Asking questions in French
There are three ways to ask a question in French, from casual to formal: rising intonation (tu viens ?), est-ce que (est-ce que tu viens ?), and inversion (viens-tu ?).
The essentials
- Intonation is the most common in speech; est-ce que works everywhere.
- Inversion swaps subject and verb with a hyphen, and adds -t- between vowels: parle-t-il ?
- Question words: où, quand, comment, pourquoi, combien, qui, que, quel.
- Qu'est-ce que asks about things (what), qui about people (who).
Every lesson on this topic
Each lesson has a full explanation, examples you can listen to, and exercises with answers.
A1 (the A1 course)
- Yes / no questions: Intonation, est-ce que, inversion
- Question words: Where, when, how, why, how much
- Quel, quelle, quels, quelles: Which / what + noun
A2 (the A2 course)
- Qui, que, qu'est-ce qui, qu'est-ce que: Asking 'who' and 'what'
C1 (the C1 course)
- Inversion after peut-être, sans doute, aussi, à peine: Peut-être viendra-t-il
In the app, these lessons are taught one idea at a time with audio, practised until you get them right on three separate days, and brought back when your own French shows a mistake on them.
Other topics
- The French subjunctive, explained
- French past tenses, explained
- French future and conditional, explained
- French articles and noun gender
- French pronouns, from je to lequel
- French verbs and tenses
- French adjectives and adverbs
- French negation
- French prepositions and conjunctions
- French numbers, time and dates
- French idioms and useful structures