Simple Questions
Use question words to ask about people, places, and things.
Korean question words follow the same grammatical position as their English equivalents but combine with different question endings. 누구 (who), 어디 (where), 뭐 (what, casual) / 무엇 (what, formal), 언제 (when), 왜 (why), 어떻게 (how), 얼마 (how much). In polite speech, all of these typically appear in sentences ending with -아요/어요 or -이에요/예요 with a rising intonation marking the question.
A key difference from English: Korean does not require subject-verb inversion to form questions. 'You are a student' is 학생이에요, and 'are you a student?' is also 학생이에요? — the only difference is the intonation. Even with question words, the word order stays subject-object-verb. 'Where are you going?' is 어디 가요? not 'go you where?'. This is identical to Japanese in structure, so Japanese speakers can build questions in Korean almost by reflex.
이에요/예요? (Polite Question)
Turn a polite statement into a question by rising intonation or adding a question mark.
Question Words + Copula
Place question words (어디, 누구, 무엇) before the copula to ask simple questions.
How It Works
Korean forms yes-no questions without changing word order. 이것이 책이에요 is a statement; 이것이 책이에요? is a question. Nothing moves, no auxiliary appears — you simply raise your intonation at the end. This is a genuine simplification compared with English, where 'this is a book' has to be rearranged into 'is this a book'.
Question words follow the same principle. 어디, 누구, 뭐 and 언제 slot into the position the answer would occupy, rather than jumping to the front of the sentence. 그 분은 누구예요? keeps 누구 exactly where the person's name would go in the answer. So if you can build the statement, you can build the question by substituting the question word into the relevant slot.
Two details are worth noting. 뭐 is the contracted, conversational form of 무엇; you will see 무엇 in writing and hear 뭐 in speech, and 뭐예요? is the everyday form. And 어디 combines with the particles you learned in the previous lesson rather than replacing them: 어디예요? asks where something is, while 어디에서 왔어요? asks where you came from, with 에서 doing the same work it does after ordinary nouns.
Where You'll Hear It
어디예요? is the question you will use most in your first weeks in Korea. It covers 'where is it?', 'where are we?' and 'whereabouts?', and combined with a noun it handles almost all navigation: 화장실 어디예요? gets you to a bathroom anywhere in the country.
뭐예요? is the vocabulary-acquisition question. Point at something on a menu or a shelf and ask 이거 뭐예요?, and you get the word plus usually an explanation. Learners who use this question habitually build vocabulary far faster than those who wait to look things up.
누구예요? needs a little care. It is perfectly fine for asking about a third person, but asking someone directly who they are can sound blunt. In practice Koreans soften it with 누구세요? using the honorific, which is also what you say when answering an unexpected knock at the door or an unknown phone call.
언제 shows up in planning conversations constantly — 언제 만나요? ('when shall we meet?'), 언제 도착해요? ('when do you arrive?') — and 어떤 is how you ask which kind of something, useful when a shop offers several options.
Cultural & Language Note
Korean forms questions without inverting the word order — 학생이에요 is 'you are a student' and 학생이에요? is 'are you a student?', separated only by rising intonation. This works exactly like Japanese, where 学生です becomes 学生ですか. English speakers must unlearn subject-verb inversion here; Japanese speakers can simply carry over the habit they already have.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
뭐 and 무엇 are not interchangeable in register: 뭐 is casual and by far the more common in speech, while 무엇 belongs to writing and formal contexts. Saying 무엇을 드시겠어요 to a friend sounds stiff. Learners also drop the rising intonation and produce a flat sentence that a Korean listener will hear as a statement rather than a question.
How to Practice This Lesson
Practise intonation, not grammar. Since the words do not change, the only thing that makes your question a question is the rise at the end. Record yourself saying 책이에요 and 책이에요? back to back and check that the two are actually different — many learners produce a flat contour and are heard as making statements.
Then build a small set of survival questions and overlearn them: 어디예요?, 이거 뭐예요?, 언제예요?, 얼마예요?. These four will handle a surprising proportion of real interactions, and having them instantly available matters more than being able to construct novel questions slowly.
Finally, practise the substitution mechanism rather than memorising each question separately. Take the statement 그 분은 선생님이에요 and swap the final noun for 누구: 그 분은 누구예요? Doing this with five different statements makes the pattern generative instead of a list.