Lesson 1.8: Questions

Let’s learn how to form questions! Fortunately, they work pretty similarly in Spanish and in English. We’ll start by telling you how to form yes-or-no questions, then we’ll explain the additional rules around other types of questions. Remember, all Spanish questions begin with an inverted question mark (¿).

Yes-or-no questions

Like in English, a casual way to form yes-or-no questions is just to add question marks to a statement.

That method is only for informal situations, though. The standard way to ask a yes-or-no question is to swap the subject and the verb, a process called inversion. This is a lot like standard English questions, but in Spanish, any verb can be swapped with the subject (no need to add something like “does”).

It’s legal to omit the subject in Spanish if the subject is obvious from the context. In that case, inversion is impossible because there is nothing to swap with the verb, so such a statement just gains question marks to become a question. That kind of question is considered formality-neutral even though it doesn’t use inversion.

However, since usted and ustedes use third-person conjugations, omitting those subjects could be confusing and sound like you’re referring to a third person. Just be careful always to include usted or ustedes (in a statement or a question) unless it’s undoubtedly clear that you mean “you” and not someone else. It’s always safe just to include the pronouns, so that is often done.

Non-yes-or-no questions

If you want to ask a question that isn’t a yes-or-no question, you’ll need a specific question word. Here are the main Spanish question words:

• Qué (what)
• Cuál (which)
• Quién (who)
• Cuándo (when)
• Por qué (why)
• Cómo (how)
• Cuánto (how much/many; follows adjective agreement)
• Dónde (where)

Note: qué and cuál have similar meanings, but qué is used open-endedly while cuál is used when there is a limited number of options. (The same goes for the English “what” and “which,” in case you didn’t know.)

To turn a statement into a non-yes-or-no question, add a question word at the front, and if the sentence has a subject, apply inversion. (Inversion is mandatory this time, even in informal situations, provided that the subject is not omitted.)

Some question words are used as limiting adjectives. In that case, bring them to the front of the sentence along with the noun they modify.

Other question words can be used in prepositional phrases. In that case, bring the entire prepositional phrase to the front of the sentence.

Notice how all of the question words have acute accents, even though none of them have an effect on emphasis. Each of the question words actually has a counterpart that is used in statements instead of questions, and the accents only exist on the question words to differentiate the two.

Finally, a brief note on punctuation: if only part of the sentence is a question, then only that part should be enclosed in question marks.

Not too bad, right? It’s nice that questions hinge around inversion in both Spanish and English, so we’re already used to the gist of Spanish questions. With a little practice and exposure to natural language, questions will probably come naturally to you sooner than you think.