Music of which country

Music of which country do you like best?

Does this sound natural to your ears?
Should we put "the" before "music"?

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Hi Paco,

Japanese ESLs tend to overuse "the __of __" structure. Even with a 'the' it sounds stilted and unnatural.

Which country's mus

Sorry, Paco. No, it doesn't sound natural. Putting "the" before music only makes it worse!

As already noted, the more idiomatic expression is "Which country's music do you like best?"

Thank you JTT and CJ

This question was posted in a Japanese QA board for English learning. Some scholarly people there argued "music of which country do you like best?" is natural, and still others insisted that it should be "the music of country do you like best?" (they argued that "music" must be defined by "the" because this "music" is specified by "of which country"). I myself feel

I also feel "you like best (the) music of which country?" would be another possible alternative.

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Not with the same neutral meaning. This sounds like an expression of surprise or shock at the mention of someone expressing a "like" for a particular county's music.

Hello JTT

Thanks as usual. I often come across in quizzing websites with such sentences like "Baghdad is the capital of which country?" and I don't think it connotes surprise. I wonder why "You like best music of which country?" is different from those quizzing sentences.

paco

Hello Paco

Oddly, '...the music of which country...?' might well suit a quiz:

1. In the music of which country might you expect to find the jing-hu, the ao-hu, the er-hu, and the zheng?

2. The folk music of which country was drawn on extensively by Bartók in his string quartets?

3. The music of which country is characterised by extended improvisation around

Hello Mr P

Thank you for the reply. I think you are right. Even in our language, quizzing sentences are stilted as colloquial speech. It is hard for us ESL (at least me) to catch this kind of subtle differences in sentence usages. My English grammar books describe something about simple wh-questions but they don't tell much how to construct complicated questions. Maybe I have to learn t

Hello JTT

Thanks as usual. I often come across in quizzing websites with such sentences like "Baghdad is the capital of which country?" and I don't think it connotes surprise. I wonder why "You like best music of which country?" is different from those quizzing sentences.

paco
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You're welcome as usual, Paco. All I can say is, "context context

JTT

I feel you too are awfully erudited (I'm not using this word in any sarcastic sense).


paco