Questions in the French language can be asked in a variety of grammatical forms. While some are used mostly in formal written forms of the language, others are used on a daily basis. Overall, the French language allows of communicating questions that fall into three categories:
How to Ask Questions in French Using “Est-ce que”
Asking questions with the help of “est-ce que” is very common both in every day speech and formal or written French language. It is placed, usually, at the beginning of the sentence, e.g.:
Qu’est-ce qu’il y a? – What’s going on?
It’s used in two forms: qu’est-ce que – referring to objects; and qu’est-ce qui – referring to people.
Also, there is a very important grammatical rule concerning que and qui. While qui doesn’t change its form when it’s used with a preposition: “avec qui?” “de qui?”; que does change into quoi: avec quoi, de quoi, etc.
Consequently, questions using the formula “est-ce que” can be formed as follows:
À qui est-ce qui tu parles?
De quoi est-ce que tu parles?
If the formula “est-ce-que” is left out, inversion must be used with respect the verb:
À qui parles-tu?
De quoi parles-tu?
How to Ask Questions in French Using Intonation
In the French language questions can be asked also by intonation. Questioned asked through intonation have the same form as statements. In writing, they will end by a question mark instead of period; while in speech they will be signalized by a change of tone by the end of the sentence. In this sense, any statement can be turned into question if pronounced accordingly:
C’est la seule de mes amies avec qui Je puisse parler si franchement.
C’est la seule de mes amies avec qui Je puisse parler si franchement?
How to Ask Detail Questions in French
Detail questions in the French language are formed with the help of a number of pronouns listed below:
- à quelle heure? At what time?
- à qui? About/to whom?
- à quoi? About/to what?
- combien? How much?, How many?
- comment? How?
- d'où? From where?
- de qui? About whom?
- de quoi? About what?
- depuis quand? Since when?
- où? Where?
- pourquoi? Why?
- quand? When?
- que? What?
- qui? Who?
All the above question pronouns are used to construct three types of sentences:
Questions with “est-ce que”:
- À quelle heure est-ce que tu pars? – the sentence starts with a detail question, followed by “est-ce que”, which is then followed by the rest of the sentence.
Questions with intonation:
- Tu pars à quelle heure? – in this case, there’s no “est-ce que”; the questions in formed via intonation change at the end of the sentence where the question pronoun is situated.
Questions with inversion:
- À quelle heure pars-tu? – if an interrogative initiates the sentence then the verb/predicate is subject to inversion.
Asking questions in the French language can be very confusing at first. The best way to learn it fairly quickly is through grammatical exercises on interrogatives. Beginning students of French are advised to used simple forms of interrogating (intonation, detail questions), as they are not easily confused. It takes a lot of grammatical knowledge to handle the form “est-ce que” correctly in every day speech.
Related reading:
Prepositions of Time in French
Prepositions of Place in French
Prepositions of Manner in French
 |
