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QuestionsForming basic questions is easy enough. Just phrase what you want to say in the same way as you would a statement, but make it obvious that it is a question by the inflection in your voice (or by a question mark if writing). For example…
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Você trabalha aqui?
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Do you work here?
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Não comemos agora?
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Don’t we eat now?
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Easy eh? You also need to be aware of other ways of asking questions in Portuguese. Merely turning a statement into a question, whilst useful, does not provide a mechanism for every type of question that you might want to ask. For example ‘why do you walk home?’; ‘what are you eating?’ – these types of question make use of interrogative pronouns and adverbs: why; what; where; when; which; who; how. Here are their equivalents in Portuguese:
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porquê?
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why? (lit. ‘for what?’ If used as part of a longer question [eg. ‘por que estamos a esperar?’], it is 2 separate words with no circumflex on the ‘e’)
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| que...? |
what...? (if used on its own, a circumflex is added to the ‘e’)
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| o que (é)? |
what (is it)?
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onde?
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where?
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quando?
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when?
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quanto/quanta?
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how much?
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qual?
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which/what? (singular)
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quais?
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which/what? (plural)
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quem?
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who?
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como?
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how?
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quão…?
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how…? (only used as an adverb – eg. ‘how tall are you?’ or, ‘how tall you are!’)
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One more that you need to know is ‘será que…’, which can be used to start a question requiring a yes or no answer. Literally, this means ‘it will be that…’, but a better translation might be ‘is it true that…?’. It can also be translated as ‘I wonder if…?’. We don’t really have a direct equivalent in English, but virtually any question that has a yes or no answer could probably be phrased using ‘será que…’. For example:
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Será que eles vão a pé para casa?
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Do they walk home? (or: is it so that they walk home?)
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| Será que comemos agora? |
I wonder if we eat now?
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You’ll get used to it, trust me.
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