Yes / no questions: rising tone, written with ?
A yes/no question is a statement said with a rising tone and written with a question mark. Nothing is added, nothing moves.
| Statement | Question |
|---|---|
| Yu mau ca. | Yu mau ca? |
| Ruma yu kabir. | Ruma yu kabir? |
| Ta suda lai. | Ta suda lai? |
This is what the language has done since its first sentence (Hi! Ok?). It is confirmed, not changed.
Question words: stay where the answer goes
To ask what, who, where, when, why, how, how many, put the question word in the exact slot the answer would occupy. Word order does not change.
| Question | Answer | |
|---|---|---|
| Yu kan ke? | Yu kan anak. | What do you see? — You see a child. |
| Kim lai? | Rafiki lai. | Who is coming? — A friend is coming. |
| Yu go nali? | Mi go ruma. | Where are you going? — I’m going home. |
| Yu saufa lai kab? | Mi saufa lai din. | When will you come? — I’ll come by day. |
| Yu mau ca porke? | — | Why do you want tea? |
| Yu go kaifa? | Mi go taksi. | How do you go? — I go by taxi. |
| Yu kan berapa anak? | Mi kan tri anak. | How many children do you see? — I see three. |
Read the question and the answer side by side: they are the same sentence with one word swapped. That is the whole rule.
The seven words
| Word | Meaning | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ke | what | Spanish qué, Portuguese que, Italian che, French que |
| kim | who | Turkish, Azeri, Uzbek, Kazakh kim |
| nali | where | Chinese nǎlǐ 哪里 |
| kab | when | Hindi/Urdu kab, Bengali kobe |
| porke | why | Spanish por qué, Portuguese por que, Italian perché, French pourquoi — all literally “for what” |
| kaifa | how | Arabic kayfa كيف |
| berapa | how many, how much | Indonesian/Malay berapa |
Six families in seven words. Each was chosen to be recognised on sight by the largest possible number of people while no one family supplies more than two.
Two details
berapa behaves like a number. It sits where a number sits — before the noun — and, like a number, leaves the noun single: berapa anak, never berapa anak-anak. This follows from the plural rule; nothing new.
A question word needs no rising tone. Kim lai? is already a question because kim is in it. The question mark is written; the voice may rise or not.
Sources for the two rules
Rising tone for yes/no is the primary or a fully standard method in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Hindi, Indonesian, Persian, Hebrew, Greek and every Arabic dialect — most of the world outside East Asia.
Question word in place (no fronting) is how Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Hindi, Indonesian, Tamil, Persian and Swahili ask: ni kan shénme? (you see what?), sen ne gördün? (you what saw?), kamu lihat apa? (you see what?). By speaker count it is the majority pattern on Earth. English, Romance and Arabic move the question word to the front instead; that movement is a rule with its own exceptions in every language that has it, and it is the one thing this design leaves out.
Why this and not the alternatives
Why no yes/no particle. Every particle with real reach collides with a word already settled — and not just one or two of them:
| Candidate | Source | Collision |
|---|---|---|
| ma | Chinese ma 吗 | crowds mi, mau, mal, mama |
| ka | Japanese ka か, Korean -kka | minimal pair with kan (to see) |
| mi | Turkish mi | is already “I” |
| ne | Latin -ne, Japanese ne | minimal pair with no |
| mai | Thai mái | minimal pair with mau (to want) |
| ba | Chinese ba 吧, Tagalog ba | is already 8 |
| ni | Korean -ni, Yoruba ni | minimal pair with mi |
| kya | Hindi kya | doubles as “what”; two jobs for one word |
| hal | Arabic hal | close to hao (good) |
| apa | Indonesian apa(kah) | inside papa |
Ten candidates from ten families, ten collisions. As with possession, the language is saying it does not want a word here — and it does not need one, because rising tone is already attested from the first lesson and is standard across most of the world. A tonal-language speaker who finds rising intonation awkward can rely on the question mark in writing and on context in speech, exactly as they do in colloquial Mandarin.
Why in-place, not fronting. Fronting changes word order, and Amadunia has exactly one word order. In-place keeps it. It is also the majority pattern by speakers and the easier one to learn: the learner builds the statement they already know and swaps one word.
Candidates for the seven words that were rejected:
| Candidate | Meaning | Reason rejected |
|---|---|---|
| ne (Turkish) | what | minimal pair with no |
| che (Persian) | what | minimal pair with ca (tea) |
| mana (Indonesian) | where | minimal pair with mama |
| do (Japanese) | how | minimal pair with du (2) |
| kak (Russian) | how | minimal pair with kan |
| kam (Arabic) | how many | minimal pair with kan |
| kitne (Hindi) | how many | begins with kita (we) |
| kuando / kuanto (Spanish) | when / how many | contain uan (1); and would be a minimal pair with each other |
| kapan (Indonesian) | when | ends in pan (bread) |
| itsu (Japanese) | when | sound, not sense: recognised by ~125M against kab’s ~700M |
kab and berapa each share a first syllable with a settled word (kabir, beri). Neither is a minimal pair — the words differ in length and stress — and both were kept for their reach.
Open questions
- Adverb position. kab, porke, kaifa are placed at the end of the sentence above. That assumes time, reason and manner phrases go last, which has not been decided on its own. If adverbs are later placed elsewhere, these three follow them — the in-place rule stays.
- Lesson 6 asked Nama yu? with no question word. That is a yes/no-shaped question that context turns into “what is your name”. The explicit form is Nama yu es ke? Both are allowed; whether the short form should be discouraged in teaching is open.