This site uses cookies. Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site, while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used. For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Cookie settings
resp.
a medieval order whose members

Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

How to make question to the sentence like "it's his first marriage"?

English answer:

How many times has he been married? / Has he been married before? / Is this his first marriage?

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
Jan 14, 2014 21:22
10 yrs ago
4 viewers *
English term

How to make question to the sentence like "it's his first marriage"?

Non-PRO English Other Linguistics grammar
How to make question to the sentence like "it's his first marriage"?

"Which marriage?" ???
Responses
3 +11 How many times has he been married? / Has he been married before? / Is this his first marriage?
4 "Is it his first marriage?" or "It's his first marriage, isn't it?"
Change log

Jan 15, 2014 14:00: Yvonne Gallagher changed "Level" from "PRO" to "Non-PRO"

Jan 28, 2014 06:25: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Votes to reclassify question as PRO/non-PRO:

Non-PRO (3): Jim Tucker (X), Lindsay Spratt, Yvonne Gallagher

When entering new questions, KudoZ askers are given an opportunity* to classify the difficulty of their questions as 'easy' or 'pro'. If you feel a question marked 'easy' should actually be marked 'pro', and if you have earned more than 20 KudoZ points, you can click the "Vote PRO" button to recommend that change.

How to tell the difference between "easy" and "pro" questions:

An easy question is one that any bilingual person would be able to answer correctly. (Or in the case of monolingual questions, an easy question is one that any native speaker of the language would be able to answer correctly.)

A pro question is anything else... in other words, any question that requires knowledge or skills that are specialized (even slightly).

Another way to think of the difficulty levels is this: an easy question is one that deals with everyday conversation. A pro question is anything else.

When deciding between easy and pro, err on the side of pro. Most questions will be pro.

* Note: non-member askers are not given the option of entering 'pro' questions; the only way for their questions to be classified as 'pro' is for a ProZ.com member or members to re-classify it.

Discussion

Charles Davis Jan 15, 2014:
@ Alexander Good find, but I think that question would only be asked in an official or legal context. In everyday speech you would be very unlikely to say "what is the number of this marriage?".
Alexander Onishko (asker) Jan 15, 2014:
"what is the number of this marriage?" BTW, I just I found something interesting on the Internet

****

Marriage License Application

If yes, what is the number of this marriage? ______

http://www.townofislip-ny.gov/i-want-to/download-forms-and-g...
Alexander Onishko (asker) Jan 15, 2014:
RE: Is this a homework question? Unfortunately I am already too old to do "homeworks" :(
Peter Simon Jan 15, 2014:
doubtful In Hungarian there's a Q word that elicits the answer 'first' or otherwise ('hányadik'), in most languages that I've ever studied, including English, Russian, Chinese, there's no Q word that forcefully elicits ordinals. In Dutch, 'hoeveelste' is possible, so I guess there is something like that in German. But such tasks have very little, if any, use, except if someone has to interrogate a witness in court ...
B D Finch Jan 15, 2014:
Is this a homework question? Is this question related to homework or coursework?
Christine Andersen Jan 15, 2014:
Has he been married before? This is a completely different sentence, but it is a way of asking for the information without making too many assumptions.
Alexander Onishko (asker) Jan 15, 2014:
Hi, folks! What you say refers to the so called "general question" - where the answer is yes or no.

What I need in this case is a "specific question" where the answer would be "first" (second, etc.)
cynthiatesser Jan 15, 2014:
Inversion To make an interrogative form, i.e. to ask a question, you just need to invert the subject and the auxiliary verb. The word order for questions is the following:

(WH word +) auxiliary verb + subject + verb (+ complements)?

With the verb "to be" (present and past simple) the word order is the following:

(WH word +) am/is/are/was/were + subject (+ complements)?
Howard Sugar Jan 15, 2014:
English is one of the few languages in which the order of the sentence indicates a question. Hence the "It's his first marriage" becomes Is it his first marriage?

Responses

+11
14 mins
Selected

How many times has he been married? / Has he been married before? / Is this his first marriage?

I don't think you can form the kind of question you want with "which marriage?". The suggestions above are the ideas that occur to me.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 24 mins (2014-01-14 21:47:47 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

It's true that you could say "Which marriage is he on?", but that would imply that he has been married many times and that perhaps he doesn't take marriage very seriously, which you probably don't want to suggest. The following is a comment on the film director James Cameron:

"And most of that 1.8 billion probably went to all his ex wives! Which marriage is he on now at the moment? His eighth? His ninth?"
http://www.empireonline.com/forum/tm.asp?m=2252981&mpage=2&k...

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 9 hrs (2014-01-15 07:17:45 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

I presume you must already know what Howard has pointed out: that a statement like "it's his first marriage" can be turned into a question simply by reversing the order of the subject and the verb: "is it his first marriage"? But what I understood you to be asking was what is the question to which the answer would be "it's first marriage": a question like "which marriage is it?". I don't think you can formulate exactly that question in natural English. We would use a slightly different way of obtaining the information.

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 9 hrs (2014-01-15 07:18:37 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

Sorry: I meant to type "it's his first marriage" instead of "it's first marriage" in the third line of my last comment.
Peer comment(s):
agree Tina Vonhof (X) : All are fine.
2 mins
Thanks, Tina!
agree crocox
10 mins
Thanks, crocox :)
agree Noni Gilbert Riley
13 mins
Thanks, Noni!
agree Dawid Cieśla
22 mins
Thanks, Dawid!
agree airmailrpl : Is this his first marriage?
1 hr
Thanks, airmailrpl!
neutral Cilian O'Tuama : but why bother? How to make question to the sentence like
4 hrs
The question could have been better put, I grant you.
agree Yvonne Gallagher
16 hrs
Thanks, Gallagy :)
agree Carol Gullidge : although I'm not really sure what the point of the exercise is! Ours not to reason why...
17 hrs
I don't know; perhaps just curiosity! Thanks, Carol :)
agree cynthiatesser
17 hrs
Thanks, Cynthia :)
agree Tony M
18 hrs
Thanks, Tony :)
agree Jaime Oriard
21 hrs
Thanks, Jaime :)
agree Jean-Claude Gouin
1 day 3 hrs
Thanks, 1045 :)
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Selected automatically based on peer agreement."
18 hrs

"Is it his first marriage?" or "It's his first marriage, isn't it?"

The second indicates that the asker is inclined to believe that it is his first marriage.
Something went wrong...
Close search
Term search
  • All of ProZ.com
  • Term search
  • Jobs
  • Forums
  • Multiple search