Questions
"Wh" questions are asked with one of the interrogative/relative (ki-) correlatives. They are commonly placed at the beginning of the sentence, but different word orders are allowed for stress:
- Li scias, kion vi faris (He knows what you did.)
- Kion vi faris? (What did you do?)
- Vi faris kion? (You did what?)
Yes/no questions are marked with the conjunction ĉu (whether):
- Mi ne scias, ĉu li venos (I don't know whether he'll come)
- Ĉu li venos? (Will he come?)
Such questions can be answered jes (yes) or ne (no) in the European fashion of aligning with the polarity of the answer, or ĝuste (correct) or malĝuste (incorrect) in the Japanese fashion of aligning with the polarity of the question:
- Ĉu vi ne iris? (Did you not go?)
- — Ne, mi ne iris (No, I didn't go); — Jes, mi iris (Yes, I went)
- — Ĝuste, mi ne iris (Correct, I didn't go); — Malĝuste, mi iris (Incorrect, I did go)
Note that Esperanto questions may have the same word order as statements.
Read more about this topic: Esperanto Grammar
Famous quotes containing the word questions:
“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions ... but by iron and blood.”
—Otto Von Bismarck (1815–1898)
“Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true and false but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.”
—Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 7, Yale University Press (1961)
“There is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,—for the root is faith,—I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)