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July 29, 2021

How to Make Questions in Japanese

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How to make Questions and a few common Question words

10 MINUTE LESSON RULES:

Read each example out loud several times.
Pay close attention to the notes.

In this lesson, we will look at how to make a question in Japanese. There are two main ways of doing so.

Add a か ka to a statement, or
Use a question word (who, what, why, where, who) + か

If you need help, see here for an introduction to basic Japanese sentence structure.

1) Using か ka

NOTE: か is a very useful little thing. Think of it as a ? question mark.

KEY SENTENCE: Please repeat several times:

あなたは日本人(にほんじん) ですか？

anata wa nihonjin desu ka?
Are you Japanese?

Note: When it is obvious you are asking the person the question, the あなたは can be dropped. Dropping the topic when the context is clear is more natural in Japanese.

Let’s start with a statement:

あなたは日本人にほんじんです。

anata wa nihonjin desu.
You are a Japanese person. [statement]

[now without changing any word, add the ka and see what happens]

あなたは日本人にほんじんですか？

anata wa nihonjin desu ka?
Are you Japanese? [question]

Note: All we did was add the ka. The overall sentence structure didn't change like it does in English.

Statement + か = Question

QUESTION	ANSWER
おいしいですか？ oishii desu ka? Is (it) delicious?	おいしいです。 oishii desu. (It) is delicious.
おもしろいですか？ omoshiroi desu ka? Is (that) interesting? [The topic could be a book, a movie, or anything]	おもしろいです。 omoshiroi desu. (It) is interesting.

2) Using question words

NOTE: The second way is to use question words (why, who, how…) just like in English.

THE MOST COMMON QUESTION WORDS:

**どこ doko – where**

どこですか？
doko desu ka?
Where is it?

えきはどこですか？
eki wa doko desu ka?
Where is the (train) station?
[simply use this format: ~ wa doko desu ka? Where is ~ ?

**だれ dare – who**

だれですか？
dare desu ka?
Who is it?

かれはだれですか？
kare wa dare desu ka?
Who is he?

**いつ itsu – when**

いつですか？
itsu desu ka?
When is it?

いついきますか？
itsu ikimasu ka?
When are you going?

どうして doushite – why

どうしてですか？
doushite desu ka?
Why?

なに nani - what

なに nani [when used as a stand-alone question word or as the last word in a sentence] & なん nan [when used together within a sentence]

Insert Audio

なんですか？
nan desu ka?
What is it?

なに？
nani ?
What?

なんじですか？
nan ji desu ka?
What time is it?

Going through sentence breakdowns is a great way to get a feel for Japanese sentence structure and learn vocabulary. Our Makoto+ membership has weekly sentence breakdowns as well as many other perks.

来(き)た、見(み)た、勝(か)った。