Hello, I am just confused relating to the placement of 何 when it comes to sentences, as I often see it in sentences such as:
“この中で一番好きな 食たべ物ものは何”
“中華料理の中で何が番好きですか”
“飲み物の中で一番好きなのは何ですか”
As I see how the 何 is very frequently in different positions and I was wondering if anyone had any insight? As this problem also appears in other grammar points as well.
Thanks in advance
if you need more clarification on what I mean, just shoot a reply
So with the instances with the 何 being at the end of the sentence, my interpretation is that the 何 is an unknown variable, the thing you are trying to identify.
For the middle sentence, the 何 is directly asking “what is most liked?”. You are asking more information about something, in this case, what is the most liked out of Chinese cuisine.
It’s important to see what the particles are doing. For the sentences with は think of it as “in terms of blah blah blah, what?” So the first sentence. In terms of these food, your favorite is…what?
The が is directly describing what immediately comes after it. You need a noun in some capacity before the が to describe what ever it is you want to talk about, in this case it’s the “most liked” describing 何
Thanks, that helps a bunch, also, when it comes to the の中で～が一番 grammar point, when the の中で and 一番 are in contact, are they affected/does anything change in comparison to when they are separated by the word that may appear between?
Thanks again for the help
This is simply showing the flexibility of the Japanese language. For all intents and purposes, they are all asking the same exact question “amongst X what’s your favorite?”. It’s a little like in English, you could ask:
“Out of all the countries in the world, which is your favorite?”
“Which is your favorite country in the world?”
Same thing with these questions you’re asking about. You’ll often see sentences with “out of order” structures in Japanese. A simple, but frequent, one you’ll hear is:
何それ？Which would be the same as それは何？or それは何ですか。All the same. Just keep in mind that after 何 you’ll never see は, only が. This applies to other question words like 誰, for example.
HTH!
At least for when it’s at the end of the sentence it has a similar felling as saying, “Your favorite is what?” Rather than “what is your favorite?”