Learn Italian: La madre è alta. - The mother is tall.

In Italian, you don't need to change the word order to ask a yes/no question like you do in English (where we swap "The mother is" to "Is the mother"). Instead, you keep the exact same words, La madre è alta, and simply raise the pitch of your voice at the end of the sentence when speaking. When writing, you just add a question mark: La madre è alta?

I thought feminine words usually end in -a. Why does madre end in -e?

While it's true that most feminine nouns end in -a, there is a large group of Italian nouns that end in -e. These can be either masculine or feminine. Because madre means "mother", it is naturally feminine. We can also tell it's feminine in this sentence because it takes the feminine article la and the feminine adjective alta.

Why is the adjective alta instead of alto?

In Italian, adjectives must change their endings to match the gender and number of the noun they describe. Since madre is a feminine singular noun, the dictionary form of the adjective (alto, meaning "tall") changes its ending to -a to become alta.

Why does è have an accent mark on it?

The accent mark shows that it is the verb meaning "is". Without the accent mark, the word e simply means "and". The accent is crucial when writing so readers know exactly which word you mean.