Words that ask questions

I mentioned in a previous post that you can often tell if a Mandarin sentence is a question because it will end in 吗 (ma). (Similar to ka in Japanese)

But of course there are other words that indicate a question just by being there. Here are the common ones:

什么 (Shén me) - this is pretty generic but basically means “what”

为什么 (Wèi shén me) - this extends 什么 to become “why”

怎么 (Zěn me) - this is close to “how”

哪里 (Nǎ lǐ) - is “where”

谁 (Shéi) - is the equivalent of our “who”

There are several ways of asking how many of something:

多少 (Duō shǎo) - is literally “how many”

One of the things I find odd with 多少 is that it’s also used like we use “how much”. For example:

多少钱？(Duōshǎo qián?) means “how much money?” but is literally “how many money”

Another common way to ask how many, is to use:

几 (Jǐ)

This one is normally followed by a measure word. A common example is:

几个马？(Jǐ gè mǎ?) - this is “how many horses?”

几个爸爸？(Jǐ gè bàba?) - this is “how many fathers?”

The typical answer is just the count and the measure word:

八个爸爸。(Bā gè bàba.) - in this case, eight fathers.

This character 几 (Jǐ) is an odd one as when it’s not used in a question, it’s often a synonym for “several”.

2021-02-19