Asking questions, formally and informally

I'm taking a French course in college and things were going well until we came to asking questions and using inversion. After hours of struggling with it, I still can't get a hang of it, especially when inverting negative statements.

This is what I understand:

1) for inversion, the subject and the verb are switched, i.e. 'Vous parlez francais?" > "Parlez-vous francais?"

2) the more informal "Est-ce que/qu" is placed at the beginning of a statement, becoming a question. "Est-ce que vous parlez francais?"

For inversion, what I don't understand is when a sentence becomes more complex, such as "The students start class tomorrow" (I apologize, but I can't think of how to write that in French). Even worse is inverting a negative statement, "The students start class tomorrow, don't they?"

one example used in my workbook is "Le professeur donne des devoirs difficiles." the answer is "Le professeur donne-t-ils des devoir difficile." Is this because the subject is the homework being given?

Thanks for any help!

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 4, 2010 at 3:58am

In general, when you use inversion, if the subject is a noun phrase (i.e. it's not just il, elle etc), then you include BOTH the inversion with the pronoun (il etc), AND the subject noun phrase (le professeur etc).

So in the case of Le professeur donne des devoirs difficiles, first imagine inserting the pronoun: Le professeur il donne des devoirs difficiles (which in informal speech is actually a possible variant of the statement), then invert il and donne in the usual way: Le professeur donne-t-il....

[Side issue: there a few cases where you can use a "simple" form of inversion, e.g. Où travaille ce prof?, Où sont les toilettes?-- essentially when you don't have a "yes-no" question, you have a short question word and the verb is intransitive.]

Note that these inverted forms are quite formal and are essentially used in writing or quite emphatic speech. In everyday speech, inversion is generally avoided except in a few cases, and a more normal form of the question would be e.g. Il donne des devoirs difficiles, le prof?.