How to Ask Questions in French

Learning how to ask questions in French is for the most part quite easy. In many ways it’s actually easier to do than in English. In this guide we are going to not only talk about how to ask yes-no questions in French, but also how to ask what, who, how, how much, why, when and where questions.

Let’s first start by looking at the ways to ask yes-no questions in French.

There are actually three main ways to ask yes-no questions in French. The first way is by adding est-ce que to the beginning of a statement. The closest equivalents to this in English are the words “do”, “does” and “did” which also turn a statement into a question. Take a look at the below examples to get a feel for how this works:

See how by just adding “do” or “does” to the beginning of a statement you change it into a yes-no question? Est-ce que works the exact same way except it doesn’t change based on who you are talking about. For example in English we say, “Do you like pizza?”, but “Does he like pizza?” if the sentence requires “he”, “she” or “it”. In French, est-ce que can be used in all of these instances.

Let’s look at the above sentences translated into French.

Contrary to the English words “do”, “does” and “did”, est-ce que can be used in pretty much any situation and tense. For example the words “do” and “does” CANNOT be used in the following sentences:

It’s obvious that this doesn’t work in the above sentences and that in order to make them correct, you would have to invert the first two words (the subject and the verb) giving you, “Would you buy a car?” and “Will she play guitar tomorrow?” (more on this later.)

The great thing about est-ce que however is that it works even in these situations. Look at the translated sentences below:

See how easy this all is? You don’t even have to think of how to formulate the question or move words around, just stick est-ce que in front of it and you’re good to go.

The second way to ask yes-no questions in French is with inversion. All this simply means is that you take the subject (I, You, He, She, They, etc..) and switch it with the verb. We do this a little bit in English but in French you can do it in pretty much any situation. 

In order to better understand this let’s look at a couple of English sentences where you are able to use inversion to create yes-no questions as well as a couple where you cannot.

See how all you have to do to make these sentences yes-no questions is a simple inversion? As you can see from the above examples this doesn’t work in every situation in English, but you should still be able to get a feel for how it will work in French.

Let’s now look at the same sentences translated into French.

Side Note: When inverting the subject and verb you have to make sure to use a hyphen like in the above examples.

That’s all there really is to it. There are a couple more things we need to go over regarding inversion, but for the most part you’ll see it’s pretty straight forward.

Because French is a language that is all about avoiding conflicting sounds we have to talk about the extra “t” that gets added when doing inversion with il, elle and on. Do NOT get this confused with the “t” that you see in sentences like « Je t’aime ». The “t” we are talking about here literally has no meaning and its only purpose is to make the sentence flow better.

An extra “t” is added when the verb that is being inverted ends in a vowel. Take a look at the below examples.

If the verb already ends in “t” you don’t need to add another. Look at the sentence below.

Il voit une voiture – He sees a car

Voit-il une voiture ? – Does he see a car?

It’s important to remember that you can only do inversion with Je, Tu, Il/Elle/On, Nous, Vous, and Ils/Elles.

You can’t say for example « Voit-Pierre une voiture ? » You would have to say « Pierre, voit-il une voiture ? »

The last thing that should be mentioned regarding inversion is that it is more formal than the other methods of forming yes-no questions. Just keep that in mind when you’re in a conversation with someone and you’ll be just fine.

Although asking yes-no questions in French isn’t that difficult to begin with, the last method is no doubt the easiest way (as well as the most informal.) All it involves is making a statement (without changing anything) and just putting an uptick at the end of it. 

Let’s look at some examples.

Let’s start off with one of the more difficult types of questions on this list. Despite it being more difficult than the others, with just a little bit of practice you should have it down in no time. 

To make things short, there are a few ways to ask “what” questions in French and typically revolve around que, qu’est-ce que or quoi. Let’s go over when and where to use all three.

Que is used before a question that uses inversion,

You can also use que next to an infinitive (a verb that hasn’t been conjugated.) You’ll see this very often online especially when people are looking for answers to some sort of general question they have. If you’re having trouble understanding the English translations just think of the word “you” as “one” such as in the sentence “What should one do in Paris?”

Qu’est-ce que is used just like est-ce que in that it gets placed before a statement. The meaning however is the same as the previous examples involving que.

Now let’s look at when to use quoi instead of que or qu’est-ce que. You’ll see in the below examples that quoi is used AFTER both the subject and the verb. The meaning however is the same as what we’ve already seen in the previous examples.

Similar to how we ask “what” questions there are a few different ways to ask “who” questions in French. The first way is to use the word qui, which is very common, and the second way is to use qui-est-ce qui which is less common. The meaning between them however is the same. Let’s take a look at both of them in context.

Let’s place qui next to an infinitive just like we did with que.

Depending on how much experience you have with learning French you’ll know that the French for “how” is comment. Contrary to other kinds of French questions asking “how” is very similar to English. As usual, let’s look at some examples:

Now let’s look at comment next to an infinitive.

It’s important to remember that in any language it can be difficult to directly translate from one to another. For example, even though we’ve already gone over that the word comment is translated into English as “how” it doesn’t mean you can always use it in the exact same way as you would in English. 

The sentence “How tall are you?”, for example, is actually translated as « Tu mesures combien ? » and doesn’t use the word comment at all. Having this said, if it still helps to remember the French word comment as the English word “how” then just stick with that.

Now that we’ve already gone over how to ask “how” questions in French let’s change gears just slightly and go over how to ask “how much” in French. To make things simple the French word for how much is combien. However, if you are wanting to ask how much or how many of something you have to add the word de making combien de. 

Let’s look at some sentences using just combien and not combien de.

You can also use combien next to an infinitive just like with the others. As a reminder you’ll see this a lot online.

Just in case you aren’t already aware, the French word for “why” is pourquoi (translated literally as “for what”.) Just like in English, in order to ask a “why” question in French just stick pourquoi in front of a statement. As usual let’s look at some examples:

Let’s look at pourquoi placed next to an infinitive.

Let’s get right into things with this one. The French word for “when” is quand and it’s used similarly to how “when” is used in English. Take a look at the below examples:

Now let’s look at quand next to an infinitive.

The French word for “where” is où. Pay attention to the accent on the letter u because the word où is literally the only word in the French language that has this. It’s actually pretty interesting that many keyboards have a key dedicated to this one accent. Just like most of the other types of questions we’ve gone over, asking “where” questions in French is anything but complicated. See the sentences below

Now let’s place où next to an infinitive and see what we get.

There are so many different ways to ask questions in French and hopefully this guide helped you with a lot of them. What other ways to ask French questions do you know? Comment below!