French

Particle

est-ce que

1. Used to introduce a yes-or-no question.

   Est-ce que tu veux une chambre ?

   Do you want a bedroom ?

   Est-ce qu’elle est arrivée ?

   Has she arrived?

2. Used after a preposed interrogative to introduce the remainder of the question.

   Quand est-ce que les élèves retournent à l’école ?

   When do the students return to school?

   Combien de musées est-ce qu’il y a en France ?

   How many museums are there in France?

Usage notes

• Before a vowel, est-ce que becomes est-ce qu’.
• In older forms of French, and in more formal registers of present-day French, the role of est-ce que is often fulfilled by subject-verb inversion:

  Quand viendrez-vous ?

  When will you come?

  In fact, est-ce que itself results from subject-verb inversion; it comes from c’est que.
• In colloquial French, yes-or-no questions are often indicated solely by punctuation (in writing) or intonation (in speech), with no special lexical or syntactic marker:

  Tu es prête ?

  You ready?

Similarly, non–yes-or-no questions often use the same structure as statements, with question words not being preposed:

Il a dit quoi ?

He said what?

• In informal or colloquial French, as in informal or colloquial English, question syntax is often used in indirect questions:

  Il veut savoir où est-ce qu’ils habitent.

  He wants to know where they live.

See also

• qu'est-ce qui
• qu'est-ce que
• qu'est-ce que c'est