Learn Spanish (Latin America): ¿Qué necesitas?

¿Qué necesitas?

What do you need?

Breakdown of ¿Qué necesitas?

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Questions & Answers about ¿Qué necesitas?

Why does Qué have an accent mark?

In Spanish, question words like qué (what) and quién (who) always have an accent mark. This helps distinguish them from words that are spelled the same but are not used for asking questions, like the word que (which usually translates to that).

Where is the word for do in this question?

Spanish does not use helper verbs like do or does to ask questions! Instead of saying What do you need?, you just say What you need? (Qué necesitas).

How do we know it means you need if the word for you (tú) is not there?

In Spanish, the ending of the verb tells you who is doing the action. The verb necesitas ends in -as, which is the specific ending for tú (you, informal). Because the verb already includes this information, dropping the tú is completely natural and very common.

Why is there an upside-down question mark at the beginning?

Spanish uses an inverted question mark (¿) at the beginning of a question and a regular one (?) at the end. This is a handy punctuation rule that tells you a question is starting before you even read it!