# 何 (interrogatives)



## vince

Hello everyone,

I'd like to know when the 何 interrogatives are used:
何人 (he ren) : who
何處 (he chu): where
何時 (he shi) : when
為何 (wei he) : why
如何 (ru he) : how

And what is the difference between the above forms and the following ones:
誰 (shei): who
哪裡 (nali) / 哪兒 (nar): where
幾時 (jishi) : when
為什麼 (weishenme) : why
怎麼 (zenme): how

Also, do the 何 interrogatives exist in Cantonese? I don't ever recall hearing them. How about in Taiwanese Minnan?


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## vince

yau mou yan hoyi bong ngo hok dimyeong yong lidi dzi?

you meiyou ren keyi bang wo xue zhenme yong zhexie zi?


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## MingRaymond

vince said:
			
		

> yau mou yan hoyi bong ngo hok dimyeong yong lidi(*should be nidi 呢啲)* dzi?
> 
> you meiyou ren keyi bang wo xue zhenme yong zhexie zi?


 
Actually, there is not much difference. I think 誰，哪兒 etc are more common.

何 is not common in Cantonese. But it is a surname.

Ming


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## paisleyHK

何人 (he ren) : who
何處 (he chu): where
何時 (he shi) : when
為何 (wei he) : why
如何 (ru he) : how

These are much more literal and somewhat archaic (they frequently appear in ancient literature), while the rest are commonly used. 

I would be surprised if a Chinese talk these literal words to me during conversations. That is really funny. 

However, when you've become a fluent user of Chinese, and write these words in your essays, that would be very impressing, given that the whole essay is archaic and exquisite.


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## ilikeenglish

the former group are generally more likely to appear in written ones. 
the first three are really too formal and can only be used in literature works.
the fourth can appear in formal writing.
the fifth can occur in speaking.  Especially when the speaker is an expert, or a broadcaster, or a teacher, or a leader, etc.

The second group is totally for speaking.  In Mainland China, we don't say 几时，the third one.   We instead say “什么时候”。

Ps.  If you want to learn Mandarin, do not use "complex characters". We've already adopted "simplified Chinese " in Mainland.  

何人 
何处
为何
如何

谁
哪里/ 哪儿
什么时候
为什么
怎么


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## vince

So perhaps the  何 words are from Classical Chinese?

Thank you for the Simplified versions. I usually try to remember the Simplified form first. But I put the Traditional versions because HK/Taiwan people might not understand the Simplified.



			
				paisleyHK said:
			
		

> These are much more literal and somewhat archaic (they frequently appear in ancient literature), while the rest are commonly used.
> 
> I would be surprised if a Chinese talk these literal words to me during conversations. That is really funny.


I think it would be funny for ANY of the words in this thread to be used in a conversation in HK. When was the last time you asked someone "nei si seoi?" (who are you?). Wouldn't you laugh if someone said that to you?


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## Dalian

vince said:
			
		

> yau mou yan hoyi bong ngo hok dimyeong yong lidi dzi?
> 
> you meiyou ren keyi bang wo xue zhenme yong zhexie zi?


An inadvertent mistake made by Vince.


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## ilikeenglish

你是谁？  could be used in oral Chinese.
Eg. in telephone, your English version may change a little into:  Who is that?
In daily life, you may turn to a more friendly way to say:  What are you here for.
When we ask 你是谁?, this person is just a stranger to us, and he centainly come to us with a matter.  We are not going to ask this to a stranger on the street who does not bother you at all, unless some mysterious reasons prompt you to wannt to know about him.

Besides, I don't really know if Hk/Taiwan people really cannot understand the Simplified version.  If they can read in Complex version, the logic goes that it is easy to read Simplified one.  But they may be used to the Complex version.
For me, a Mainland Chinese, I have no great problem in reading a novel in the Complex, Old version of Chinese, for even if you are uncertain a particular difficult word is, the context will solve the problems, and most of them look just similar.


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## ilikeenglish

You said "So perhaps the 何 words are from Classical Chinese?"
 Not exactly. 
1. Almost every word in Chinese can be found in Classical Chinese. Some of them just are rarely used now. 
2. Besides, a Chinese word can be combined to another word or some other words.  So even though 何人 is seldom used, 何必 (is it necessary....)，何况 (not to mention...)，etc. are often used in both written or oral Chinese.


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## MingRaymond

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> If you want to learn Mandarin, do not use "complex characters". We've already adopted "simplified Chinese " in Mainland.


 
I think learners should learn both traditional and simplified Chinese. Traditional Chinese characters are not complex characters. They are traditional characters. Our ancestors have used them for thousand of years. Traditional characters should not be abandoned.


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## vince

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> 你是谁？  could be used in oral Chinese.



Not in Hong Kong unless you are speaking Mandarin. It is not proper spoken Cantonese.


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## ilikeenglish

What is the opposite of "simplified"? If one written system is called "simplified", is there anything wrong to call the other "complex"? 
Every Chinese cannot deny this! You surely want to pick up in others, so you make trouble about others' words.

If you value "tradition" so much, and, you know they have "ancestors" , will you still want to deny Cantonese belongs to its "father" language----Mandarin, and go so far to claim the independence of Cantonese?


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## ilikeenglish

My above letter is for F10.

This letter is for you, vince.  I bothered to write here because seeing the title of your thread "Mandarin/ Written Chinese".  Is there anything wrong for me to give you Mandarin expressions and explanations?

When I speak oral Chinese, I'm talking about official language, Putonghua  普通话。
I don't have to bother about local dialects. Do you know how many dialects there are in China.  Hongkong is just a samll region with Guangdong  Province.  Do you know in the southern China, the dialect of two neighbouring villages are different, not to mentions dialects of two towns, two cities, two provinces.  
So if I want to be comprehensive, I would not finish the dicussion by next year.


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## Dalian

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> Cantonese belongs to its "father" language----Mandarin


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## jazyk

> Besides, I don't really know if Hk/Taiwan people really cannot understand the Simplified version. If they can read in Complex version, the logic goes that it is easy to read Simplified one. But they may be used to the Complex version.


I for one can read kanji quite fluently (I'm talking about Japanese, of course) but don't understand simplified characters. If I see the same text in traditional characters, I can get the gist of it.


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## vince

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> If you value "tradition" so much, and, you know they have "ancestors" , will you still want to deny Cantonese belongs to its "father" language----Mandarin, and go so far to claim the independence of Cantonese?


Cantonese is not derived from Mandarin. I.e. Mandarin is not the_ father_ of Cantonese. They are _sister_ languages that derive from Middle Chinese spoken during the Tang dynasty. In this respect, they are older than Russian and Ukrainian, which remained the same language (proto-East-Slavic) for a longer time, and are therefore mostly mutually-intelligible, unlike Mandarin and Cantonese.



> When I speak oral Chinese, I'm talking about official language, Putonghua  普通话。
> I don't have to bother about local dialects. Do you know how many dialects there are in China. Hongkong is just a samll region with Guangdong Province. Do you know in the southern China, the dialect of two neighbouring villages are different, not to mentions dialects of two towns, two cities, two provinces.
> So if I want to be comprehensive, I would not finish the dicussion by next year.


About the number of dialects, this is a problem with the Chinese classification system. For lay-Chinese people, there is no hierarchy of dialects, every dialect is at the same level.

For most Chinese, Beijing-hua, Shanghai-hua, and Suzhou-hua are all considered dialects of "Chinese", but this is overly simplistic and gives no indication about the structure of the Chinese language family. (For those who aren't familiar with the Chinese linguistic situation, "<CITY>"+ hua = "the <CITY>-dialect")

Shanghai-hua and Suzhou-hua are dialects of the Wu language. They are the same language since they are (roughly) mutually intelligible. Beijing-hua is a dialect of the Mandarin language. It is not the same language as Suzhou-hua and Shanghai-hua since Beijing-hua is not intelligible with any dialect of Wu.

But if you ask a Chinese person, "what dialect do you speak?" they will usually pick out the city-dialect "I speak Chaozhou-hua/Sichuan-hua/Fuzhou-hua" with no indication of what language the dialect actually belongs to.

The fact is: there are only about 15 Chinese LANGUAGES spoken in China. The major ones are Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Min, Gan, and Hakka. But there are over 10000 dialects in China distributed among this small number of languages.

And each of these independent Chinese languages has tens of millions of speakers, more than many European languages.

According to www.ethnologue.com:

Wu is spoken by 77 million (primary dialects: Shanghai-hua and Suzhou-hua)
Yue is spoken by 71 million (primary dialects: Hong Kong Cantonese and Toisan-hua)
Min-nan is spoken by 45 million people (primary dialects: Taiwanese and Chaozhou-hua)
Hakka is spoken by 25.8 million people
Gan is spoken by 20.6 million people

(By comparison, only 44 million people speak Polish, and only 20 million people speak Dutch)



(I am of course only referring to Sinitic languages derived from Middle Chinese, not about minority Turkic, Tai-Kadai, or Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in China)


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## ilikeenglish

jazyk said:
			
		

> I for one can read kanji quite fluently (I'm talking about Japanese, of course) but don't understand simplified characters. If I see the same text in traditional characters, I can get the gist of it.


 
That's because Japanese's complex written symbol is very close to the achient, complex Chinese written symbol. I hope you understand this. 
So Janpanese simplifed written system is far more different from its complex one.

Everyone in China knows this.    

I hope you westerns know more about the Asian history before  discussing grand issues here.   Japan and Korea people all value Chinese achient, classical works very much.  Many of their shops have names written in Complex Chinese.


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## vince

Are you aware that many of these Chinese characters in Japan do not represent Chinese words?


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## ilikeenglish

vince said:
			
		

> Cantonese is not derived from Mandarin. I.e. Mandarin is not the_ father_ of Cantonese. They are _sister_ languages that derive from Middle Chinese spoken during the Tang dynasty. In this respect, they are older than Russian and Ukrainian, which remained the same language (proto-East-Slavic) for a longer time.
> 
> 
> About the number of dialects, this is a problem with the Chinese classification system. For lay-Chinese people, there is no hierarchy of dialects, every dialect is at the same level.
> 
> For most Chinese, Beijing-hua, Shanghai-hua, and Suzhou-hua are all considered dialects of "Chinese", but this is overly simplistic and gives no indication about the structure of the Chinese language family. (For those who aren't familiar with the Chinese linguistic situation, "<CITY>"+ hua = "the <CITY>-dialect")
> 
> Shanghai-hua and Suzhou-hua are dialects of the Wu language. They are the same language since they are (roughly) mutually intelligible. Beijing-hua is a dialect of the Mandarin language. It is not the same language as Suzhou-hua and Shanghai-hua since Beijing-hua is not intelligible with any dialect of Wu.
> 
> But if you ask a Chinese person, "what dialect do you speak?" they will usually pick out the city-dialect "I speak Chaozhou-hua/Sichuan-hua/Fuzhou-hua" with no indication of what language the dialect actually belongs to.
> 
> The fact is: there are only about 15 Chinese LANGUAGES spoken in China. The major ones are Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Min, Gan, and Hakka. But there are over 10000 dialects in China distributed among this small number of languages.
> 
> And each of these independent Chinese languages has tens of millions of speakers, more than many European languages.
> 
> 
> (I am of course only referring to Sinitic languages derived from Middle Chinese, not about minority Turkic, Tai-Kadai, or Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in China)


 

Can you write in Chinese at all?  If you can, write here. Not only write sth unrelated to this discussion. But use it as a communication tool.
If you cannot, I think you lack the qualification to discuss the big affaris.
What you said are just some of the repetition of the lingusits studying Chinese languages.  

Layman's opinions sometimes cannot go too wrong.  Experts have conflicting among themselves.  Sometimes, maybe the translation into English has not transformed all the interior implications. 

The various classfication of dialects you quoted here is actually based on pronunciation differences.  Although experts classified into four groups, that does not mean that a village dialect is not a dialect. These experts just don't want to discuss some minor things, for your discussion on them will not catch people's attention.  So they make such classification to save their energy and make things simpler.

That does not mean you can deny the fact that all dialects of Chinese are mainly different in their pronunciation systems, not grammar or vocabulary differences.   
If you really know sth about Chinese language, you would see many of them share common grammar rules.  A majority (I don't have the figure, I feel more than 80% or 90%, ) of the vocabulary of them are the same. 

People don't understand the other region 's dialect, because of being not used to a different pronunciation system and the degree of difference of pronunciation among two regions, not because of any real differece in vocaulary and grammar.

That's why the Chinese language is actually one.

As a Chinese, if I just listened more about Cantonese, I should be able to understand more and more.  Actually I did understand more as I am wathcing Hongkong moview.  I don't particularly need to learn its grammar from scratch.  Can't this indicate Cantonese is just a local dialect of Chinese?


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## Dalian

ilikeenglish,

Just consider the relationship among such Romance languages as French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese...They derive from a same ancestor and share the same writting system. A large number of words are identically or similarly spelled and are mutually intelligible. Aren't they independent languages?

Dalian


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## ilikeenglish

vince said:
			
		

> Are you aware that many of these Chinese characters in Japan do not represent Chinese words?


 
I know in a matter of fact.  But a lot more do mean the same thing. You can just open a Japanese book to find out that.  

I just posted the letter quoted by you to implicate to another guy here that the relation of Japanese and Chinese cannot be comparative to the situation of Chinese and Cantonese. Japanese is an example used by him.  I don't have an interest to discuss here.

Would you please don't change the topic?  As if one problem is not complicated enough.


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## ilikeenglish

Dalian, do you think I cannot read Cantonese.  Cantonese has no independent written system.  If you don't believe, just write some.  I can surely translate word by word to Mandarin, provided you won't write too rare slangs.

Cantonese and Mandarin are no comparisons to French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese.
Do you mean you only need to learn French to be able to read in Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portugese?
But I surely need only learn Mandarin to be capable of reading in Cantonese.
You can just try on me.


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## vince

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> I just posted the letter quoted by you to implicate to another guy here that the relation of Japanese and Chinese cannot be comparative to the situation of Chinese and Cantonese. Japanese is an example used by him. I don't have an interest to discuss here.


 Yes it can.

Previously Japanese people did not have any written language of their own. They did not have neither katakana nor hiragana. They just wrote in Classical Chinese, identical in grammar and vocabulary to the Classical Chinese written in China, but differing in the pronunciation of the characters. But then they created a written language that actually reflected the nature of the Japanese spoken language and how it had nothing to do with any Chinese language.

By comparison, Cantonese people do not have any (standardized) written language of their own. They usually write in Standard Written Chinese, identical in grammar and vocabulary to the Written Chinese written in the rest of China, but differing in the pronunciation of the characters. But there exists a written language that actually reflects the nature of the Cantonese spoken language and how is only related, but not the same, as other Chinese languages.

Differences: Japanese has no genetic relation to any Chinese language, while Cantonese is genetically related to Mandarin
Japanese now has a standardized writing system. Cantonese still does not (though it is more standardized than any other non-Mandarin chinese language)


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## vince

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> Dalian, do you think I cannot read Cantonese.  Cantonese has no independent written system.  If you don't believe, just write some.  I can surely translate word by word to Mandarin, provided you won't write too rare slangs.
> 
> Cantonese and Mandarin are no comparisons to French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese.
> Do you mean you only need to learn French to be able to read in Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portugese?
> But I surely need only learn Mandarin to be capable of reading in Cantonese.
> You can just try on me.


I go to the Portuguese Wikipedia, click "Random Page", and get this:

Portuguese:


			
				Wikipedia said:
			
		

> O *Condado de Lee* é um dos 254 condados do Estado americano de Texas. A sede do condado é Giddings, e sua maior cidade é Giddings. O condado possui uma área de 1 642 km² (dos quais 14 km² estão cobertos por água), uma população de 15 657 habitantes, e uma densidade populacional de 10 hab/km² (segundo o censo nacional de 2000). O condado foi fundado em 1874. Foi nomeada em homenagem ao general confederado Robert E. Lee.


My word-for-word translation into Spanish:

_El condado de Lee es un de los 254 condados del Estado americano de Texas. La sede del condado es Giddings, y su mayor ciudad es Giddings. El condado posee una área de 1 642 km2 (de los cuales 14 km2 están cobiertos por agua), una población de 15 657 habitantes, y una densidad poblacional de 10 hab/km2 (según el censo nacional de 2000). El condado fue fundado en 1874. Fue nombrada en homenage al general confederado Robert E. Lee.

_Can a Portuguese speaker understand the above paragraph? What do you think?

BTW, the word-for-word translation into Spanish is 97% grammatically correct and natural.


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## Dalian

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> Dalian, do you think I cannot read Cantonese. Cantonese has no independent written system. If you don't believe, just write some. I can surely translate word by word to Mandarin, provided you won't write too rare slangs.


Close relations between writing systems of two languages do not necessarily mean one is the 'father' language of the other.


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## jazyk

> _El condado de Lee es un de los 254 condados del Estado americano de Texas. La sede del condado es Giddings, y su mayor ciudad es Giddings. El condado posee una área de 1 642 km2 (de los cuales 14 km2 están cobiertos por agua), una población de 15 657 habitantes, y una densidad poblacional de 10 hab/km2 (según el censo nacional de 2000). El condado fue fundado en 1874. Fue nombrada en homenage al general confederado Robert E. Lee.
> 
> _Can a Portuguese speaker understand the above paragraph? What do you think?


Of course!  I sometimes even wonder why there are translations between these languages.  I think glossaries would suffice for troublesome terms.


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## MingRaymond

ilikeenglish said:
			
		

> As a Chinese, if I just listened more about Cantonese, I should be able to understand more and more. Actually I did understand more as I am wathcing Hongkong moview. I don't particularly need to learn its grammar from scratch. Can't this indicate Cantonese is just a local dialect of Chinese?


 
This means that you understand some Cantonese. Even I write something in Cantonese, you can translate that into Mandarin, this doesn't mean that you don't need to learn Cantonese grammar in order to understand Cantonese. Also, this doesn't mean that Cantonese isn't a language.


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## panjabigator

Ilikeenglish...I am very confused.  What is your argument: that Cantonese is not a language and is improper slang or that it is just a dialect of Mandarin?


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## Maestro TD

paisleyHK said:
			
		

> These are much more literal and somewhat archaic (they frequently appear in ancient literature), while the rest are commonly used.
> 
> I would be surprised if a Chinese talk spoke these literal words to me during conversations. That is really funny.
> 
> However, when you've become a fluent user of Chinese, and write these words in your essays, that would be very impressing, given that the whole essay is archaic and exquisite.


Careful, I think you mean literary, and not literal.


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## LikeBarleyBending

vince said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I'd like to know when the 何 interrogatives are used:
> 何人 (he ren) : who
> 何處 (he chu): where
> 何時 (he shi) : when
> 為何 (wei he) : why
> 如何 (ru he) : how
> 
> And what is the difference between the above forms and the following ones:
> 誰 (shei): who
> 哪裡 (nali) / 哪兒 (nar): where
> 幾時 (jishi) : when
> 為什麼 (weishenme) : why
> 怎麼 (zenme): how
> 
> Also, do the 何 interrogatives exist in Cantonese? I don't ever recall hearing them. How about in Taiwanese Minnan?


 

They are the same, except:  the upper ones are written(somewhat ancient) Chinese, the lower ones are oral.


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## eidolon

*"何" is an ancient word, which can be found more commonly in the ancient phrase ，such as“谈何容易”“何济于事”“吾何畏彼哉？”...*
*Every student in the mainland of China need to study the ancient prose.Compared with today's Chinese, Most of the ancient words have different meanings when they used in the past. As known to all, China has a long history, the writing before today's dynasty is very complex and difficult. As a middle school student, I was forced to recite the meanings of many old words,some are not used today. Frankly, I prefer to the old Chinese. It's fascinating,beautiful and more rhythmizable to be read.*
*Nevertheless, the meaning of "何" is still used today.*


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## Aoyama

何人 (he ren) : who
何處 (he chu): where
何時 (he shi) : when
為何 (wei he) : why
如何 (ru he) : how
is, to put it simply, literary (written) Chinese  also called 文言. It would not be used in normal speech.
It is also used in _written_ Japanese (official), with, of course , a completely different reading .


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