"你喝什么？"
Translation:What do you drink?
20 Comments
But when we ask others what do they want to drink, we also say 你喝甚麼？ Of course add 請問 before is more polite. 請問你喝甚麼 can be understand as "What do you drink?" or "What do you want to drink?"
你要喝什麼 nǐ yào hē shénme or 你想喝什麼 nǐ xiǎng hē shénme
these two are also very commonly used.
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oh my, thank you for using pinyin - we are all just starting and everybody is just throwing chinese characters around like nobody's business XD
You are typing a different question.
The post was 你喝什么？ni he shenme? (Literally "you drink what?" Meaning "What do you drink?")
You said 你要喝什么？ni yao he shenme? (Literally "you want drink what?" Meaning "What do you want to drink?")
As a local who is just playing this for fun, I would say this question is in fact very often used by locals to ask people what they want to drink, like: (i) when you are in the restaurant, and you want to know what your friend would like to order; or (ii) when you ask your guest what he/she'd like to drink. (iii) when you want to treat your friend something to drink.
In these situations everybody is supposed to understand this implied meaning even if you drop the word "要/想". The same also applies to "吃" (to eat). :)
And as I am typing this, my memory recalls that people rarely ask this question in other contexts (i.e., when they're not offering others something to drink/going to order something to drink).
I must admit I also got this wrong though.
Thank you for the Traditional Chinese! This simplified is freaking me out!
If you said something like "請問你喝什麽?" I would interpret it as "Excuse me, what are you drinking" If I wanted to know what this person wants to drink I would add the word 要 or 想 in front of the verb.
It's important for foreigners to also recognise that Chinese verbs like English ones tend to be in a present continuous form. Some might argue that it's only present form when you add 在 in front of the verb, but people tend to just interpret it as present tense regardless of whether you add 在 or not. Other tenses would use characters such as 會 and 了.
I would say though, the use of 想 is more prevalent in HK affected Chinese (I'm from HK), whereas with Mainland Chinese it's more common to use 要 when you ask someone what they want.
Also, not many people use 甚 for 甚麼 even in regions that use the traditional Chinese script. You're not wrong to use it, but most people use 什 for 什麼. There are phrases where you can only use 甚 but this isn't one of them. It's the same as the traditional character for 十 which is 拾. It's the traditional character for it but no one uses it except during scenarios such as banking.
Since the term shénme is in the sentence and it ends with a question mark your answer needs to be in question form.
I often see 什么 for when asking a question, do those characters always go at the end to show a question?
I think it means 'what'
To show a question a sentence usually ends with 'ma'
it said "ni he shenme", which is literaly "you drink what" but when i typed it in it said i was wrong
I assume you are not an English speaker, because the grammar in English and that in Chinese are totally different, you cannot directly translate Chinese to English in Chinese grammar.
Would you like something to drink... This is definitely right, "what do you drink"... I only use this sentence when I was 8 years old, just started learning English.
