Question Words
Question Words
French question words sit at the front of the sentence, the same slot English question words occupy — the real trick in French is picking the right word for 'what', since que and quoi split along a line English's single word 'what' doesn't draw.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
qui vs. que/quoi — 'who' vs. 'what', split further by position
Qui parle ? (Who is speaking?) — Que fais-tu ? (What are you doing?) — Tu penses à quoi ? (What are you thinking about?)
Who is speaking? — What are you doing? — What are you thinking about?
qui always means 'who' (for people), matching English 'who' closely. que means 'what' and normally comes first in the sentence, often triggering inversion (Que fais-tu ?); quoi also means 'what' but is used standing alone or right after a preposition (à quoi, de quoi, avec quoi). English gets by with a single word 'what' in every position, so French additionally splitting 'what' into two words depending on sentence position is a genuinely new distinction to track — there's no single French word that always means 'what' regardless of where it sits.
quel / quelle / quels / quelles — 'which', agrees like an adjective
Quel livre ? (which book, masc.) — Quelle heure ? (what time, fem.)
which book? — what time?
Unlike qui/que/où/quand, which never change form, quel behaves like an adjective and must agree in gender and number with the noun that follows it: quel (masc. sing.), quelle (fem. sing.), quels (masc. pl.), quelles (fem. pl.). English 'which/what' never changes form no matter what noun follows, so this agreement is a new habit — all four French spellings are pronounced identically, and only the noun tells you which spelling is correct.
combien de + noun — 'how many/much'
Combien de frères as-tu ? (How many brothers do you have?)
How many brothers do you have?
combien alone means 'how much' (Ça coûte combien ? — 'How much does that cost?'), but to ask about a specific noun you need combien de + noun, with de staying invariable regardless of gender or number — it never becomes du/des here, even though de otherwise behaves like the partitive article you just learned.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| French | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| qui | kee | who |
| que / quoi | kuh / kwah | what |
| où | oo | where |
| quand | kahn | when |
| comment | koh-MAHN | how |
| pourquoi | poor-KWAH | why |
| combien | kohm-bee-AHN | how much |
| combien de | kohm-bee-ahn duh | how many (+ noun) |
| quel / quelle | kel | which / what (agrees with noun) |