A deep dive into 'What', French's multi-faced question word

It's an excellent first step for beginners to begin their study of another language by first learning its most common words, and "what" is one of the most common words, so you're on the right track with Googling how to say "what" in French.

... unfortunately, there are several different words that correspond to the English word "what".

Never fear 💪

We'll walk through each one, talk about what they mean, and provide example sentences so you can see them used in context.

(This is a monster table of contents, sorry!)

[Context]: According to English-French dictionaries, there are like 7 words that mean "what" in translation; here's why

So, I'll be up front with you: There isn't just one French word that means "what". If you look through the example sentences on Collins Dictionary, you'll see that there are several of them.

To make sense of this, you need to understand two things:

For example, take the English phrase "it's raining heavily". In French, rain isn't heavy. Instead, they say that it's raining "cords" (Il pleut des cordes). The idea translated—both expressions refer to a significant and violent amount of rainfall—but the words don't: English says it's raining "heavily" because a heavy sound is made when rain hits the roof; French says it rains cords because it indeed looks like there are long streaks in the sky, not just individual drops.

The situation with "what" is similar.

Consider this:

"What" is a placeholder in each case, but it's holding the place of a different thing. The first "what" takes the place of the thing that did the breaking; the second "what" takes the place of the thing that was broken.

In the face of this difference:

In other words, these are all distinctions that English could have made, but ultimately didn't.

We'll talk about how to do that later on in the article.

For now, here's the different words for "what" that exist in the French language and what they're used for.

[Table] The 7 ways "what" can be translated into French

We'll explore all of this in more detail in the article, but just to give you a peek of what we're going to be talking about:

1. Quoi → the "what" question word for casual or informal sentences

"Quoi"

means "what", and it's the simplest to use of all the French "whats"... but it's also informal/casual, making it inappropriate for use in many situations. Unless you're talking with friends, you'll want to use the other (more complex) versions of "what".

For now, though, here's a few examples of "quoi" in action:

Making things even more confusing is that quoi is not informal when it occurs with prepositions, such as à, de, sur, sous, avec, dans. In these cases, quoi is not informal, and is in fact the only "what" word available for use, regardless of whether the situation is formal or informal:

You'll also see "quoi" used at the end of sentences, in which case it's a filler word that means something along the lines of "you know/you see/okay".

2. que / qu' → the "what" question word for formal sentences 

"Que" and "qu'""

are used to say "what" in formal questions:

It's apparently illegal for things to be simple and straightforward, so I unfortunately must inform you that "que" is actually the translation of both "what" and "that".

You'll have to pay attention to context to determine whether que means "what" or "that" in a particular sentence.

3. Qu'est-ce que / qu'est-ce qui → a fixed expression that also translates to "what" 

Remember how we said that "que" contracts to "qu'" when it appears before a word that starts with a vowel? That's exactly what is happening with "qu'est-ce que"

and "qu'est-ce qui" (que est → qu'est), which both translate literally to "what is (it) that...".

This phrase sounds like a mouthful in English, it's very common in French—and if you shorten it to just "que", the tone of your question actually becomes more formal.

Another thing worth pointing out about qu'est-ce que/qu'est-ce qui is that, whereas many of the other "what" words require you to invert the order of the subject and verb in a sentence ("je pense que ___", but "que pensez-vous?"), this is not the case here. You can simply append qu'est-ce que/qu'est-ce qui to the beginning of a statement to turn it into a question.

Unfortunately, we also run into a grammatical hurdle here.

Use qu'est-ce que when "what" is the object of a sentence

In grammar, an "object" refers to the thing that receives an action: it's the thing you are doing, the thing you want, and so forth.

In all these sentences, qu'est-ce que is acting as a placeholder, and it will be filled in with whatever it is with the thing the other person is doing/wanting/eating/thinking.

Use qu'est-ce qui when "what" is the subject of a sentence

In grammar, "subject" refers to the thing that is doing the main verb of a sentence. In other word, it's the thing that is doing something.

The difference is subtle, but it's important as French. Qu'est-ce qui is a placeholder here, too, but what it replaces is the thing that is causing or doing something—the doer, not the do-ee.

4. Ce qui / ce que / ce dont → French's indefinite relative pronouns, or the "what" in "what is ___ is that ___"

This trio is a bit tricky, so let's start with how they sound:

If you understood the difference between qu'est-ce qui and qu'est-ce que, the logic is very similar. Otherwise, what all three phrases have in common is that:

To get super technical, ce que/qui/dont are French's indefinite relative pronouns, and they serve to connect a relative clause to a main clause.

Use ce qui when "what" is the subject of the verb that follows it

Observe the following two examples:

The thing to notice is that "ce qui" is the doer of the verb that follows it, and this may or may not be the subject of the entire sentence. For example, in the second sentence, "ce qui" is "what would please me", but the subject of the sentence as a whole is "tu", not "what".

Use ce que when "what" is the complement of a verb

Yeah, I know, that's confusing grammar stuff. Do me a favor and look at this next sentence:

The construction looks very similar to the two example sentences from the first section, doesn't it? But there's a very, very important difference:

With that distinction in mind, look at these next few example sentences:

Here, "what" is the thing that you don't understand, the thing that you love, or the thing that was forgotten. It's the do-ee, not the doer.

Use ce dont with verbal phrases which feature the preposition "de"

Thankfully, this one is the easiest of the bunch, and it doesn't require you to compare anything or worry about grammar.

French has several fixed phrases/constructions that combine a verb and the preposition "de", such as:

In all such situations, you'll use ce dont alongside the "de" verb, and ce dont will replace de.

To use ce dont correctly, all you have to do is remember the verbs that appear in "de" constructions.

Bonus: (ce) + preposition + quoi

In addition to the "de" verbs above, there are other verbs which commonly get paired with other prepositions. For example, the verb "penser" (to think) takes the preposition "à" (to). This leads to sentences such as:

The logic here is the same as "ce dont", the difference is simply that these particular verbs get paired with a preposition other than "de".

5. Quel / quelle / quels / quelles → the "what" that gets used with nouns (may be "which" in translation)

Phew! That was a lot of grammar. Let's move onto an easier one.

Quel, quelle, quels, and quelles all translate to "what"... but, again, they refer to "what" in a specific scenario. When you pair "what" (or "which") with a noun, you'll translate that what (or which) to quel/quelle/quels/quelles in French.

Despite the different spellings, they also all sound like this →

You can see these "whats" as being like an adjective. To use them correctly, you must pay attention to the gender and quantity of the noun they're paired with:

Here they are in action:

6. Comment and Pardon → a more polite "quoi" when you didn't understand what someone said

While "comment"

usually means "how", it can also be used as a more polite version of "quoi". For example, French parents tell their children this:

The "lesson" is that, if you don't understand or didn't catch what someone said, you should respond with "comment" instead of "quoi".

As such, if you want to ask someone to repeat themselves, you could say something like:

Then, "comment" can replace "quoi" as a more polite exclamation:

7. Et si → the way to say "what if...?" or "how about"

Going in a completely different direction as the previous examples, "et si"

is a French construction used to introduce hypothetical scenarios—something that you are either suggesting or imagining.

When being used to express a possibility you're that you're considering or exploring, "et si" translates to "supposedly" or directly to "what if":

When being used to express a suggestion or proposal, "et si" may be translated in several ways, depending on the situation:

How in the world am I going to learn 7 different phrases that all mean "what" ?!

At this point in the article, you might find yourself being like bruh.

Me, too.

I feel that.

The thing is, you don't actually have to learn the difference between all these phrases. Your brain is an incredible pattern recognition machine, and so long as you make a habit of interacting with French media, you'll gradually build an intuition for when to use which phrase.

Like, check this out.

Say you're watching a video from French Comprehensible Input (he's awesome btw) and you stumble into the phrase qu'est-ce qui.

If you're using Migaku, you can just click right on that phrase in the subtitles and get an explanation of what it's doing in the sentence. If you decide that word is useful, you can click on the orange button next to any particular subtitle to make a flashcard out of it:

Migaku will periodically ask you to review these flashcards, ensuring that you will commit them to memory over time. (Here's how.)

As you review your flashcards and consume more French sentences, you'll eventually just "feel" that qu'est-ce qui is used in the sort of sentences where you're inquiring as to what is happening or going on: you'll have seen a bunch of sentences where qu'est-ce qui is used in this context, but won't have seen any where qu'est-ce que is used.

The result is a very naturally sort of intuition about when to use which French "what"—just like you have in your native language.

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"Ce que" this means, if you want to learn French...

Basically—don't worry about this stuff too much.

You'd be amazed by how much stuff your brain will figure out on its own, if you let it, so:

🥖💪 Bonne chance! 💪🥖