"他们有几个孩子？"
Translation:How many children do they have?
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Well, 几 is used when the answer implies a number less than or about 10. Usually people have less than 10 children, so in this case we use 几. But if we ask about time, day of the month, month or year, we use 几 too. I can say that 多少 is used in questions about something material, and the answer to this question may be more than 10.
Sometimes it lets you say "kids" and sometimes it counts the sentence wrong if you write kids. This is so stupid.
27 Dec 2019 - It has been fixed, I entered "how many children do they have" without a question mark, and it was accepted as correct.
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Because it is not a yes/no question. With 吗 it would mean ‘Do they have several children?’.
I've asked this queston before but nobody has responsed me so i hope in this section someone will do: why 几 is not at the end of the sentence if it work here as a question word ?
The general rule is that question words are used in-place.
"You like what food?"
"They where are giving speeches?"
"She married who?"
吗 is an exception because it doesn't replace any other word. So it goes at the end just because it has to go somewhere.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. I think the 几 is meant to take the place of a number character, like 一, 两, or 十, something like that.
