Portuguese Question Words: quem, o que, onde, quando, por quê

English makes a meal of asking a question. It needs a question word, then it needs to drag in do or does, then it swaps the subject and the verb: where does your mother live? Portuguese does none of that. It has a short list of question words, it puts one at the front, and it leaves the rest of the sentence exactly as it was.

Brazilian Portuguese goes further still, and happily leaves the question word at the end if that is where the conversation put it. That makes questions one of the cheapest wins in the language: you can ask who, what, where, when and why before you have learned a single past tense, and a learner who can ask questions can keep a conversation alive on very little.

The Portuguese question words list

Most of these never change form. qual and quanto are the exceptions, and they have their own section below.

How a Portuguese question is built

Yes-or-no questions need nothing but intonation. Take a statement, raise your voice at the end, and it becomes a question:

Você fala inglês. - You speak English.

Você fala inglês? - Do you speak English?

The words are identical. English speakers sometimes go hunting for a Portuguese do to put at the front, and there is not one. The answer, by the way, is rarely a bare sim: Brazilians tend to answer by repeating the verb, so the natural reply to Você fala inglês? is Falo, I speak.

Open questions put the question word first, and then carry on in ordinary statement order:

Onde você mora? - Where do you live?

Quando o seu pai volta? - When is your father coming back?

This is where Brazilian and textbook Portuguese quietly part company. Grammars written with Portugal in mind often show the subject moving after the verb, as in Onde mora você?, and that is not wrong, but in Brazil the subject stays where it would be in a statement: question word, subject, verb. It is one less thing to rearrange, and it is the order you will actually hear. Brazilian vs European Portuguese covers the wider split, including why você rather than tu is the default here.

The é que habit

Spoken Brazilian Portuguese loves to slip é que in straight after the question word:

O que é que você quer? - What is it that you want?

Onde é que você mora? - Where is it that you live?

It adds no meaning. It is a rhythm, a way of giving the question word a little more weight, and it is so common in speech that you should expect it rather than be thrown by it. You never need to produce it yourself, but when you hear Quando é que... at the start of a question, strip out the é que and the question underneath is the plain one.

Question words at the end

The other thing Brazilians do constantly is leave the question word where the answer would go:

Você mora onde? - You live where?

Isso é o quê? - That's what?

Ele chega quando? - He's arriving when?

In English this sounds either incredulous or like a quiz show. In Brazilian Portuguese it is completely neutral, and very common in conversation. Notice the spelling change in the second one: at the end of a question, que takes a circumflex and becomes quê, because it now carries the stress. That same rule is behind the most famous spelling puzzle in the language.

Por que, porque, por quê, porquê

Four spellings, two sounds, and every Brazilian schoolchild has been drilled on them. The rule is tidier than its reputation:

Read the table as two rules. Two words when asking, one word when answering. Then a circumflex when the word lands at the end or stands alone as a noun, because that is where it takes the stress. The pair you will use most is the first and the third:

Por que você está triste? Porque o meu cachorro está doente. - Why are you sad? Because my dog is ill.

European Portuguese writes some of these differently, which is one reason the internet is full of contradictory advice. The table above is the Brazilian norm. Since por que and porque sound the same, and the accented forms differ only in stress, the main place any of this costs you is on the page.

O que, que and qual: three ways to say what

O que is the everyday what, and the safe default for asking what on its own: O que você quer? The bare que means the same and turns up in quicker speech, but o que is never wrong.

Que before a noun means what or which kind, and here it is the only choice:

Que horas são? - What time is it? (Literally: what hours are they?)

Que livro? - Which book?

Qual is where English speakers go wrong, and the trap is worth learning now. English uses what in what is your name? and what is that?, and those are two different questions. Portuguese splits them:

Qual é o seu nome? - What is your name? (Pick out the specific answer.)

O que é isso? - What is that? (Define it, explain it.)

If you are asking for a particular piece of information, a name, a number, an address, a choice from a set, it is qual. If you are asking what something is in the sense of what kind of thing, it is o que. O que é o seu nome? is an odd question: it asks what a name is, as a concept. Qual becomes quais in the plural, for both genders: Quais são os seus amigos?, which ones are your friends?

Quanto: the one that agrees

quanto agrees with the noun it goes with, in gender and number, exactly like an adjective:

On its own, with no noun, it stays quanto: Quanto é?, how much is it? Note Quantos anos você tem?, literally how many years do you have? Portuguese gives your age with ter, not ser, and saying sou vinte for I am twenty is one of the classic early mistakes. The agreement itself is the same -o, -a, -os, -as pattern every Portuguese adjective follows.

Cadê: Brazil's shortcut

Cadê means where is, and it does not need a verb:

Cadê o meu celular? - Where's my phone?

Cadê você? - Where are you?

It is informal, universal in Brazilian speech and texting, and rarely heard in Portugal. It is also a word that makes you sound like you learned Portuguese from people rather than from a book, which is a good reason to use it. In anything formal, Onde está does the same job.

Prepositions go at the front

English leaves prepositions dangling at the end of a question: who do you live with? where are you from? Portuguese never does. The preposition moves to the front with the question word:

Com quem você mora? - Who do you live with? (Literally: with whom do you live?)

De onde você é? - Where are you from?

Para onde você vai? - Where are you going to?

De quem é isso? - Whose is that?

The last one matters: Portuguese has no word for whose. It asks of whom is it? instead. And for movement, aonde is simply a plus onde fused together, so Aonde você vai? and Para onde você vai? are the same question; both are common. The contractions that glue prepositions to other words get a page of their own.

Mistakes English speakers make

1. Looking for a do. There isn't one. Você fala inglês? is complete.
2. Using o que before é for a specific answer. What is your name is Qual é o seu nome?, not O que é o seu nome?
3. Forgetting to agree quanto. Quantas vezes, not quanto vezes: vez is feminine and the plural is plural.
4. Stranding the preposition. Who do you live with is Com quem você mora?, never a sentence ending in com.
5. Writing porque in a question. In Brazilian spelling, the why that opens a question is two words: Por que.
6. Giving your age with ser. It is Eu tenho vinte anos, I have twenty years.

Question tags: né?

English has a whole machine for tag questions: isn't it? don't you? haven't they?, each one matched to the verb before it. Brazilian Portuguese replaces the lot with one syllable:

Está frio, né? - It's cold, isn't it?

Você vem amanhã, né? - You're coming tomorrow, aren't you?

Né is a squashed não é, and it goes on the end of any statement whatever the verb, the person or the tense. Não é? in full is the more careful version. Brazilians use né so often that it becomes a verbal tic, and it is worth adopting on day one: a statement with né? on the end is a question you cannot get wrong, and it invites a yes or no, the kind of answer a beginner can follow.

What to do next

Learn the list as eight questions rather than eight words: Quem é?, O que é isso?, Onde você mora?, Quando é a festa?, Por que não?, Como você está?, Qual é o seu nome?, Quanto é? Each one is a whole, usable sentence, and each is a frame you can drop new vocabulary into. Then go and ask them: the question words sit in chapter 3 of the Portuguese course, next to este, esse and aquele, and the answers you get back will reuse ser and estar in every other sentence.