#ria4819
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Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.
Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.
First of all, do you know the difference between « que » and « qui » ?
qui replaces a subject & que replaces a complement d'objet direct
That's for relative pronouns but remember that distinction: qui for subjects, que for objects.
Take this sentence, « … veut partir avec moi ? »
What should be the proper word here, qui or que?
qui
Okay, wonderful. Second question, do you know what « est-ce que » is?
Like what is its function?
i know to translate it when it is in a sentence but idk how to say what it is rn
Bit of a rundown for you. « est-ce que » serves as a sort of dummy inversion and it's a question marker. Let's take the question word « Que (What) ». This question word acts as an object but we can't have objects preceding a subject, so what we do is that we invert. That's why we have this:
« Que veut le professeur ? »
instead of « Que le professeur veut » or some stuff like that. « est-ce que » serves to do that inversion for you so you can have the original structure of the sentence without change. We would then get:
« Qu'est-ce que le professeur veut ? (Qu'est-ce que = Que + est-ce que) »
For something like « Que (What) » this is fine, but for something like « Pourquoi (Why), quand (when) », inversion requires you repeat the subject pronoun if the subject is a noun like:
« Pourquoi le professeur veut-il sortir de la classe ? »
(original sentence: Le professeur veut sortir de la classe.)
So instead we can get:
« Pourquoi est-ce que le professeur veut sortir de la classe ? »
Bit of a diversion but back to that marker, « est-ce que ». As I've said before, « que » is used for objects, so what if we wanted a subject? Well, we can use « est-ce qui » for that. For example, take the sentence « Qu'est-ce qui te dérange ? »
Here, « Que (What) » would instead assume a subject role, giving us the translation, 'What is bothering you?'
Compare « Que veut le professeur ? (What does the professor want?) » and « Qu'est-ce qui te dérange ? (What's bothering you?) ». Do note that this works for inanimate objects; human beings use « Qui (Who) » instead.
We can even introduce the concept of « est-ce que » with the question word « Qui (Who) » because it can either be a subject or an object like in these two sentences:
« Qui t'appelle ? (Who is calling you?) »
« Tu appelles qui ? (You are calling who?) »
While we would keep the first as it is (edit: though this exercise you have wants you to put in « est-ce qui » to make « Qui est-ce qui »), we can change the second sentence into: « Qui est-ce que tu appelles ? »
So, to recap:
(1) Question words: Que (What) for inanimate/dead things, Qui (Who) for animate/living things, usually humans.
(2) « que » is used as an object marker while « qui » is used as a subject marker.
(3) Both concepts can be applied to « est-ce que/est-ce qui ».
Let's look at your exercise:
(a) … t'énerve le plus dans tes disputes avec tes proches ?
In this question, is it asking you for a subject or object? After that, is it asking you for a living being, a person, or a dead thing like abstract stuff (personality, appearance, etc)?