I was just talking with someone about the rule regarding "asking a question to/from/of".
I am natively Dutch, and to me, "to" makes the most sense intuitively, since in Dutch grammar you pose a question, you don't ask it. I'm aware however that "to" is incorrect in English.
The person I was talking to said that the correct rule is "from". This seems quirky to me however. If you "ask X from someone", it means that you ask them to give you an X. So to me, whereas "asking an answer from" makes sense, "asking a question from" doesn't, unless you're asking for a question.
I've seen a source on the internet that says "of" is the correct rule. But this sounds odd to both of us. "asking a question of X" sounds like you have a question about X.
So, which is the correct one, and why? Is my reasoning about "from" correct?
Best Answer
If you have to use a preposition with ask a question, then of your choices, certainly it has to be of.
The thing is that normally, we wouldn’t use a preposition at all to name the person we’re posing the question to. Instead, we’d just use an indirect object, which must fall between the verb and the direct object:
Or like this:
But remember, you also ask someone for something, which makes it more of a request instead of just questioning them: