fifteenminutes

[boreal rampart]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

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.

[night reef]

French has three ways of asking a question, inversion (formal), est-ce que (neutral), and intonation (informal).
(1) Inversion [formal]: You invert the verb and the subject, inserting a -t- if it's in the third person singular and the ending is a vowel and/or repeating the subject if it's a noun.
Le professeur a raison ===> Le professeur a-t-il raison ?
(2) Est-ce que [neutral]: You add « est-ce que » before the subject.
Le professeur a raison ===> Est-ce que le professeur a raison ?
(3) Intonation [informal]: You just repeat the sentence with a rising intonation.
Le professeur a raison ===> Le professeur a raison ?

So, both are possible; the first is inversion while the second is intonation.
You can refer to this article for more details.

[limber kite]

so in your case you can indeed say

• Pourquoi est-ce que tu m'appelles ...

[hollow jackal]

what does est-ce que exactly mean?

I understand stuff better if I can know the exact translation and finds reasonings from there

[night reef]

Literally ‘Is it that’; it’s inversion of « c’est que (it’s that) »

It’s dummy inversion so you don’t have to invert the clause

[hollow jackal]

d'accord

merci