A lot of English question words start with “W.” They mostly start with “D” or “I” in Japanese, plus the ubiquitous nani/nan (“what”). There seem to be a lot of them in Japanese for two reasons: one is that there are often different words for cases where we would use the same question word– “how much” vs. “how old,” for instance, both use “how,” but are different words in Japanese. And the other is because of all those darn “counters” that I talked about back in the chapter on numbers.
Check out a few:
What: nani or nan
Where: doko
Where to: doko ni
Where at: doko de
Why: doushite or naze
Who: dare or donata
With whom: dare to
To whom [did you give something]: dare ni
Which: dore
Which (particular object): dono (object)
What kind of: donna
How (by what means, as in travelling): nan de
How (used to propose something, like “how about X?”): ikaga
How much [does something cost]: ikura
How many (also used for asking a person’s age): ikutsu
How long will something take: donogurai
When (time in general): itsu
What time (specific hour): nanji
What day (of the week): nan-youbi
What day (of the month), or what date: nan-nichi
What month: nangatsu
How manu months: nan-kagetsu
What year: nan-nen
How many people: nan-nin
How many animals: nanbiki
What floor (of a building): nangai
You get the idea. The later question words use those counters I mentioned. For example, -kai is the counter for floors of a building. Ikkai is the first floor, nikai the second, etc., and sonankai is the proper question word for “what floor.” In other words, there are as many question words as there are counters! And there are tens of counters!! (You remember, there were ones for big ships, small boats, bottles, fruits, pairs of socks, etc).
