French III Study Guide
Interrogative Formation

  • A simple way to form a question in French is by adding "est-ce que" to the beginning of a phrase.

  • The sentence "We ate the cheese" is formed into a question in the following example:
Nous avons mangé le fromage.

becomes...

Est-ce que nous avons mangé le fromage?

  • By adding "est-ce que" to the above phrase, it literally becomes the question "Is it that we ate cheese?" although it is really the French equivalent of asking "Did we eat the cheese?"

  • A shorter way to ask the same question is by a method called "inversion."

  • The following example uses the same phrase from above:
Nous avons mangé le fromage.

becomes...

Avons-nous mangé le fromage?

  • This example is in the passé composé, so the pronoun and the helping verb (in this case, avoir) are flipped and hyphenated. This phrase literally translates to "Have we eaten the cheese?" although it is understood in the same manner as adding "est-ce que" is. An example in the present tense could be formed into a question in the same way, except by flipping the regular verb (such as manger) in place of the helping verb.

  • The following are common question words seen in French:
français
qui
que/qu'est-ce que

quand
pourquoi
comment
combien
quel/quelle
anglais
who
what
where
when
why
how
how much/how many
which

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