3.10 Questions — Epoché
What you will be able to do Ask a yes-or-no question by putting one word in front of a statement, with nothing else changed. Use the seven question words, and choose correctly between مَا and مَاذَا . Say why Arabic needs no auxiliary verb and no inversion to make a question. Read كَمْ with a singular noun after it and not be surprised. Tell the question word meaning who from the preposition meaning from, which is written with the same letters. Prerequisites : 3.9 and the past tense endings Questions are the easiest thing in this volume. Arabic does not reorder the sentence, does not add a helping verb, and does not change the verb in any way. A question is a statement with a word in front of it. That is worth saying plainly, because English does something much more elaborate and an English speaker will expect to have to do it. English inverts the subject and the verb, and when there is no auxiliary to invert it invents one: he eats becomes does he eat, with a verb that means nothing and exists only to be moved. None of that machinery has any Arabic counterpart. The pattern Yes or no To turn a statement into a yes-or-no question, put one of two particles in front of it. The commoner in modern writing is a separate word; the other is a single letter written onto the front of the next word, like the prepositions of 3.7. Neither has a translation. They correspond to nothing in the English sentence, because English marks the question by moving words around instead. When you translate into English you make the inversion; when you translate into Arabic you delete it and add the particle. The difference between the two particles is slight and a beginner may use either. The single letter is a little more formal and is preferred when the question is rhetorical or expects the answer no; the separate word is the neutral everyday choice. The last two sentences below use one of each. Notice what does not happen. The verb keeps its form and its position; the subject stays where it was; nothing is added at the end. If you can say a sentence, you can ask it. The seven words The question words go at the front, as they do in English, and the rest of the sentence follows in its ordinary order. Word English What follows it مَا what a noun مَاذَا what a verb مَنْ who a verb or a noun أَيْنَ where a noun or a verb مَتَى when a verb لِمَاذَا why a verb كَيْفَ how a noun or a verb كَمْ how many, how much a singular noun أَيّ which a noun, in a chain Three of these need a word of comment. The first two are both what, and the choice between them is mechanical: the short form goes before a noun, the long form before a verb. What is your name takes the short one; what did she drink takes the long one. English uses the same word in both, so this is a distinction to be made rather than transferred. The word meaning why is transparent once you have 3.7: it is the preposition meaning for with the word for what after it. Literally, for what. Several other question phrases are built the same way, and you can read them without being taught them. The word for which is not really a question word but a noun, and it heads a possessive chain of 3.5. So which pen of yours is two words in a chain, and the eighth sentence below is exactly that. How many takes a singular The word meaning how many is followed by a noun in the singular, not in the plural. How many book do you have. This is unexpected for an English speaker and it is not optional. The noun also takes an ending, which is the same accusative marking you saw in the tenth sentence of 3.9, and which belongs properly to the case lesson of the second period. On an unvowelled page it is written with an extra letter after a masculine noun, so it is one of the few case endings that a reader can actually see. The seventh sentence below shows it. Who and from The word meaning who and the preposition meaning from are written with the same two letters. They are told apart by the vowel, which is not printed, and therefore in practice by what follows. If a verb follows, it is who. If a noun follows, it is usually from. If the sentence ends in a question mark, it is who. This is the kind of small ambiguity that makes Arabic look harder than it is on first acquaintance, and the kind that disappears entirely after a few hundred sentences. How English says it English makes a yes-or-no question by inverting, and where there is nothing to invert it supplies the verb do. That verb is one of the odder things in English and it has no equivalent anywhere in Arabic. When an English speaker composes an Arabic question, the first step is to throw it away. For questions with a question word, English and Arabic agree on the position: the word goes first in both. What English adds and Arabic does not is, again, the inversion and the auxiliary. Where did he go has both; the Arabic has the question word and then the ordinary sentence. One English habit has no Arabic parallel at all and must be given up: the tag question. Isn't it, doesn't he, aren't you. Arabic asks the whole question again or uses a fixed phrase, and there is nothing that varies with the verb of the main clause. English also strands its prepositions in questions: who did you talk to, what are you looking at. Arabic cannot, as 3.7 said. The preposition goes in front of the question word, so the Arabic order is to whom did you talk. The one place Arabic is more demanding is the two words for what. English speakers will get this wrong for a while, and the remedy is to look at what follows rather than at the English. Real sentences Eleven questions. Name the question word, or the particle, before you read the English. As printed With the vowels supplied English ما اسمك؟ [1] مَا اسْمُك؟ What's your name? ماذا شربت؟ [2] مَاذَا شَرِبَتْ؟ What did she drink? من كتب الرسالة؟ [3] مَنْ كَتَبَ الرِّسَالَة؟ Who wrote the letter? أين المحطة؟ [4] أَيْنَ الْمَحَطَّة؟ Where is the station? متى يغلق المطعم؟ [5] مَتَى يُغْلِق الْمَطْعَم؟ When does the