I was trying to formulate a question yesterday I used the second sentence, however, I keep wondering if that was correct.
Can someone explain to me why I am ...? or
Can someone explain to me why am I ...?
Is "why I am" even valid in any sentence context?
A statement giving a reason might be
He is happy because it is warm.
A question might be formed by replacing the reason with the question word. Introducing an auxiliary verb "does", inverting the subject and auxiliary. Then fronting the word "why":
He is happy because it is warm why. → He is happy why → Is he happy why? →
Why is he happy?
If you don't invert the subject you get a content clause, not a full sentence. It can stand in for the content in a sentence, in place of a noun phrase or prepositional phrase. It means the same as "the reason that ..."
Why he is happy is because it is warm. = The reason that he is happy is because it is warm.
So in your example, you need a content clause to mean
Can someone explain to me the reason that I am ...
So you should use the non-question clause "why I am"
The question form is inverted: Why am I so stubborn?
Statement clause:
Please tell me why I am so stubborn.
This pattern is true to all English utterances:
Why does he drive his car so fast? [question form]
I will tell you why he drives his car so fast. [clause]
Inversions are for questions and statements do not use inversions.
However, there are times in speech, where a question is given by intonation and not by inversion.
Please tell me why I am so stubborn?
Often, these are rhetorical questions.
