Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hanygeorge38]

Hello Teachers,

Could you please tell me the deference between while and whereas

Thanks
_________________
hany

[bud]

'While" has many uses, and one of them is synonymous with 'whereas.' They mean 'compared with the fact that,' 'although' or 'but.' I suspect that wherever you see 'whereas,' you could substitute it with 'while' and not change the meaning.

[river1974]

I think "while" is sometimes synonymous with "when or as", sometimes synonymous with "whereas or but", and sometimes synonymous with "although or though or even if." Its usage should be dependent on the context. Flankly, sometimes I am confused about all these conjunctions since I don't know which one is a better usage.

[BMO]

[bud]

River - Your are absolutely correct. You seem to have a very good understanding of the many uses of 'while.' Be patient with the prepositions if they are not yet as comfortable to you as you'd like. I know several very high-level ESL speakers. Their few remaining errors almost always are with prepositions. The infrequent errors do not degrade their accomplishments in learning a foreign language, and rarely do they interfere with their intended meaning.

BMO - Exactly - "but not vice versa." You're right on with your examples.

[river1974]

Check out the following sentences:
(a) I like tea while he likes coffee.
(b) I like tea whereas he likes coffee.
(c) I like tea but he likes coffee.
(d) I like tea and he likes coffee.

Are all these sentences equivalent in meaning? I think sentence (d) is a bit different from others, but I can't figure out exactly.

[bud]

This is my best amateur explanation:

You are right that, in essence, (d) is a little different than the first three - at least in the literal sense. 'While,' 'whereas' and 'but' all imply a contrast. So you can conclude two things about "him:" he doesn't like tea and he likes coffee.

'And' does not imply a contrast. To interpret the sentence in the literal sense, you can only conclude that "he" likes coffee. However, in the practical sense, the sentence has no purpose (without some context that changes it's meaning) except to imply the contrast. Therefore, in most contexts you could also conclude that "he" doesn't like tea. That conclusion comes from the meaning of the sentence, not from the conjunction 'and.'

Very good, River! Hope this helps.

[river1974]

Thank you, Bud. Your explanations really help a lot. Now I understand how to choose a proper conjunction next time I deal with similar situations. I need to use lots of conjunctions when doing the translation from Chinese to English, so the proper use of conjunctions is important to me. And your replys are always satisfactory!

[bud]

Thank you for the kind words, River!