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Interrogation

Interrogation

Question Words

• They are words used to provoke a question commonly used in front or at the end of sentences in French.
• Question words:

Question words	Meaning
Que/Qu’est-ce que	What
Quand	When
Pourquoi	Why
Comment	How
Où	Where
À quelle heure	At what time
Qui	Who
Avec qui	With who
Combien	How much
Combien de temps	How long

Asking a question

• Demander – To ask; Poser – To put down.
• When you want to say “To ask a question” in French, you must say “Poser une question”.
• Saying “Demander une question” is incorrect.

Open-ended Questions

• They are questions that requires an answer where it is not limited to any fixed response.
• There are two main ways to form an open-ended question:
  • Front:
    • Question words can be placed in front of the sentence.
    • Using only question words will require inversion of the subject and verb joined with a hyphen.
    • Using questions words + est-ce que will not require inversion.
  • Back:
    • Questions words can be placed at the back of the sentence, but note that inversion is not required for this.

Close-ended Questions

• They are questions that requires an answer where it is limited to a number of responses (Yes and No).
• There are three main ways to form a close-ended question:
  • Intonation
    • This works by taking a regular statement and raising your voice at the end of the sentence which will imply that the statement is a question.
  • Inversion
    • The subject and verb switch places and are joined with a hyphen and it is automatically recognized as a question.
  • Est-ce que
    • Est-ce que is placed in front a regular statement and it is automatically recognized as a question.

Euphonic Inversion

• When the subject and the verb inverts to create a question, there may be an instance where two vowels are next to each other.
• In this case, a -t- is added in-between to maintain euphony when words are pronounced. 
• It only applies to subject pronouns il, elle and on.