如果 or 要是

warius
 January 29, 2010, 02:40 PM posted in General Discussion

hey guys. quite early after i started learning chinese the teacher told us that we should use 要是 as "if", but a few days a go it got more complicated as we also learned 如果 as "if" , so now im confused. whats the difference between these two? could someone please explain? :)

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changye
 January 30, 2010, 02:27 AM

Hi warius

如果 is basically interchangeable with 要是，while 要是 is a little more colloquial than 如果. You can say "要是我(的话)" (I would..., in my case), but not "如果我(的话)". The correct one is "如果是我(的话)".