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Lesson 22A2

Question Formation: Do/Does and Wh-Words

प्रश्न बनाना: Do/Does और Wh-शब्द

English inserts a helper word, do or does, into questions that have no other helping verb — a purely grammatical requirement that Hindi handles very differently, with an optional, invariant question-marker instead.

Grammar Comparison

व्याकरण तुलना

do/does appears only to make a question possible; क्या never changes at all

English

Do you like tea? (do carries no meaning of its own — it's purely a question-marker)

Hindi

क्या तुम्हें चाय पसंद है? — क्या बस वाक्य के आगे बैठ जाता है, कभी नहीं बदलता

Hindi also has a word whose only job is to flag a yes/no question — क्या — but it behaves completely differently from do/does. क्या simply sits at the very front of an otherwise ordinary statement (तुम्हें चाय पसंद है → क्या तुम्हें चाय पसंद है?) and never conjugates, never carries tense, and is often dropped entirely in favor of rising intonation. English can't do this for ordinary verbs (like/eat/go), so it inserts a helper verb, do or does, that does conjugate — matching he/she/it with does — purely to hold the question's grammatical structure together: 'You like tea' becomes 'Do you like tea?', not 'Like you tea?'. Once do or does is inserted, the main verb drops back to its bare form, even for he/she/it (Does she like tea?, not Does she likes tea?). Wh-questions in both languages skip this front-marker: Hindi's wh-word alone signals the question, just as English's wh-word plus do together do.

Vocabulary

शब्दावली

EnglishPronunciationHindi
Do you like tea?doo yoo lyk teeक्या तुम्हें चाय पसंद है?kyā tumheñ cāy pasand hai?
Does she work here?duz shee wurk heerक्या वह यहाँ काम करती है?kyā vah yahāñ kām kartī hai?
Where do you live?wair doo yoo livतुम कहाँ रहते हो?tum kahāñ rahte ho?
What does he want?wut duz hee wontउसे क्या चाहिए?use kyā cāhie?