Forming questions in languages

Possible approaches applicable to all types of questions

Use imperative form: "tell me whether it's raining".
Use statement of desire: "I wish to know how much it costs" / "I want you to tell me how long it lasts".

statement + intonation (most languages): "you're coming after that?"
swap subject with verb in statement form (en, fr, de; not zh). If the verb uses an auxilliary or modal verb, then only the first word of the compound verb is swapped: "will he have to have bought one?". In english one must use an auxilliary verb: "*comes he?" -> "does he come?" / "is he coming?".
statement plus extra word, typically a word used almost solely for this purpose. May occur either before the statement (lojban, ar) or afterwards (zh).
statement followed by "is that not so?" (fr, de, en, probably most languages). In english it's common for the "not so?" question to be specialized to the statement in a way similar to the swap case, e.g. "he'll have finished, won't he?"
juxtaposing positive and negative forms of the principle verb (zh): "he will won't come?"
use of the mechanism for asking which of a set of alternatives, often combined with abbreviation for the negative case. In some languages (en) the alternatives must use one of the other question forms ("will he or won't he come?", "will he come or not?"), whereas other languages (fr) allow the alternatives to be in statement form: "he's coming, or not?".

Many languages use "?" at the end of all questions. Greek uses ";" instead.

Spanish is rare in using "¿" at the beginning of questions.