Class 5 — the past, and the question that runs Kerala, in Malayalam script. Today you take the past tense and turn it into questions, and in doing so you learn the single most-asked question in the Malayalam language. Start with how Malayalam asks anything at all, because it does it in a way English cannot. To turn a statement into a yes/no question, you add ONE SOUND to the end of the verb. That is the whole operation. കഴിച്ചു (kazhichu) ate → കഴിച്ചോ? (kazhicho?) did you eat? പോയി (poyi) went → പോയോ? (poyo?) did you go? വന്നു (vannu) came → വന്നോ? (vanno?) did you come? കണ്ടു (kandu) saw → കണ്ടോ? (kando?) did you see? Now notice what did NOT happen. The word order did not change. Nothing moved. No extra word appeared. Look at what English has to do for the same job. "You ate" → "Did you eat?" English invents an auxiliary out of nowhere, puts it at the front, and then reverses the verb back to its plain form. Three separate operations to ask one question. Grammarians call it do-support, it is genuinely unusual, very few languages do it, English essentially invented it in the last five hundred years — and it is one of the hardest things for learners of English to master. Malayalam adds one sound. And Malayalam is in enormous company. Japanese adds a particle at the end. Mandarin adds a particle. Turkish adds a particle. Polish, Russian, Finnish, Esperanto, Hindi — a great many languages mark a yes/no question with a small word or ending and change nothing else. So when asking questions in Malayalam feels too easy, that is not a mistake. English was doing something needlessly complicated, and you have stopped. Quizzes below. Dr. Reshmi R Nair — SpeakMalayalam.