View Full Version : Some english native speaker please tell me the difference between (Perhaps and Maybe)
Kosimo
April 4th, 2008, 10:13 PM
English is not my native language, and I could never understand the difference between this two words: Perhaps and Maybe.
Could you please help me?
Thank you guys.
sanderella
April 4th, 2008, 10:20 PM
I think it depends on where you come from. I tend to use perhaps in writing and maybe orally. Have you tried Googling the words? There's some interesting comment, Americans seem to use maybe more than Brits.:)
gn2
April 4th, 2008, 10:20 PM
The only real difference is the spelling, they both mean the same thing.
HermanAB
April 4th, 2008, 10:56 PM
I can also think of 'possibly'.
The reason for the different words is that they originated from different European languages. Western European languages are all mixed up and if you know any one, then it is easy to learn another and once you know two, it is much easier to learn a third because of the increasing overlap and so on.
I suppose that this is more or less true at any particular point in the world, with the local languages influencing each other.
heartburnkid
April 4th, 2008, 11:23 PM
"Perhaps" and "Maybe" are synonyms. This means that they are largely the same in meaning.
English has a lot of synonyms; this is mostly because English started as a mash-up of several other languages, and is still constantly incorporating loanwords. That's just the nature of the beast.
Kosimo
April 4th, 2008, 11:24 PM
Cool, thank you guys for the answers. It is clear now. I though it was used independently for two different meanings.
I know the languages differences, it happens a lot with Spanish, spanish from spain and from america is very different, even if is the same language. And almost everybody understands the same words, but expressions and words are used in a different way.
p_quarles
April 4th, 2008, 11:40 PM
The reason for the different words is that they originated from different European languages. Western European languages are all mixed up and if you know any one, then it is easy to learn another and once you know two, it is much easier to learn a third because of the increasing overlap and so on.
English is a special case in this regard, too. It has two distinct lines of heritage, one following from the German language family and the other based in Latin (via old French). So, you have many cases where two words mean nearly identical things, but have different origins. In this case, "maybe" is a word of Germanic origin, and "perhaps" is a word of Latinate origin, with cognates in many Romance languages.
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.2 Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.