2.7 Questions — W-words and inversion — Epoché
What you will be able to do Ask a question with any of the nine question words — wer , was , wo , wann , warum , wie , woher , wohin , welcher — and explain why the verb still comes second: Wann kommst du? Ask a question that expects a yes or a no by putting the verb in first position and nothing in front of it: Sprichst du Deutsch? Do both without inventing an auxiliary verb, which is what English forces you to do and German does not: Trinkst du Tee? is three words, do you drink tea is four. Choose correctly between Wie viel kostet es? and Wie viele Bücher hast du? , and say what decides it. Prerequisites : 2.6 — you need the negation and the position rules from the grammar volume, and 3.2 for the present tense of the two commonest verbs, since half the questions below are built on them. See 2.6 Grammar if the placement of the negator is not yet settled. The grammar volume resumes here, after the verb lessons and the first reading text. You can now state something, deny it and put the verb in the right place. This lesson adds the last of the three sentence types that a beginner needs, and it is the easiest of the three, because German asks questions the way English did before it acquired the habit of manufacturing a helper verb. There are two kinds of question and the difference between them is a difference of one slot. A question that begins with a question word fills first position with that word, so the verb comes second, exactly as in a statement. A question that expects a yes or a no leaves first position empty, so the verb comes first. That is the whole of it, and everything else in this lesson is vocabulary and one point of usage. The nine question words All nine begin with the same letter, which is the German cognate of the wh- of English. The correspondence is regular and once you see it the list stops looking like a list. German English · what to notice wer who — the false friend of the lesson: it looks like English where and means who . This trips up every beginner at least once was what — the direct cognate, with the consonant shift you know from the cognates volume wo where — the one that means what the first word looks like it means wann when — the direct cognate, and it never means if , which is a different word warum why — not a cognate; built from the old word for where and the word for around ( wo + um ) wie how — not obviously related to the English word, and it also does the work of English what in asking a name woher where from — English puts the preposition at the end of the clause; German attaches the direction word her to the question word wohin where to — the same again with hin , and English mostly omits the preposition altogether and says simply where welcher which — the only one of the nine that agrees with a following noun like an article, taking its endings from it Three of those deserve a second look. The first is a genuine trap and worth over-learning: the word that looks like English where means who , and the word that means where is shorter. Say both out loud several times now. The seventh and eighth are the pair English has largely given up. Old English distinguished whence and whither from where , and modern English has collapsed all three into one word and moved the preposition to the end: where did you come from . German keeps the three-way distinction, and each of its words is a single unit: wo with a direction word, her or hin , welded on. These two are adverbs, not prepositions, but they do the work of English from and to . The practical consequence is that a German question of this kind is shorter than its English translation and has nothing dangling at the end. The ninth is not really a question word but an article that asks a question, which is why it appears here with an ending. It agrees in gender and case with the noun it introduces, taking the same endings as the definite article, so once you can say der , die , das and den you can form all its shapes. There is also a set of question words that combine with prepositions in a way this volume comes back to later. Questions with a question word Nine sentences, one for each word, all of them three or four words long. In every one the question word is the first element and the verb is the second — which is the rule from the first lesson of this volume, applying without modification. German English Wer bezahlt das? [1] Who is paying for this? Was machst du? [2] What're you doing? Wo arbeitest du? [3] Where are you working? Wann kommst du? [4] When are you coming? Warum fragst du? [5] Why are you asking? Wie heißt du? [6] What is your name? Woher kommst du? [7] Where do you come from? Wohin gehst du? [8] Where are you heading? Welche ist besser? [9] Which one is better? Count the words in the German column and in the English column. Every German question here is three words. Only one of the English translations manages it in three, and only by contracting ( What're you doing? ); most take four or five, because English has to supply are , is , do or one to hold the question together. That difference is the subject of the next section. The first and the last rows are the exception in a small way: when the question word is itself the subject, nothing has been displaced, and the order is simply question word, verb, the rest. The other seven have the question word as something other than the subject, so the subject follows the verb. Both are second position; the difference is only which element occupies the first slot. The sixth row is a usage point worth learning as a phrase. German asks a name with the word for how and a verb meaning to be called . English asks with what and a possessive. Translating the English word by word produces something a German speaker will not use, so learn the German question whole. Questions that expect yes or no Leave first position empty and the verb takes the front of the sentence. There is nothing else to do: no added word, no change to the verb, no rearrangement of a