"你喝什么?"
Translation:What do you drink?
12 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
906
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?"
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.