Question Words
प्रश्नवाचक शब्द
French question words move to the front of the sentence; Hindi's typically stay right where the answer word would go, which is the first habit to notice. The other trick in French is picking the right word for 'what': qui always means 'who', while que and quoi both mean 'what' but split depending on where they sit in the sentence — a distinction that doesn't map cleanly onto Hindi's single क्या.
Grammar Comparison
व्याकरण तुलना
qui vs. que/quoi — 'who' vs. 'what', and subject vs. object
Qui parle ? (Who is speaking?) — Que fais-tu ? (What are you doing?) — Tu penses à quoi ? (What are you thinking about?)
कौन बोल रहा है? — तुम क्या कर रहे हो?
qui always means 'who' (for people). que means 'what' and is placed at the front of the question, often triggering inversion (Que fais-tu ?); quoi also means 'what' but is used standing alone (Quoi ?!) or right after a preposition (à quoi, de quoi, avec quoi). Hindi has a loosely similar split: क्या (kyā) is the everyday, direct form of 'what', but it changes to the oblique किस (kis) before a postposition — किस से (with what), किस के बारे में (about what), किस के लिए (for what/why). The trigger is different — Hindi's swap is a case rule tied to postpositions, French's is about sentence position and whether que is fronted — but the underlying habit, that 'what' isn't always the same word once something is attached to it, will feel familiar to a Hindi speaker.
quel / quelle / quels / quelles — 'which', agrees like an adjective
Quel livre ? (which book, masc.) — Quelle heure ? (what time, fem.)
कौन-सी किताब? (किताब स्त्रीलिंग है, इसलिए कौन-सी) — कौन-सा समय?
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.). Hindi actually has a close parallel here: कौन-सा (kaun-sā) also changes shape to agree with the noun it modifies — कौन-सा (masc.), कौन-सी (fem.), कौन-से (masc. pl.) — so a Hindi speaker already has the habit of matching a question word's ending to the noun's gender; the difference is just that French spreads this over four spellings (with quel/quels sharing a pronunciation) instead of Hindi's three.
combien de + noun — 'how many/much'
Combien de frères as-tu ? (How many brothers do you have?)
तुम्हारे कितने भाई हैं?
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. Hindi also keeps two different words for this idea — कितना (kitnā, 'how much', for mass/uncountable nouns) and कितने (kitne, 'how many', for countable plural nouns) — but the Hindi choice tracks the noun's own countability and agrees with its gender and number, unlike French's fixed, unchanging combien de.
Vocabulary
शब्दावली
| French | Pronunciation | Hindi | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| qui | kee | कौनkaun | who |
| que / quoi | kuh / kwah | क्याkyā | what |
| où | oo | कहाँkahāñ | where |
| quand | kahn | कबkab | when |
| comment | koh-MAHN | कैसेkaise | how |
| pourquoi | poor-KWAH | क्योंkyoñ | why |
| combien | kohm-bee-AHN | कितनाkitnā | how much |
| combien de | kohm-bee-ahn duh | कितनेkitne | how many (+ noun) |
| quel / quelle | kel | कौन-साkaun-sā | which / what (agrees with noun) |