Using "do" to create a question

Question

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English questions and negation with do in syntax
What is the origin of the 'do' construction?

I vaguely remember hearing that using "do" to create a question is almost unique to English. Other languages would simply reverse the verb and subject.

However, as I asked a similar question (mistakenly) 30 min ago...I'm not certain whether this is right or not. Could speakers of other languages comment and set me mind at rest? Could anybody point me to a website on this?

I think this is what I really meant to ask rather than my "to go" question — Richard, May 13 '11 at 20:32
In a vaguely similar question, I was pointed to this interesting article about "do-insertion" that you might find to be an interesting starting point. — Kit Z. Fox, May 13 '11 at 23:12
If I understand correctly, you are asking if other languages form questions with a "do"-like helper verb? This would be off-topic. — Kosmonaut, May 14 '11 at 02:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 13 '11 at 22:22

Norwegians, among others, seem to ask/say things like: "do you close the door?", "do you bring keys?". This becomes harsh and impolite on a normally very kind language in use. This is not correct.

I'm not sure if that is the same as you are asking..

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '11 at 16:52

You can do that in Hebrew as well.

You can say " Do you want to come with me to the beach" or you can also say "would you want to come with me to the beach", but this is more of a "high level language" that you'll hear from old people or in books. Usually people would just say "you want to come with me to the beach?"

This is I guess part of the shortening we all do to all of our languages.

Using "do" to create a question

2 Answers2