6 Question phrases

Question phrase 1 – ¿Qué es…?

The first thing you should to ask yourself: are you looking for the definition of a word or phrase?

If you are, you’ll need this first question phrase.

Think of ¿Qué es…? as asking “What is the definition of…?”.

Question phrase 2 – ¿Cuál es…?

If your question isn’t related to the definition of an idea or concept, but instead could have a variety of options, you may need this second question phrase.

In fact, ¿Cuál es…? should to be one of your go-to questions for asking about anything where more than one option is possible.

Furthermore, you still need this construction even when it feels like there is only one answer such as asking someone’s name.

Question phrase 3 – ¿Cuál de…?

This third question phrase is a lot more obvious than the previous two and is much easier to translate between English and Spanish.

You use ¿Cuál de…? when you want to ask “which of … (these options) …?”.

Question phrase 4 – ¿Qué (sustantivo)…?

Question phrase 5 – ¿Qué (verbo)…?

You need this question phrase whenever you want to follow a question word by a conjugated verb and there isn’t a discrete set of choices in front of you.

If you want to ask about what happened, what someone wants, what someone does, or what someone wants to do, etc., you’ll need this phrase.

The choice between this phrase and the last phrase in Spanish is much closer to the consideration you have to make when deciding between ‘what’ and ‘which’ in English.

If there is a big range of options, go with ¿Qué (verbo)…?.

Question phrase 6 – ¿Cuál (verbo)…?

In contrast to the previous phrase, if you have a small set of things to choose from, and you know from context what you are choosing, then you will need this last phrase.

Context matters here! In other words, you can only use this question phrase if linked to a previous statement.