Formal Catalan does not use a separate interrogative grammar, but it makes the relation between a question and its source unusually explicit. A court record distinguishes the words asked from the clerk's report of them; a research article distinguishes its guiding question from the proposition it will test; an interview distinguishes a neutral request for information from a leading question. Those choices affect punctuation, person, tense, word order, and the preposition carried by the interrogative phrase.
The central contrast is between direct questions, which are independent utterances and take question punctuation, and indirect questions, which are subordinate clauses introduced by si or an interrogative expression. Formal prose often prefers the indirect form because it identifies the institutional act—examinar, determinar, preguntar, aclarir—instead of theatrically addressing the reader.
Direct and indirect questions
A direct question has its own interrogative force. An indirect question packages that same open issue as an argument of another predicate.
Quan va rebre el departament la primera denúncia?
When did the department receive the first complaint? — Direct question.
L'auditoria ha d'aclarir quan va rebre el departament la primera denúncia.
The audit must establish when the department received the first complaint. — Indirect question.
El tribunal determinarà si la notificació es va practicar dins del termini legal.
The court will determine whether the notice was served within the statutory time limit.
Indirect polar questions use si “whether/if”; partial questions use qui, què, quin, on, quan, com, quant or a prepositional phrase containing one of them. The subordinate clause does not take question marks merely because its content is unknown.
Catalan spelling differs sharply from Spanish here. Only forms such as què and per què carry the relevant written accent; qui, quin, on, quan, and com do not acquire Spanish-style acute accents in interrogative use.
L'estudi examina qui accedeix al servei, amb quina freqüència i per què alguns usuaris l'abandonen.
The study examines who accesses the service, how often, and why some users abandon it.
The three embedded interrogatives are coordinated under examina. There is no final question mark because the sentence asserts the scope of a study.
Research questions and hypotheses
An academic text may present its research question directly, especially in a title, heading, abstract, or introduction. It may instead integrate the question into prose.
Fins a quin punt redueix la jornada flexible l'absentisme laboral?
To what extent does flexible working time reduce absenteeism? — A direct research question.
L'objectiu principal és determinar fins a quin punt la jornada flexible redueix l'absentisme laboral.
The main objective is to determine to what extent flexible working time reduces absenteeism.
The direct form highlights a problem. The indirect form highlights the research operation. Neither is inherently more rigorous, but an article should not alternate between them accidentally.
A research question is not a hypothesis. A hypothesis asserts a predicted relation and can be supported or rejected:
La hipòtesi és que una flexibilitat més gran redueix les absències de curta durada.
The hypothesis is that greater flexibility reduces short-term absences. — Declarative que-clause, not an interrogative.
Do not replace interrogative si with declarative que: determinar si la mesura funciona leaves two outcomes open; demostrar que la mesura funciona presents effectiveness as the proposition to be demonstrated. That small conjunction changes the epistemic commitment of the whole study.
Legal questioning: neutrality and recorded form
Institutional records commonly use impersonal or passive-like framing to identify an official question without inserting the recorder as “I.”
Es pregunta al testimoni si va reconèixer la persona que sortia de l'edifici.
The witness is asked whether they recognized the person leaving the building. — Formal legal record.
Se li demana que indiqui des de quin número de telèfon va fer la trucada.
They ask them to state which telephone number they made the call from. — Formal instruction plus embedded interrogative.
The second sentence combines two dependencies. Demanar que indiqui selects the subjunctive because it is a directive; des de quin número... is the interrogative complement of indiqui. The indirect question itself does not trigger that mood.
Leading questions encode an answer as likely or desired. A record or judgment may need to identify that bias explicitly:
La pregunta «Oi que no va veure qui conduïa?» orienta el testimoni cap a una resposta negativa.
The question ‘You didn't see who was driving, did you?’ steers the witness toward a negative answer.
By contrast, Va veure qui conduïa? leaves the polarity more open, while Què va poder observar exactament? avoids presupposing that the witness identified a driver. This pragmatic distinction matters more than ceremonial vocabulary. The biased-question guide analyzes the polarity mechanics.
Interview framing
Journalistic interviews alternate among direct questions, polite request frames, and reported questions. A request such as Ens pot explicar...? is a direct yes–no question grammatically, but pragmatically requests the explanation rather than a bare sí.
Ens pot explicar per què el pressupost definitiu supera la previsió inicial?
Can you explain why the final budget exceeds the initial estimate? — Formal interview framing.
Quines dades avalen aquesta afirmació i de quina font provenen?
What data support this claim, and what source do they come from?
La periodista li va preguntar amb qui havia negociat l'acord i què havia ofert a canvi.
The journalist asked him who he had negotiated the agreement with and what he had offered in return.
Catalan keeps selected prepositions attached to the interrogative phrase: amb qui, de quina font, sobre què, a qui. English can strand the equivalent at the end; formal Catalan cannot simply copy that order. Nor should a writer preserve Spanish government automatically: the Catalan predicate determines whether the complement uses a, amb, de, en, per, or sobre.
An interview can foreground a topic before the question proper:
Pel que fa als habitatges buits, quines mesures preveu aplicar-hi el govern abans de final d'any?
As for empty homes, what measures does the government plan to apply there before the end of the year? — Reordered topic plus locative clitic hi.
Pel que fa a... sets the domain, and hi links aplicar back to the relevant location or domain. Dropping the clitic because English has no equivalent weakens the Catalan structure.
Reported questions and temporal viewpoint
A direct quotation preserves the speaker's words and punctuation. An indirect report adapts person, deixis, and often tense to the reporting viewpoint.
La presidenta va preguntar: «Quan publicareu els resultats definitius?»
The chair asked: ‘When will you publish the final results?’ — Direct quotation.
La presidenta va preguntar quan publicarien els resultats definitius.
The chair asked when they would publish the final results. — Indirect report with future-in-the-past.
The conditional publicarien locates publication after the past act of asking. Catalan does not require a blind English-style backshift in every report: the chosen tense must reflect whether the writer adopts the original speaker's temporal viewpoint or the current one. If publication is still future at the time of writing, va preguntar quan publicaran els resultats can be justified; if the text narrates a completed past sequence, publicarien is normally clearer.
Likewise, deictic words need deliberate adjustment: original demà may become l'endemà in a past narrative, and aquí may become allà. This is semantic anchoring, not a word-for-word conversion routine.
Punctuation in formal prose
Contemporary Catalan normally closes a direct question with ? and does not automatically use Spanish opening ¿. An opening mark is available when a long or structurally complex sentence would otherwise be difficult to parse, but house style should apply that option consistently. A short direct question needs only the final mark.
If an introductory phrase lies outside the question, a comma may separate it:
D'acord amb les dades disponibles, quina és l'estimació més prudent?
According to the available data, what is the most prudent estimate?
After a colon, a directly formulated research question can remain a full question:
La qüestió central és aquesta: com es pot garantir la independència de l'òrgan supervisor?
The central question is this: how can the independence of the supervisory body be guaranteed?
An embedded question takes no question mark when the containing sentence is declarative. But when the matrix clause itself asks something—Ens pot dir quan arribarà?—the final mark belongs to the whole direct request. Do not decide punctuation merely by spotting si or a question word.
Decision table
| Communicative task | Recommended formal pattern | Punctuation |
|---|---|---|
| state a research problem prominently | direct wh-question | final ? |
| describe what a study investigates | analitzar / determinar + si / wh-clause | declarative full stop |
| record an official question | es pregunta si... | declarative full stop |
| request an explanation politely | Ens pot explicar per què...? | final ? for the whole request |
| preserve exact wording | reporting clause + direct quotation | question mark inside the quotation |
| summarize earlier wording | reported interrogative with adjusted deixis | no question mark unless the matrix is interrogative |
A natural professional dialogue
—Ens pot precisar quan va conèixer l'existència de l'informe? —El vaig rebre el 14 de març. —I sap qui l'havia encarregat? —No; només em van comunicar que provenia de la direcció general.
‘Can you specify when you learned of the report's existence?’ ‘I received it on 14 March.’ ‘And do you know who had commissioned it?’ ‘No; I was only told that it came from the directorate-general.’
The first direct request contains the embedded quan clause. The second asks whether the interviewee possesses an answer to qui l'havia encarregat. The pluperfect places commissioning before receipt, and the object clitic l' links back to l'informe.
Common Mistakes
❌ L'estudi vol saber si que la reforma ha reduït les desigualtats.
Incorrect doubled subordinator; si alone introduces an indirect yes–no question.
✅ L'estudi vol saber si la reforma ha reduït les desigualtats territorials.
The study seeks to establish whether the reform has reduced territorial inequalities.
❌ La comissió analitzarà cómo es van adjudicar els contractes.
Incorrect Spanish accent; Catalan com has no accent.
✅ La comissió analitzarà com es van adjudicar els contractes.
The committee will analyze how the contracts were awarded.
❌ Quin organisme vau presentar la reclamació a?
Incorrect English-style preposition stranding.
✅ A quin organisme vau presentar la reclamació?
Which body did you submit the complaint to?
❌ L'objectiu és demostrar si el tractament és eficaç.
Mismatch of commitment: demostrar que asserts a proposition, whereas determining whether requires a neutral verb.
✅ L'objectiu és determinar si el tractament és eficaç en adolescents.
The aim is to determine whether the treatment is effective in adolescents.
❌ La periodista va preguntar que per què havia dimitit.
Incorrect insertion of declarative que before the embedded interrogative.
✅ La periodista va preguntar per què havia dimitit el conseller.
The journalist asked why the minister had resigned.
Short correction task
Rewrite each sentence in formal Catalan and choose the appropriate punctuation.
- L'informe examina ¿quién rep les subvencions?
- Es pregunta al pèrit que si havia verificat les signatures?
- La qüestió és en quin criteri s'han basat la decisió en?
L'informe examina qui rep les subvencions i segons quins criteris.
The report examines who receives the grants and according to what criteria.
Es pregunta al pèrit si havia verificat totes les signatures.
The expert is asked whether they had verified all the signatures.
La qüestió és aquesta: en quin criteri s'ha basat la decisió?
The question is this: what criterion was the decision based on?
Key Takeaways
- Direct questions carry interrogative punctuation; indirect questions are subordinate constituents introduced by si or an interrogative expression.
- In Catalan, write què and per què, but qui, quin, on, quan, and com—never copy Spanish accents.
- Academic determinar si keeps an issue open, while demostrar que commits the writer to a proposition.
- Formal legal and journalistic prose must distinguish neutral from leading questions and keep selected prepositions with interrogatives.
- Reported questions adjust person, tense, and deixis according to temporal viewpoint, not by mechanical backshift.
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Start learning Catalan →Related Topics
- Embedded QuestionsA2 — How Catalan places questions inside statements and larger questions with si or an interrogative phrase, declarative punctuation, and non-inverted word order.
- Polite and Indirect QuestionsB1 — How Catalan softens requests for information and action with the conditional, the imperfect, embedded questions, address forms, and service-register choices.
- Questions with PrepositionsA2 — How Catalan keeps required prepositions before qui, què, quin, and on in questions, including purpose, destination, source, and verb government.
- Subject Position in QuestionsA2 — How Catalan places, omits, or postpones a question's subject according to grammatical role, information status, and contrast rather than English auxiliary inversion.
- Biased and Negative QuestionsC1 — How Catalan questions encode speaker expectations through no, no pas, que no, tags, tense, and explicit polarity in answers.
- Topic and FocusB2 — How Catalan packages clauses around what the discourse is about and what the speaker presents as new, contrastive, or corrective information.