Hey! What's up! My name is Antonia Romaker and today we are going to compare direct and indirect questions.
Well actually mainly we're going to focus on indirect questions because they are rather complicated.
First of all let's take a look at two examples as a frame of reference.
What do you think about this dress? Sounds very natural, a usual direct question.
Tell me what you think about this dress. And this one is indirect.
Have you noticed some differences? Firstly punctuation, secondly this part of the second sentence
looks almost exactly the same as the first question.
The only difference is the word order:
in the first question we have inversion as we usually do in questions
and in the second, indirect question there is no inversion, the word order is as in a statement.
And here are some peculiarities of indirect questions: first of all they appear within another sentence.
Tell me something, it is a separate sentence and within we put a question.
What do you think about this dress?
But the question changes its form, it loses inversion,
so the word order is as in a statement no inversion in indirect questions.
Let's take a look at two more examples.
Does he know what he wants?
Does he know it? What does he want? Does he know what he wants?
Here, no inversion - he wants - no auxilary verb 'does', we drop it.
Do you understand what I am saying? Can you split the sentence in two sentences, in two questions?
'Do you understand something?' and 'What am I saying?'
Together we have: Do you understand what I am saying?
You have probably noticed already that an indirect question can be found within a statement like here.
Tell me something. And within a question like here. Does he know? Do you understand?
I should add that indirect questions are usually more formal and more polite.
therefore if you address someone you know well you can simply ask:
Where's the bathroom?
But if you ask a stranger better use an indirect question and say something like:
Could you tell me please where the bathroom is?
There are some other phrases you can start an indirect question with if you want to sound polite and formal.
And I wrote down a couple of examples which I want you to change into indirect questions.
So right now pause the video and practice a little bit change these sentences using these phrases.
And here are my variants do you know how much
Do you know how much this car costs?
Or could you tell me please how much this car costs?
I was wondering who's the manager.
I'd like to know what the time is.
Or could you tell me what the time is. Do you know what the time is? Different variants.
Is there any chance you could help me?
Notice that in all indirect questions the word order is as in a statement, no inversion.
However do not forget that in some of who and what questions even in their direct form there's no inversion.
For example: 'What makes you so sad?'
I was wondering what makes you so sad. In this case the word order in the indirect question
will be absolutely the same as in the direct question.
And finally the last issue I want to touch upon today is using yes-or-no questions within indirect questions.
Here usually we add if or whether. Let's take a look at this example.
I wonder if they work here. Do they work here? I don't know.
So I wonder if they work here.
I want you to create two indirect questions, right now pause the video and practice.
Do you know if we can park here?
Are you sure you speak Spanish?
Or are you sure that you speak Spanish?
Okay that's it about indirect questions.
If you have direct questions to me or indirect write a comment.
I will try to answer as soon as possible. Anyway that's it. Do not forget to like, share and subscribe.
And I hope to see you in my next episode! Happy English and Russian practice! Bye!