which of them is/are correct, it's often very difficult for teachers to give you a clear, definitive answer. And we love to give clear, definitive answers.

Whether or not a given sentence is "correct" often depends on the context; it depends on the intended meaning. If we don't know the situation or understand precisely what the intended meaning is, we have to scratch our heads and speculate. It increases the odds that we'll just skip it go on to a different question, because we have to carefully hedge our answers and try to cover various possible contexts, and that's difficult and time consuming. It increases the odds that we'll miss something or slip up. And we hate to slip up.

You may have noticed that "laundry list" questions are often the last ones that teachers want to answer. This is part of the reason. They can be a real pain!

We understand that many times you simply don't have any context to give us. It may be related to a question from a test or something, and you're stuck with it the way it is. Well, at least do your best to explain the meaning that you attach to the sentence. Just that will help a lot, and you'll get better answers from people because we really do want to help you.

dragn