Questions
What does the speaker want to find out?
Meaning
A question asks for missing information or checks whether something is true. It can ask about a person, place, reason, or other detail, or offer alternatives to choose from. Languages mark questions with word order, question words, small markers, or intonation, and some have no special question word order. Requests and commands ask someone to act rather than supply information, although a question can also serve as a polite request.
How to spot it
Check whether the speaker is asking for information or confirmation, then look for any question word, changed order, small marker, or spoken melody that signals it.
In your native language
In most direct questions, English puts an auxiliary verb, a helper such as can or do, before the subject. If the statement has no helper, most verbs need do, does, or did, but be forms questions without adding do. A question word or the phrase containing it usually comes first; when who or what is itself the subject, there is normally no added do or change in order.
Do you work on Saturdays?
Do goes before you to turn the statement into a question.
Who called you?
Who is the subject, so no do is added.
Who did you call?
Who asks about the person called; did comes before you, and call has no past ending.
In your learning language
Spanish marks yes-or-no questions mainly by intonation, the rise and fall of the voice, without adding a helper verb. Information questions use words such as qué, dónde, and cuándo, usually before the verb; an expressed subject often follows the verb. Written questions have opening ¿ and closing ?, and question words keep their accent marks when the question is embedded inside a statement.
¿Vienes mañana?
Are you coming tomorrow?
The words can have the same order as a statement; the voice and punctuation mark the question.
¿Dónde vive Ana?
Where does Ana live?
The question word comes first, and the expressed subject Ana follows the verb.
No sé a qué hora sale el tren.
I don't know what time the train leaves.
Qué keeps its accent mark even though the whole sentence is a statement.
Learners whose language uses a helper verb to form questions may add one unnecessarily. Learners whose writing has only a closing question mark may omit ¿ or the accent marks on question words.