# How much sugar do you take in your tea?



## seitt

Greetings,

Please, how do you say ‘How much?’?

E.g. ‘How much sugar do you take in your tea?’

Best wishes, and many thanks,

Simon


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## xiaolijie

How much (also how many) = 多少 (duōshao)


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## macrotis

Please help me complete the translation of the example sentence:
你多少糖 ... 你茶? (or 你的茶 or just 茶?)


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## Ghabi

For example, you may hear:
  -你 平常[habitually] 喝茶 加 多少 糖 呢?
   -中国人 喝茶 加 什么 糖!


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## seitt

Many thanks, excellent.

Are the above sentences okay for sugar when it's in a mass i.e. not lumps?


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## xiaolijie

seitt said:


> Are the above sentences okay for sugar when it's in a mass i.e. not lumps?


Yes, as implied in post #2.


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## viajero_canjeado

seitt said:


> Are the above sentences okay for sugar when it's in a mass i.e. not lumps?



I reckon if they're lumps you could ask 幾塊糖。


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## BODYholic

For lumps of sugar, I usually say 几颗糖。

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## xiaolijie

BODYholic said:


> For lumps of sugar, I usually say 几颗糖。


 颗糖 here reminds me of 颗心 . Does "你有几颗心?" make any sense in Chinese (figuratively) ?


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## MèngDié

xiaolijie said:


> Does "你有几颗心?" make any sense in Chinese (figuratively) ?


 
"你有几颗心?" by itself doesn't really mean anything to me. Perhaps it would make sense in a certain context?


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## BODYholic

xiaolijie said:


> 颗糖 here reminds me of 颗心 . Does "你有几颗心?" make any sense in Chinese (figuratively) ?



It makes sense to me. You can ask a Casanova this question. 

Over here, we tend to use 颗 on (comparatively/relatively/presumably) small but valuable items. E.g. 心, 星, 钻石, 红豆(因为此物最相思。) & etc. There are exceptions, of course. We discussed this quite extensively previously. 

While raw sugar is almost worthless here, sugar cubes are still not something common enough to be present in every household in Singapore. These cubes are typically found in (better) restaurants and hence, we generally 'perceived' them as something valuable. Of course, in actual fact, these are readily available in any supermarkets and they are, needless to say, affordable.  This explains why we rarely say "幾塊糖" when referring to sugar cubes. While it is not wrong, it sounds coarse/unrefined to my ears. We may, however, say "几块冰糖".


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## MèngDié

块, to me, would usually refer to things of a bigger size than 颗, and also for things that are generally square or rectangular-shaped...


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## viajero_canjeado

BODYholic said:


> This explains why we rarely say "幾塊糖" when referring to sugar cubes. While it is not wrong, it sounds coarse/unrefined to my ears.



Ah, thanks for enlightening me. The 量詞 sometimes give me trouble. I suppose I had a misconception that 一顆 something would be round-ish (蘋果, 心) and 一粒 would generally be small (米, 沙)。



MèngDié said:


> 块, to me, would usually refere to things of a bigger size than 颗, and also for things that are generally square or rectangular-shaped...



I guess that's why I mistakenly thought it would apply to square-shaped sugar cubes.


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## HTOT

viajero_canjeado said:


> I guess that's why I mistakenly thought it would apply to square-shaped sugar cubes.


Maybe it's the dialect thing. We say"几块糖”not 几颗糖


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