Arabic/YesNoQuestions

Yes/no questions are those questions which can be answered with either a yes or a no in English. For example "Did you go to school today?". That was a yes/no question because someone answering could answer "yes" or "no" and be perfectly understood. An example of a non-yes/no question is: "How was school today?". If your friend asked you that question and you answered "yes" or "no" your friend would think you did not hear him.

So how do yes/no questions work. In English yes/no questions start with an auxiliary verb. There are many of these. In English yes/no questions can start with "have", "do", "did", "will", or other auxiliary verbs.

"have" ex. Have they come?
"do" ex. Do they sleep?
"did" ex. Did they jump?
"will" ex. will you go away?

In Arabic yes/no questions are much simpler to understand, and to make. Every "yes/no" question usually starts with one of two words/semi-words. So

هل (hal)
a hamza (either a "أ " (a) OR ء (a))

Both of these work the same way. Both go at the beginning of a question sentence.

The difference in meaning between هل(hal) and hamza:

For making "X=Y" sentences into questions.

هل (hal) is put at the beginning.

For making "X!=Y" sentences into questions.

ء (a) hamza is put at the beginning.

For "X does (something)" sentences

A hamza is used when talking about the present
- A hamza would start this sentence: "Are you crying?".
hal is used when talking in the non present tense.
- هل (hal) would start this sentence: "Do you cry?".

So how do we make a question. In Arabic a question can easily be made from a statement(a sentence, that is not a command, nor an exclamation, nor a question).

X=Y Sentences

For example, how do we transform the following sentence into a yes/no question.

الولد صغير

al-waladu Sagheer(un)
al-wa-la-du-Sa-gheer
The boy is small.

Simple, just add هل (hal) to the beginning.

هل الولد صغير؟

hal al-waladu Sagheer
hal-al-wa-la-du-Sa-gheer
Is the boy small?

Now don't forget the basic Arabic word for yes is نعم (na`am) and the basic word for no is لا (laa).

X!=Y

أليس كذلك؟

a laisa kadhaalik
a-lai-sa-ka-dhaa-lik
Isn't it like that? OR Right?

X does (something)

هل تعمل؟

hal ta`mal
hal-ta`-mal
Do you work?