Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to form yes/no questions and use Russian question words correctly.

Lesson Explanation

A genuinely simple fact, similar to Italian (covered in an earlier-built Gabal course): turning a Russian statement into a yes/no question often requires no word reordering at all — only rising intonation in speech, and in writing, just a question mark: Ты говоришь по-русски? (Do you speak Russian?)

Common question words: Что? (What?), Кто? (Who?), Где? (Where?), Когда? (When?), Почему? (Why?), Как? (How?), Сколько? (How much/many?).

A genuinely important detail connecting directly to the case system introduced this Part: question words like что and кто themselves DECLINE by case, since they can serve as the subject, object, or any other grammatical role in a sentence, just like nouns: Что (nominative/accusative — What), Кого (genitive/accusative animate — Whom/Of whom), Кому (dative — To whom). Compare: Кто это? (Who is this? — nominative) versus Кого ты видишь? (Whom do you see? — accusative animate, matching the animate accusative rule from Part 2, Lesson 3.)

The particle ли can also form a more formal or written yes/no question, placed directly after the verb: Знаешь ли ты его? (Do you know him? — a genuinely more literary/formal alternative to the plain intonation-only question.)

Practice Questions