Learn German: Woher kommst du? - Where do you come from?

Wo asks about a fixed location ("where are you?"). But here, we are asking about an origin or movement from a place. To ask "where from", German uses the directional word woher.

In English we put "from" at the end of the sentence. Why is it at the beginning in German?

English splits this concept into two words: "Where" at the start and "from" at the end. German neatly bundles them into a single word: woher (literally "where-from"). It acts as the main question word and goes right at the beginning of the sentence.

I sometimes hear people say "Wo kommst du her?". Is that the same thing?

Yes! In everyday spoken German, people often split the word in half. They put wo at the start of the question and move her to the very end: Wo kommst du her? Both versions are correct and mean exactly the same thing.

Why is the verb "kommst" instead of the base word "kommen"?

The verb must match the subject du (informal "you"). The base verb is kommen (to come). For du, you remove the -en ending and add -st, which gives you kommst.

How do I ask this if I need to be polite to a stranger?