Day 7 - Ask Questions in French

There are a number of ways of forming questions in French and the ins and outs of some of them are rather complicated. But 99 per cent of the time, you don't need the complicated forms. Here are some simple rules of thumb to get you through.

      1.  In relaxed spoken French, the following is generally all you need to remember:

• To form a yes-no question, you just need to put est-ce que at the beginning of the sentence:

Est-ce que tu travailles? -> do you work?
Est-ce que tu fais ça demain? -> are you doing it tomorrow?

• You can also form a yes-no question simply by keeping the same words as in the equivalent affirmative sentence but by saying the final syllable on a rising pitch:

Tu travailles? -> do you work?
Tu fais ça demain? -> are you doing it tomorrow?

• To form a partial question (who..., when..., where...) you just need to put the appropriate French question word (quand, où, qui) at the end of the sentence.

Tu pars quand? -> when are you leaving?
Tu vas où? -> where are you going?
Tu travailles avec qui? -> who do you work with?

      2.  In formal speech and writing:
The usual way of forming a question in formal French is to use inversion. In formal French, it is possible and usual to form a question by inverting the order of the subject and the verb:

• When a third person singular pronoun and verb are inverted, an extra -t- may need to be inserted.

Le chien a-t-il mangé aujourd'hui? -> Does the dog has eaten today?

• If the subject is a noun phrase, there are situations where it cannot be directly inverted and a corresponding subject pronoun must be introduced.

Où travaille ton père? -> where does your father work?

• If the subject is je, the inverted form is often not possible at all:

Dois-je faire une réservation? -> Should I make a reservation?