Latin Indirect Questions: Question Word plus Subjunctive

An indirect question reports a question: he asks what I am doing, I do not know why he came. Latin keeps the question word and puts the verb into the subjunctive: quid facis? becomes rogat quid faciam. The sequence of tenses picks which subjunctive.

Direct to indirect on one screen

The question word stays put; the verb becomes subjunctive, in the tense the main verb dictates.

Those six lines are the whole construction. Facturus is masculine because the speaker is; a woman would say factura sim.

Indirect questions are on the OCR GCSE Latin prescribed syntax list.

The sequence of tenses does the timing

Purpose clauses and indirect commands only look forward, so they use two tenses. An indirect question can ask about any time, so it uses four, plus a future.

The present row also serves the future and a perfect meaning have done; the past row serves the imperfect, the perfect meaning did and the pluperfect. Seen from a past main verb, the three times sit like this:

English shifts its tenses back after a past main verb too (he asked what I was doing), so translate the Latin subjunctive with the English tense that fits, and do not try to make it sound subjunctive.

Cicero's first speech against Catiline opens with a run of them, every one a perfect subjunctive because the main verb arbitraris is present:

Quid proxima, quid superiore nocte egeris, ubi fueris, quos convocaveris, quid consilii ceperis, quem nostrum ignorare arbitraris?

What you did last night and the night before, where you were, whom you called together, what plan you made: which of us do you think does not know? (Cicero, In Catilinam 1.1)

The verbs and question words

Any verb that can have a question as its content can introduce one: asking, knowing, finding out, seeing, telling, wondering.

The question words are the ones you use in direct questions, and they do not change:

1234

1. 1Rogat quis sit.
2. 2Rogat ubi sit.
3. 3Rogat quando veniat.
4. 4Rogat quanta sit pecunia.

1 Rogat quis sit: he/she asks who he is. 2 Rogat ubi sit: he/she asks where it is. 3 Rogat quando veniat: he/she asks when he/she is coming. 4 Rogat quanta sit pecunia: he/she asks how much money there is.

Yes-no and either-or questions

A question with no question word asks whether. Latin marks it with num or with -ne on the first word, and an either-or question with utrum ... an.

Num loses its colouring here. In a direct question, num venit? expects the answer no: he/she is not coming, is he/she? In an indirect question it is a plain whether. Or not is necne in an indirect question; in a direct one it is annon.

Indirect question, indirect statement or relative clause?

Three constructions follow verbs like scio and video, and they look alike at a glance.

1. A question word plus a subjunctive verb: an indirect question.
2. An accusative plus an infinitive, no question word: an indirect statement.
3. A word pointing back to a noun or pronoun already in the sentence (id ... quod), with an indicative: a relative clause.

The hard case is quid against quod, because English what covers both. Quid with a subjunctive asks; quod with an indicative points back.

Translating them into natural English

English indirect questions use statement order (where he was), not question order (where was he); a translation that keeps the question order reads like a crib.

Inside an indirect question, se points back to the person asking: rogavit num se videret asked whether someone saw him, the asker; rogavit num eum videret asked about a third person.

Two shapes that need a second look

Quid faciam? already means what am I to do?, so reported it looks exactly like an ordinary indirect question; try what to do first. Fused into one idea, nescio quis means somebody or other and takes an ordinary indicative, which is the giveaway.

Mistakes English speakers make

The first row needs a footnote. Plautus uses the indicative, and so does later and Church Latin: the Vulgate's non enim sciunt quid faciunt (Luke 23:34), for they do not know what they are doing. Cicero and Caesar use the subjunctive, and so should you.

What to do next

1. Take six direct questions and report each after rogat and after rogavit.
2. Add the future to two of them with facturus sim and facturus essem.
3. Then go on to fearing clauses, where ne changes sides.