What’s the Difference Between ما إذا and إذا ما?

نِسْيان

root: ن-س-ي / form I verbal noun / definition: oblivion, forgetfulness

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Winter is deepening and I realised I left my productive research routine somewhere between نيسان (last April) and نسيان (oblivion), and the upward crawl to find it again over the rim of the crater is proving to be a… task.

I don’t know if there are any appropriate adjectives here, but I’m looking for something between “slow”, “adventurous”, and “uncertain”.

But whilst I hunt for that adjective (and my routine), let’s amble a little in the fields of Arabic grammar.

There are two phrases which bear an eerie resemblance to one another:

ما إذا

and

إذا ما

Spooky.

Well, not really.

Both ما and إذا are particles which each carry a range of meanings on their own. And when combined, they form a new meaning—dependent on their order.

The first combination, ما إذا means “whether“.

We learnt this phrase in How to Say “Whether” in Arabic and, as we saw in that post, it’s followed by a past tense verb.

(إذا being followed by the past tense is standard in conditionals!)

Let’s see an example from that post:

عَلَيهِم أَن يُقَرِّروا ما إذا كانوا سَيَدعَمونَ المَشروع

they need to decide whether they will support the project

As for the second combination, إذا ما means “when, whenever, or if“.

This might seem somewhat counterintuitive if you’re familiar with إذا—because إذا itself means “if” and ما is sometimes used as a negation, so it might seem logical that إذا ما means “if not”.

But in the phrase إذا ما, the ما is not a negation!

ما, here, is just a little particle doing its thing… whatever that thing is.

The point is, ما doesn’t change the positive conditional connotation of إذا standing alone.

Example?

سَيَنجَحُ المَشروعُ إذا ما دَعَموهُ

the project will be successful when/if they support it

And note that the verb following إذا ما is in the past tense again!

Summary:

• ما إذا = whether
• إذا ما = when(ever), if

The more I look at these two phrases and their translations, the smaller the difference between them seems…

…but perhaps that’s because my eyesight has weakened, as I’ve noticed, over the past year or so of being glued to either my computer screen or a book.

I’m at that point in my research where I’m alternating between adding to my 116-page document of notes and perfecting my banana pancake recipe.

Whether or not this counts as productivity is subjective. But whenever I settle into a stable routine again, I’m sure things will take off—

—ahh, I think I’m seeing that difference clearly now.

!في أمان الله

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