Interrogatives: Who, What, When, Where, & Why?
In English, we create questions with what are colloquially called “wh-words.” Although there are quite a few of these words in English, it is customary to view “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why” as the basic five.
In grammar, these words are called “interrogatives.” These words in English, though, have two fundamental kinds of usage. The following examples demonstrate this with the words “when” and “where.”
i. When did he go home?
ii. I like it when you dance.
iii. Where do you live.
iv. The place where I bought my dog is really nice.
Interrogatives (疑問詞) – literally in Japanese as “part of speech for questioning” – as the name implies, are words which revolve around questioning. In English, there is rule that interrogatives go at the start of a sentence and/or clause. In Japanese, there is no such rule. To put this in perspective, consider the following:
v. Who went with you to the park?
vi. Last night when I came home from work, [who was it to that you were talking on the phone with]?
In v. and vi., “who” must be at the start of their respective independent clauses. However, this as you will see in this lesson, is not the case in Japanese. As we learn about the rules of Japanese interrogatives, try to superimpose your understanding of English interrogatives on to them.
In this lesson, we will learn about the basic question words of Japanese, but to simplify things, we will only look at how interrogatives behave in polite speech, then we will revisit each interrogative individually later on to see how speech register affects them.
Interrogatives in Polite Speech
The first interrogatives that we will be going over are “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” and “why.” In Japanese, these words can appear in more places in the sentence than in English. This difference happens to affect various factors in how they are used. In the following chart, take note of the differences between interrogatives used at the start of a sentence and interrogatives used at the end of a sentence.
| Interrogative | Start of a Sentence | End of a Sentence |
| Who | 誰が…ですか？ | …は誰ですか？ |
| What | 何が…ですか？ | …は何ですか？ |
| When | いつ（が）…ですか？ | …はいつですか？ |
| Where | どこが…ですか？ | …はどこですか？ |
| Why | 何故…｛の・ん｝ですか？ | …(の)は何故ですか？ |
The placement of interrogatives is determined by how much emphasis you are placing on the individual words in the sentence. The closer to the front of a sentence something is, the more emphasis is placed on it. This principle helps determine the nuances in the examples below designed to give you a thorough range of grammatical complexity that comes about simply from the patterns above.
1a. 誰が社長ですか。
1b. 社長は誰ですか。
Who is the company president?
Ex. 1a. would only be used in the sense of “who is the company president?” It would only be used when asking about who the company president is in a conversation where said person would not be present. This is unlike 1b. which could be used to ask who the company president is out of a group of people visible/near the speaker and listener(s).
2. 誰が好きですか？
Who do you like?
3. 妻は誰に似てると思いますか？
Who do you think my wife looks like?
4. 誰と一緒に住んでいますか。
Who do you live together with?
5. 一番好きな科学者は誰ですか。
Who is your favorite scientist?
6. 担当者は誰になりますか。
Who will be(come) the manager?
7. 何が変わったのですか。
What exactly has changed?
8. お土産は何がいいですか。
What would be good for souvenirs?
9. 履き物は何がいいですか。
What would be good for footwear?
10. 今日は何の日ですか。
What day1 is it today?
11. え、何ですか。
Uh, what?
12a. お仕事は何ですか。
12b. 何の仕事をしていますか。
12a. What is your job?
12b. What line of work are you in?”
13. お名前は何ですか。
What is your name?
14. 趣味は何ですか。
What are your hobbies?
As is true of all interrogatives, いつ is an example of an adverbial noun, being grammatically rendered either as an adverb or as a noun depending on the surrounding grammatical context. When いつ is used more so like a noun, it is very similar in nuance to “what time (period)?”
15. 住宅を有利に買う時期はいつがいいんですか。
What time is good to lucratively buy a home?
16. 雛人形を飾る時期はいつごろが良いですか。
About what time would be alright to display hina dolls?
17. このサプリ（メント）は、飲むタイミングがいつがベストなんですか？
As for this supplement, what timing would be best to drink it?
18. エアコンはいつが安いんですか。
When is it that air conditioning is cheap?
19. 請求はいつになりますか。
When will billing be?
20. いつ仕上がりますか。
When will you be finished?
21. イチゴはいつ生る2んですか？
When do strawberries ripen?
22. ケータイの緊急地震速報はいつ鳴るんですか。
When does the mobile emergency earthquake alert go off?
23. 復興はいつ成るのですか。
When will restoration come into fruition?
24. 「いつが空いてます？」「2週間後が空いてます！」
“What time is available?” “Two weeks from now is available!”
Grammar Note: With the use of が, it is apparent that openings in schedules are being referred to as opposed to one’s personal availability per se.
25. 今（は）、いつですか。
Ima (wa), itsu desu ka?
What point in time is it now?
Sentence Note: One can imagine Ex. 25 being used by someone from the future confused as to what point in time he has traveled to.
26. いつマレーシアに来ましたか。
When did you come to Malaysia?
27. 電池は、いつ、誰が発明しましたか。
As for the battery, when and who invented it?
28. スミスさんはどこで何を壊しましたか。
What did Mr. Smith break and where?
29. 日本の｛何・どこ｝が好きですか。
{What about/where} in Japan do you like?
30. 数学のどこが好きですか。
What part about math do you like?
31. 住所はどこですか。
What3 is your address?
32. ｛トイレ・お手洗い｝はどこですか。
Where is the bathroom/restroom?
33. なぜ街へ行ったのですか。
Why did you go to town?
34. コンビニのおにぎり、どこが美味しいと思いますか。
As for convenience store rice balls, where are they really good at?
35. 飛行機の座席はどこがいいですか。
What seats on a(n air)plane are good?
36. 郵便局はどこですか。
Where is the post office?
Why?
When なぜ is placed towards the front of a sentence, the predicate usually ends in ～｛ん・の｝ですか, which is done so to hone in on the reason for the situation at hand. The contracting of の to ん is indicative of the spoken language. When ～｛ん・の｝ですか follows nouns or adjectival nouns, remember to insert な, as this ending follows the 連体形.
37. 牛は、なぜ毎日乳が出るんですか。
Why do cows produce milk every day?
38. 火山はなぜ噴火するんですか。
Why do volcanoes erupt?
39. なぜ名詞なんですか。
Why is it a noun?
Under the same principles, if なぜ is at the end of the sentence, a noun phrase has to precede it. If the phrase is a full sentence, then the particle の needs to be used to make it into a noun before なぜ can create the question. In this situation, の shouldn’t ever be contracted.
40. 人々が神に祈るのはなぜですか。
Why do people pray to God/the gods.
41. 太ったのはなぜだと思いますか。
Why do you think it is you got fat?
- Day as in a special day, not a day of the week. ↩︎
- While /naru/ is a great example of a multifaceted homophone, without the use of the particle に, it would have to be interpreted as 生る (to ripen), 鳴る (to sound/ring), or 成る (to come into fruition). ↩︎
- Contrary to English, the word for “where” needs to be used in asking what someone’s address is, as “address” is not perceived as a “what” but as a location. ↩︎