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Beginning a question with "how to" | ||
Tags: Syntax | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 15 10 August 2013 at 5:21pm | IP Logged | ||
a bit ironic to discuss this on a site called 'how to learn any language', named after a book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 10 of 15 10 August 2013 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
If you already know how to _____, you present your knowledge and there's no question mark. If you are asking a question, and it isn't "how to type a question mark", there should be a question mark. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 15 10 August 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Russian we make questions in this way.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 12 of 15 10 August 2013 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Brazilian Portuguese, the most common way would be as in English, with the explicit subject:
Como eu faço para entrar no Skype? How can I enter Skype? A mistake frequently made by Croatians is using HOW instead of WHAT ''How do you call this word in English?" or using COMO in Spanish in phrases like HOW DO YOU LIKE IT? ¿Cómo te gusta? will raise strange looks, you should say ''¿Te gusta? or ''¿Cómo te parece?'' Edited by Medulin on 10 August 2013 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 15 10 August 2013 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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It does not seem rare at all, in fact in several difficult situations I have heard people
say, "What to do? What to do?" for example. In university, I often asked during tutorials, "How to solve this problem/question?". It could be a colloquial mode of asking questions to shorten the sentence, an "impersonalised" "How to..." form instead of, "How do I solve...?". Incidentally, recently I watched a film from 1970 that was titled ¿Qué Hacer?, which in Spanish literally means, "What to do?". Edited by 1e4e6 on 10 August 2013 at 11:39pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 14 of 15 11 August 2013 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Back in the early days of SEO "how to..." searches were the most common searches on the web so tons of websites with answers to the "how to..." questions sprung up in an effort to dominate traffic and search results. They simply tried to match what people were searching. My guess is that SEO had a lot to do with why we see a lot of "how to..." phrases on the internet.
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| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5733 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 15 of 15 15 August 2013 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
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What Cavesa said. It's because of Google. I see it written fairly often by apparently native speakers and it doesn't even register as strange.
However, I have NEVER heard this spoken - it would sound completely wrong, and very foreign. Interesting how that works! You can ask, "Do you know how to [do something]" and that is perfectly correct, but you can't omit the "do you know" or it sounds really bad. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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