Asking Questions In French For Beginners

Being able to ask a question is going to be pretty important if you want to communicate in French.

Luckily forming questions is not too difficult and there is a number of different ways that you can do this.

The Word “Ask” In French

The first thing to know is that the French do not ‘ask’ questions. They ‘pose’ questions. It sounds a bit strange, but basically they are just very polite. They have two verbs for “to ask” – Demander and Poser

For most things you will want to say, you will use Demander, but as soon as you also use the word “question” you should use Poser.

“Je veux poser une question” and “Je veux demander une question” both mean “I want to ask a question”. However, the version using poser is going to sound more natural to a French speaker.

If you want to ask for something, like directions, money or anything like that, then they would always use Demander.

Ways To Ask A Question In French

There are a number of different ways to create a question in French:

Turn A Statement Into A Question

The easiest way to make a question is to just say a statement and raise voice at the end of the sentence. This intonation turns it into a question. It doesn’t need to be a crazy increase in pitch, you can do it subtly.

This can be hard to notice as a beginner, but you will start to hear it. We actually do this in English so you should start to recognise the change in sound to denote a question pretty quickly.

To do this is writing form, you just add a question mark at the end.

A simple statement such as “You are hungry – Tu as faim” only needs to be spoken by raising the last word and adding a question mark.  “You are hungry? – Tu as faim?”

If you really want to exaggerate it you can make a puzzled looking face as well, although is this probably not necessary.

Saying “No” At the End

Another very simple way to turn a sentence into a question is to say No at the end of a statement. There are two ways you can do this, which is also what we do in English.

You can simply say “no” at the end of a simple statement, so it becomes “You are hungry, no? – Tu as faim, non?”

Or you can say “n’est-ce pas” which roughly translates “isn’t it” but is more similar to when we would say “right” at the end of the sentence.

A simple statement then becomes “You are hungry, right? – Tu as faim, n’est-ce pas?”

You could even take this to mean “you are hungry, aren’t you?” however, you get the idea that “N’est-ce pas” makes it a question.

Invert The Verb

This is another very simple way to make a question and is also very useful as it is the best way to ask a question if you are trying to be formal. (When you are talking to a stranger or someone important)

All you need to do is flip the verb and the pronoun around and that is it, which is actually something we do in English too.

“You are hungry – Tu as faim”

Becomes

 “Are You hungry? – As-tu faim?”

You will see there is a little hyphen in between the pronoun and verb when it is switched around. This just happen when it is written, it doesn’t affect how it is spoken.

If there is more than one verb in a sentence, you would normally flip the first one. Just try and think it through as if it were in English and imagine what words you flip around to make the statement a sentence and you can’t really go wrong.

Another thing to point out here is that if you where talking to someone formally and being more polite, you would use the Vous form of the verb.  So it would actually be “Avez-vous faim?”

Lastly, If you are using the il/elle pronoun and the verb you are switching round ends with a vowel,

Then you need to add a -t– in the middle. Basically the French don’t like when vowels follow each other.

So “he likes… – il aime…”

As we can see aime ends in a vowel, so it would become “aime-t-il…”                             

Est-ce Que 

Adding ‘Est-ce que’ to the start of a sentence is a very easy to make it a question. It can roughly translate as “is it that” which doesn’t really make sense, so you are better to read it as “is it true that…” 

It is often used with simple yes/ no questions. You just need to place it before a statement and it will become a question

“You are hungry – Tu as faim”

Becomes

“Are you hungry? – Est-ce que tu as faim?”

Or read it as “is it true that you are hungry?” is it makes it easier.

Question Words In French

If you know anything about asking questions in English then you know all about Who, What, Where Why, When and How.

These are all used in French too.

You can use them individually, but if you want to ask them in a question, you should put them before Est-ce que

Who – Qui

This simply becomes Qui est-ce que…

What – Que/Quoi   

In French there are two main ways to say ‘What’

The more formal way is to use Que and place this in front of est-ce que. When this happens it is shortened slightly by merging the two words due to all the vowels.

So it becomes  – Qu’est-ce que…

For a more informal way we can use Quoi.

Normally this will just be said after the verb.

So “Tu manges – you are eating”

Becomes – “Tu manges quoi? – What are you eating?”

However, if you read that “you are eating what?” as if you where in some sort of shock, this would be fine and you can start see why this is the more informal way of asking.

Where – Où

This become – Où est ce que…

Remember that the où needs the accent above the u. Without the accent, the words means “or”

Why – Pourquoi

This becomes – pourquoi est-ce que…

When -Quand

This becomes – Quand est-ce que…

How – Comment

This becomes – Comment est-ce que…

There is only one other rule to know when you are using any kind of question where ‘est-ce que’ is involved.

As you can see the ‘que’ ends with a vowel. If the word following has a vowel, you need to merge the two words.  This is common if you are using il or elle after, so the question now become

Est-ce qu’il or Est-ce qu’elle

Conclusion

As you can see there is a number of ways to word a question in French and they are fairly straight forward.

 I appreciate that some of the question words look very similar. A lot of them seem to involve he letter ‘Q’ which can be confusing at first.

Just take your time to learn them and you will start to recognise them faster in sentences you are reading.  

(Read the next lesson – Saying “I need to” In French)