While learning French, or any new language, it’s certainly natural to have a lot of questions to ask, whether it’s a request for something simple in a shop or getting to know a French-speaking person. Our first question is – are you ready to start learning how to do this?
To start off, we’ll take a look at question words in French. In English, we often call the most basic list of question words ‘the Five Ws’. It’s a term used in journalism and writing, as well as language learning:
- Quoi ? or Qu’est-ce que… ? What?
- Où ? Where?
- Qui ? Who?
- Pourquoi ? Why?
- Quand ? When?
Unfortunately, there’s no simple way to remember these in French. Instead of the Five Ws, you’ve got a mixture of Qs, an O and a P!
We’ll look at an example of each question below. Unlike English, the question word doesn’t always need to open the sentence:
Qu’est-ce qu’ils font ? What are they doing?
C’est quoi ton adresse ? What’s your address?
Tu l’as trouvé où ? Where did you find it?
Qui veut venir avec nous ? Who wants to come with us?
Pourquoi est-il déjà parti ? Why did he leave already?
C’est quand l’examen final ? When’s the final exam?
Aside from this group of five words, another important question word in English is how, which is comment in French:
- Comment ? How?
Comment allez-vous ? How are you doing?
Before we move on, there is one more key word used in French questions beyond ‘the Five Ws’. Unlike English, which needs more than one word to express it, you can use a single French question word to ask about quantity.
- Combien ? How much? or How many?
Combien de personnes nous rejoindra ? How many people will join us?
Combien ça coûte ? How much does that cost?
While it is of course crucial to know the question words and their various forms, you’ll find yourself needing to ask for information using verbs too.
Take for example the question ‘Do you have a pen?’ (the verb here is ‘have’, making the question ‘do you have…?’).
When asking this in French, you have three options of phrasing the question:
- Est-ce que tu as un stylo ?
- As-tu un stylo ?
- Tu as un stylo ?
These three constructions go from most to least formal. This means, depending on who you’re speaking to, you might hear or need to use a different question formation. Generally, you use formal constructions for people you don’t know, and informal constructions for people you’re friendly with. (Remember you may also need to switch the informal tu pronoun for the more formal vous when addressing someone you don’t know well.)
You can find an explanation for each construction below:
- This essentially translates to ‘is it that you have a pen?’ with est-ce being an inversion of c’est. To form this type of question, all you do is add est-ce que in front of the statement, which in this case is tu as un stylo.
- If tu as un stylo means you have a pen, then you can invert this statement to ask a question instead. To invert it, you simply switch the pronoun (tu) and the conjugated verb (as) then add a hyphen in the middle to create as-tu… ?
- This is the most informal way of asking a question, where your spoken tone is very important. To make this statement into a question when speaking French aloud, you need to speak with intonation. To do this, the tone rises upwards towards the end of the phrase to make it sound like a query. We do this in English too.
So, how are you feeling about French questions now? Ready to jump into a conversation? When will you practise your new questions out on someone? Keep up to date with our blogs for more help and advice on improving your spoken French!
Written by Holly Tarbet, freelance copywriter and editor.
All opinions expressed on this blog are those of the individual writers, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company, HarperCollins.
