An interrogative word is a word you use to ask a question.

An interrogative sentence is a question. Pregunta is the Spanish word for question.

People ¿quién? who?—singular ¿quiénes? who?—plural ¿con quién? with whom? ¿de quién? whose?

Things ¿qué? what? ¿cuál? which?—singular (or

what?) ¿cuáles? which?—plural ¿cuánto, -a? how much? ¿cuántos, -as? how many?

Location ¿dónde? where? ¿adónde? to where? ¿de dónde? from where?

Time ¿cuándo? when?

Reason ¿por qué? why?

Description ¿cómo? how?

All interrogative words have a written accent mark.

Spanish questions have question marks both before and after the question. The question mark at the end of the question is

exactly like an English question mark. ? The “extra” question mark at the beginning of

the question is an upside-down English question mark. ¿

If only part of the sentence is a question, the question marks go around only that part of the sentence.

Marco es inteligente, pero ¿es trabajador también?

With Interrogative Words In questions with interrogative words, the verb

comes before the subject. The order is:

interrogative word + verb + subject + (rest of sentence)

¿Qué come Elena en el restaurante? ¿Adónde van Uds. después de las clases? ¿Por qué va Ignacio a la playa todos los

días?

Differences from English In English, we use the verb do (or its other

forms: did, don’t, doesn’t, etc.) to signal that a question is coming.

We do not translate this do into Spanish—English is the only Indo-European language that uses a particular verb to introduce questions. 

In an English question, the subject comes after do and before the action verb. In a Spanish question, the subject usually comes after the action verb.

Without Interrogative Words You don’t always need to use an interrogative

word to ask a question.   For simple questions that can be answered sí

or no, you can change a statement into a question just by raising your tone at the end:

¿Ana va a la biblioteca?

Without Interrogative Words To emphasize that you are asking a question, you

can also:put the verb before the subject:

¿Va Ana a la biblioteca?

OR

add ¿verdad? (right?) or ¿no? to the end:

Ana va a la biblioteca, ¿verdad?

Ana va a la biblioteca, ¿no?