The English word “why” has two logically distinguishable meanings: “from what cause” and “for what purpose.” It would be better if there were two separate words. Combining the two meanings into one word gives it an unwarranted air of mystery, a sense that there could be more meanings still. Remember that episode of The Prisoner, where Number Six asked a supercomputer “Why?” and it melted down?
Are there any foreign languages where “why” is broken down into two words?
Well, Spanish, for one. Por Que in spanish is the equivalent of Why, even though directly translated t would be “For What”. But, yeah, Spanish is one.
Posted by BKABBY:
Umm . . . you’re missing the point, BKABBY. “Por que” is a two-word phrase, but, as a phrase, it has the same double meaning as the English “why.” I’m looking for a language that has one word or word-phrase meaning “from what cause,” and another word or word-phrase meaning “for what purpose.”
BKABBY, you misunderstood the OP which is whether there are languages which have different words for the different meanings.
In philosophy the fact that we have one word for multiple meanings has lead to many problems. ‘Why’ can indicate that either an evidential reason or an explanatory reason will be acceptable/forthcoming.
In Auslan (Australian sign language) why and because are one word.
In philosophy the fact that we have one word for multiple meanings has lead to many problems. ‘Why’ can indicate that either an evidential reason or an explanatory reason will be acceptable/forthcoming.
eg. Why is the scaffolding unsafe?
Because I saw it move around in the wind (evidential reason)
Because someone might fall off (explanatory reason)
In Auslan (Australian sign language) why and because are one word.
BKABBY,
yes “por que” means “why” in spanish but “porque” means “because”. Always thought that was interesting.
“why” (I think) comes from an old English word hwi.
hwi is the instrumental form of hwo meaning “who”.
The point of the instrumental case is to instruct. The word instrumental comes from the Latin word instrumentum (instruct).
Therefore “why” is a word that is used when seeking clarification on something - further instruction.
I don’t think that your two meanings of the word “why” are indeed two meanings. The word “why” takes into account both meanings therefore only one word is needed. “Why” simply means “give me further instruction” so the fact that one of your meanings refers to the past and one to the future doesn’t matter.
sorry, old English word for who is hwa not hwo, typo.
French porquoi- “why”… as in “why is it such a problem that its one word?”
If why were two words, where would you split it? Between the w and h or between the h and y? 
Sometimes it is two words (“How come. . . ?”) and that’s one of those expressions that annoys the heck out of me.
Hmmm, maybe you could re-introduce “wherefor” as in “wherefor art thou Romeo”
Actually, German uses two different words for the distinguishable meanings" “from what cause” and “for what purpose”:
“From what cause” = "wodurch
“For what purpose” = “wozu”
There are even more vartiations that are usually just translated as “why” in English, for instance:
“weshalb” = also “From what cause”
“warum” = also “For what purpose”
It seems the Germans like to ask a lot of complicated questions (and have a very complicated grammar).
One word seems to be all that’s needed for the most part.
If you ask me why I did something, I’ll presume you want to know the purpose. If you ask me why an event occurred, I’ll presume you want to know the cause.
Also, if you asked “From what cause did the chicken to cross the road”, the answer is “A desire to get to the other side”, not enough of a difference from the usual answer to concern most people.
Almost every word in the dictionary has multiple meanings. Why should why be any different?
Just the other day I was reading a draft of a set of new development ordinances, and, paraphrased, it said that the maximum density of a subdivision would be its area times the maximum permitted density in that zone. Two different uses of density, one maybe even wrong–but the planner in charge didn’t see anything wrong with it.
One could argue that in English there are two words that together would cover the whole gamut of meanings in why.
I’m thinking of wherefore and therefore, two words that unfortunately are rather rare (and in the first case, often missunderstood).
In Swedish we do make this distinction, and have varför and därför. (Surprisingly enough var, där and för mean where, there and fore[sup]*[/sup] respectively. Shows how closely related the Germanic languages are)
[sup]*[/sup]Yup, they both mean the pointy end of a boat. Don’t ask me why.
I don’t have anything more than a basic etymology-freak’s knowledge of Old English, but I’m pretty sure that the Old English for ‘why’ us hwy, which probably did unround to hwi at some point, though I’m not sure if the Old English bothered to change the spelling–I just know more about sound changes than orthographical changes. Other than that, everything else seems correct.
Mycroft Holmes: Heh, wow. I thought I was a pretty good non-native speaker of German (gooooood non-native speaker of German–roll over–play dead–gooooood :)). I had no idea that weshalb and warum weren’t one-hundred-percent synonymous. Thank God I generally stick to warum in conversation…
It’s always those little words that throw me. Weltanschauungabwechschlunglosigkeit is immediately clear to me, but wozu–I gotta reach for my dictionary for that one.
I was never taught this in German class, which I had for 5 years. I wonder whether it’s because it would be too hard to get English-speaking students to know the difference, or because it’s not used by the average person (like English’s ‘who’ and ‘whom’).
What for?
I gotta admit, all those words that start with ‘wo-’ are enough to drive any non-native speaker nuts when learning German:
wobei, wodurch, wofuer, wohin, womit, etc.
Wieso, weshalb and warum are IMHO absolutely synonymous. I can’t think of a situation where they mean something different. In fact they can means either “from what cause” or “for what purpose” (just as “why” in English). But we still can use “wozu” and “wodurch” to make things clearer.