The simple answer is, for yes/no questions, another word is added: 吗？ Another way to ask a yes/no question in Chinese is to repeat the verb in both the positive and negative form: 有没有 (lit: have not have) e.g. 你有没有钱？Do you have money? 你有钱吗？ 去不去 (lit: go no go) e.g. 你去不去超市？ Do you go to the grocery store? 你去超市吗？ However, in some cases the Chinese also use a rising inflection at the end of the sentence to ask a question (yes, it is possible). In the laziest of speech they'd use the rising inflection without adding the question word. For all other types of questions, they'd use the specific question word, as in English/Spanish/French, etc. Who 谁 What 什么 Where 哪里 / 哪儿 (Northern China) When 什么时候 / 几点 Why 为什么 How 怎么

Hi, Christian: I think Toffler has already gave a very good answer. I also find Ryo's example of 我们有几个苹果very interesting. In effect, it's not exactly about tones going up or going down as he said, because we already have certain fixed tones on each word, as you mentioned. With the exact same sentence: 我们有几个苹果, generally it means 'We have some apples'. However, if you put a little extra accent onto 几个(several, certain amount of) when you speak, it may become a question as to 'How many apples do you have?' That's because几个in any sentences are normally sort of like function word, which doesn't have a very solid meaning. We don't give such words too much 'attentin' when we speak. I think it's the same with English, people don't have to say words like 'a, the, of' and the like loud and clear, right? So if you say 几个very very clearly when you're speaking to others, I mean more than necessary, they will know for sure you're asking about the numbers, as how many. Anyway, it's just a rather casual and informal example. The two sentences as 'some apples' and 'how many apples' may write the same in Chinese, but in reality, you'll know what's it actually about. However, if you really want to be precise, without any sense of misleading, I'm afraid you have to say the 'how many' word in Chinese, which is多少.so 你们有多少个苹果？ Hope it helps.

er,your questions is very difficult to answer clearly. let me have a try. i think the two way are both existing in chinese language.for example, we say"几点了？"to ask the time, here 几 means "what", it is a special question word, but sometime we just change our intonation to descripe a questions, like "我们有几个苹果".if your tones go up when saying "我们有几个苹果？",this mean how many apples we have?.and if your tones go down this mean we surely have some apple.but as you know chinese tones is very complex, and most time, the sentence and the words meaning is just depend on the whole dialog.if i say 我们有几个苹果，让我们平分了吧. means there are some apples we have,let`s share them. that you won`t mistake the meaning 几 as a special question word. just like it does in english, all depends on the how dialog`s mean.