Forming questions in French - forms and structures (2023)

FAQs

What's the easiest way to form a question from a sentence in French? ›

One of the most common ways to ask a question in French is to invert the subject and the verb in a sentence. Those questions can usually only be answered with yes or no. Manges-tu une pomme?

“Qu'est-ce que” and “Est-ce que” are frequently used in French to ask questions.

Basic French Sentence Structure

The primary parts of the French sentence are the subject, the verb and the object(s). For the most part, French grammar follows the subject-verb-object word order as English does.

Adding question words to the beginning of a sentence is a simple way of creating a sentence in French. The most common is the phrase “Est-ce que” at the beginning of a sentence with a verb, or “Est-ce” with only a noun.

There are three main interrogative pronouns in French, and they are qui (who or whom), que (what) and lequel (which one). Qui and que are fairly simple to use. Primarily, qui is used when the answer is going to be a person, and que is used when the answer is going to be an object or idea: Qui es-tu ? (Who are you?)

How do you form questions in French GCSE? ›

There are two main types of question: those that can be answered yes or no, and those that have to be answered with a specific piece of information or a sentence such as I don't know.

The forming of questions in French is fundamentally similar to the way we form questions in English. The basic principal is that the verb is placed before the subject, i.e. there is a subject / verb inversion.

Five past forms, which are imparfait (imperfect), passé composé (compound past), passé simple (simple past), plus-que-parfait (pluperfect) and passé antérieur (anterior past). Two future forms, which are futur (future) and futur antérieur (future anterior).

Main verbs have three basic forms: the base form, the past form and the -ed form (sometimes called the '-ed participle'): base form: used as the infinitive form, with to or without to (Do you want to come with us?

In English, a sentence is constructed according to a subject-verb-object word order: Sally (subject) eats (verb) croissants (object). French also has a subject-verb-object (or sujet-verbe-complément) structure in basic sentences, as you'll see here: Marie (sujet) mange (verbe) des croissants (complément).

allé, arrivé, venu, revenu, entré, rentré, descendu, devenu, sorti, parti, resté, retourné, monté, tombé, né et mort.

The hardest things about learning French for advanced learners are the subjunctive and oral comprehension. The subjunctive is a verbal mood in French that expresses uncertainty, emotion, necessity, and doubt — in a word, it's used when the subject expresses an attitude.

Cinq gros rats grillent dans la grosse graisse grasse.

Even in English this one is hard to say! We've abandoned the ss sound for one of the French sounds that's hardest for Anglophone learners to produce: r.

What is the best French grammar checker? ›

Here are a few pre-reading strategies that are helpful. Look at the pictures. Look at the title. Scan text for familiar words.

Quoi means "what." Que is like "that." For example, J'espére QUE tu n'es pas trop fatigué. (I hope THAT you're not too tired) or Il m'a dit QUE je suis marrant (He told me THAT I'm hilarious) Que always follows a noun otherwise you use qui. Qui is followed by a verb. Il y a une fille qui mange.

When you use an adjective it must agree with the noun it is describing in both gender – masculine or feminine – and number – singular or plural. This means that French adjectives can have up to four different forms: masculine singular; feminine singular; masculine plural; and feminine plural.

We use interrogative pronouns to ask questions. They are: who, which, whom, what and whose.

Rule #1: French is SVO

Like many other languages throughout the world, French is what we call an SVO language. This means that the default word order is: Subject – Verb – Object.

How do I learn French oral questions? ›

It's hard or not, depends upon your leaning and grasping ability, some people find this easy while some people find this very hard to learn French.

- question mark ? Rule in French: One space before, one space after except for the semicolon where the space is optional.

The most basic way of asking a question in French is simply to use the intonation of your voice to change a statement into a question. For example: tu veux une bière (you want a beer) tu veux une bière ? (you want a beer?)

The phrase est-ce que is used to ask a question. Word order stays just the same as it would in an ordinary sentence. Est-ce que comes before the subject, and the verb comes after the subject. So to turn the sentence Tu connais Marie (meaning You know Marie) into a question, all you need to do is to add est-ce que.

French (or any language) is a great subject to take at GCSE because 60% of the marks are based on your Speaking and Writing assessments which you can easily get A* or full marks on if you spend time learning them. Then you only have to get a grade C/B on the written paper to get a good grade overall like an A or B.

Is GCSE French hard? How hard you find it depends on many factors, like the learning method you choose, how much you enjoy the process, and your motivations. French is a pretty tough language to learn for several reasons!

The prevailing theory around the origins of French spacing is that it's a holdover from old printing standards, as evidenced by its use in old books. It most likely started with the question mark, because it takes up much more space than other punctuation marks.

French. Yes, the whole language. In French, exclamation points, question marks, colons, and semi-colons (all forms of "high" punctuation) should always have a space preceding them.

What is the difference between Qu est ce que and Quelle? ›

When it is in a question: It may help to think of "qu'est ce que" as what, where you really don't know the answer , and "quel" (quelle) as "which one", where you know you are asking about something, but you only know a part: you are asking about a book, an age, a car, and you need an answer specific to that: which book ...

: what is it? : what's that?

you start a question with "qu'est-ce que"; in order words, "qu'est-ce que" only appears at the start of a question. However, you end a question with "quoi"; in order words, "quoi" only appears at appears at the end of a question. Qu'est-ce que tu fais?