Spanish grammar.......Preguntas....?

Question

What is the general gramatical structure of a question in Spanish? It always seems really backwards to me.

Also please explain what the following question is asking: ¿Qué les dijo el amigo sobre María a las personas que estaban allí? Who said what about María?

Note: I didn't write the question. It's a comprehension question from my spanish book.

Answer 1

The general structure of questions in Spanish could be resumed as follows:

¿ + (Qué, Quién, Cómo, Cuándo, Dónde, Porqué,) + conjugated verb + article or noun + noun2 (if any) + complement + ?

First, the opening question mark (¿), the closing question mark (?) then the grammatical structure in between of them.

Examples:

¿Qué es la Biología? (What is Biology?)
¿Cuando empezó la Segunda Guerra Mundial? (When did the Second World War begin?)

Regarding your second question:

My try with translation is:
What did THAT buddy tell THOSE PEOPLE in there, ABOUT Maria?

Somebody is doing the question asking to someone what a buddy, a guy, (or a "friend" that surely knows Maria, and surely knows the person that is making the question) tell to a group of people about someone called Maria.

Good luck!

P.S. Do not worry to feel Spanish backwards. We feel the same about English. For example, we normally put adjectives after nouns and you normally do the opposite, so it sounds weird when we try to literally translate English phrases.

Answer 2

General structure: What is this - ¿Qué es esto? - Verb then subject.

¿Qué les dijo el amigo sobre maria a las personal que estaban alli? - What did the friend told the people who were there about maria?

Clear?

Answer 3

First, you need to know these words:

* qué: what
* por qué: why
* cuándo: when
* dónde: where
* cómo: how
* cuál: which
* quién: who
* cuánto, cuánta: how much
* cuántos, cuántas: how many

Now, you can ask a question like this:
Wh- word + verb + complement.

In your question, "¿Qué les dijo el amigo sobre María..." (What does the friend say about Mary...) you use "les" before de verb because that's an alternativeform for the verb "decirles". (and you must always use this form when asking questions)

This site explains how to ask questions in Spanish:
http://spanish.about.com/od/sentencestructure/a/ask_question.htm


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http://spanishexperts.blogspot.com

Answer 4

Spanish is my native language and I say the same, that in english you speak in a different order.

I wil give you three examples of questions in english and spanish. I wil do my best:

1.-¿Cuando vas a comprar la comida al supermercado?

1.-When are you going to buy food to the super market?

2.-¿Cuantos años tienes?

2.-How old are you?

3.-¿Has pensado que tù eres el que podrìa ser el del problema?

3.-¿Have you ever thought that you are the one who could be the problem?

Now the traslation of the question: What did the friend say about Maria to the people that were there?

Another possible traslation:What did Maria`s friend say about her to the people that were there?

The first is the most accurate traslation.

I hope it helps you

Answer 5

The structure is the same except the only thing you put backwards are colors...like brown car, you put car brown.

*remember to put accents in the right places*
for example: ( Qué should be just Que, dijo should be dijó)

¿Que les dijó=What did he say to them, (you know it's refering to a guy because, amigo is masculine. So a man said it.)

To say this is redundant:
¿Que les dijó, el amigo, sobre maría, á las personas que estaban allí?

*If you have Que les dijó you don't need ....á las personas ...etc*

*put commas in the right places as well*

therefore either say this:
¿Que les dijó, el amigo, sobre maría?
or this:
¿Que dijó, el amigo, á las personas que estaban allí?

Answer 6

http://www.studyspanish.com/lessons/quest.htm
(questions grammar)

And the question means; What does ur friend said about María to the people who were there?

Get it?

Espero te sirva esta respuesta, el español es mucho mas dificil que el ingles (soy latina), pero suena mas bonito!!!

Answer 7

What did that guy say about Maria, to the people in there?

Apparently there was a guy who said something about Maria to all the people around.

I don´t know where Mr_fire_a got all what he answered. It is wrong, all of it.