1
  • Why my new year has to go exactly opposite to what I have planned?
  • Why does my new year have to go exactly opposite to what I have planned?

Which is the correct sentence?

1
  • 1
    In main clause interrogatives, if the interrogative word is not the subject its placement in this position triggers subject-auxiliary inversion, as in your second example.
    – BillJ
    Commented Dec 31, 2020 at 14:13

3 Answers 3

1

The second is the correct form.

The most frequent form of a question in English is to precede the subject with some form of the auxiliary verb “do” and follow the subject with the remainder of the verb

Statement

The girl studied algebra last year

Question

Did the girl study algebra last year?

“Why” is most often used as an interrogative to initiate a question on purpose or cause. But the resulting question still takes the form appropriate to a question.

0

[1] Why my new year has to go exactly opposite to what I have planned?

[2] Why does my new year have to go exactly opposite to what I have planned?

In main clause interrogatives, if the interrogative word is not the subject its placement in this position triggers subject-auxiliary inversion, as in [2].

[1] is not ungrammatical, but it is not an interrogative; rather, it is the kind of sentence one might find used as the title of something, perhaps a newspaper headline.

0

Both are oddly phrased sentences to a native speaker (American). The meaning could easily be confused.

There's something strange about the tense to me. I would phrase it:

Why would my new year go exactly opposite to what I planned?

or

Will my new year go exactly opposite to what I planned?

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .