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Confusing questions: What colour dress is she wearing?



 
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ESL Forum | English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
Is the sentence correct? (Health monitoring of the company employees engaged...) | Protagonist vs hero
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Confusing questions: What colour dress is she wearing? Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:06 am  Confusing questions: What colour dress is she wearing?
 

Hi everyone!

I've got 2 little question.
Is correct the 1st question or is it better to say it in another way?

1.What colour dress is she wearing?
2. What is the colour of the dress she is wearing?

And, which version is better when it comes to questions like these:

1.How is your mother feeling?
2.How is feeling your mother?

I hope someone could explain it to me.
Thanks in advance and BTW, great page! Very Happy
BlueEyedGirlpl
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Questions Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:06 pm  Questions
 

Hi Blue_eyed_girlpl,

Your first question:

Quote:
Is correct the 1st question or is it better to say it in another way?
1.What colour dress is she wearing?
2. What is the colour of the dress she is wearing?

Both are acceptable. Your question should be: Is the 1st question correct?

Your second question:

Quote:
And, which version is better when it comes to questions like these:
1.How is your mother feeling?
2.How is feeling your mother?

Number 1 is correct and number 2 is wrong. the subject (mother) has to be next to the auxiliary (is) as in:

What are you doing?
Where are you going
When is Charlie arriving?

Alan
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Confusing questions Sat Feb 04, 2006 12:46 pm  Confusing questions
 

.
Quote:
1.What colour dress is she wearing?
2. What is the colour of the dress she is wearing?

And in addition, #1 is the more conversational way to state the question.
.
Guest






Questions Sat Feb 04, 2006 13:21 pm  Questions
 

Well, yes. The point is whether you want to be precise or not. A police detective asking a specific question would ask:

Quote:
What is the colour of the dress she is wearing?

Alan
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Confusing questions Sat Feb 04, 2006 19:05 pm  Confusing questions
 

thank you, as you could see I have some problems with forming questions not only while doing some tests but also in practice Embarassed
Blue_eyed_girlpl
Guest





Questions- color Mon Jan 28, 2008 8:29 am  Questions- color
 

1.Which color dress is she wearing?
2. What colour dress is she wearing ?

Can you please let me know which of the above Q's are right and what is the difference.
harini_HR
New Member


Joined: 25 Jan 2008
Posts: 1

Confusing questions: What colour dress is she wearing? Mon Jan 28, 2008 23:14 pm  Confusing questions: What colour dress is she wearing?
 

Hi Harini,
Answer 2 is better but answer 1 is commonly used in modern conversational English, whether we like it or not. In this situation, if we use 'which' it implies we have a limited choice e.g. 'Which do you prefer, tea or coffee?' However, 'what' implies a much wider choice (in your example the dress could be any colour).
Hope this helps.
Anchorman
New Member


Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Posts: 7
Location: UK

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