Question Words

There's a lot of kana-only question words in Japanese that are important for daily communication. I know the basic ones like who, what, where, etc., but there are ways to modify those words to make them more broad or narrow, depending on the particles you add.

The particle も can be used to include or exclude everything. For example:

誰も - everybody (or nobody when used with negative)
どこも - everywhere (or nowhere when used with negative)
どうしても - no matter what
いつも - always

Initially it's strange to see a word be able to transform into its total opposite (like everywhere vs. nowhere), but I'm sure context will take care of it in almost all sentences.

Next is でも, which can be used to turn a word into its "any" form.

誰でも - anybody
何でも - anything
いつでも - any time
いくらでも - any amount

Finally, か can be used to turn a word into its "some" form.

誰か - somebody
何か - something
どうしてか - for some reason
いくつか - some number of things

There are more question words that can undergo this transformation, but I'm not going to list all of them because it'd take up a ton of space. For now, I've made flash cards for all 42 of them so I'll be able to recall each of them offhand.

Credit goes to Tae Kim's lesson seen here.