what's the difference between とか and や?

Question

I'd say that the biggest difference is that you can use とか in a list of only one item, but や needs to be used in a list of two or more items. — HAL, Jan 2, 2015 at 6:33
Like almost all of these questions of the form "What is the difference..." this is asking for the impossible. There is never a single 'difference'. — Brian Chandler, Jan 6, 2015 at 8:12

Billy · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-15 03:33:04Z

9

Abridged from Routledge's "Japanese: a comprehensive grammar":

とか and や both list representative items, so are usually best translated with "and (among others)" or "or".
とか is a combination of と (quotation particle) and か (question particle). As such, it can quote: "生意気だとか態度が悪いとか言われ、傷ついた。" (Read: "「生意気だ」とか「態度が悪い」とか...")
とか can be used more than once in a sentence; や must be used no more than once. But や can be used together with punctuation to list more than two items: "歯形や指輪、持ち物など".
Both can be used with など, and often are: "A とか・や B など".
とか can also be used to mean など, in phrases of the form "A とか" or "A とか B とか": "日本の新聞とか読むの？". It can have particles attached when it does this: "アメ横(a place)とかで売っている".

answered Jun 15, 2013 at 3:33

Billy

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Hmm, I'm not sure や can only be used once in a sentence. The first example in 大辞泉 is 「赤や黒や青が混ざり合っている」
– user1478
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:17
But the book you're citing definitely says it can only be used once: "toka, a combination of the quotation P to and the Q P ka, can join nouns in the same way that ya does in the sense of 'and', 'or' (see 241), but unlike ya it can be used more than once in a sentence." (p.542) And "ya joins items in the sense of 'and (among others)' or 'or'. It is used (once) between items only." (p.593)
– user1478
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:22

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