328 How Much Is It?

Have you ever been to China and bought something? It’s always important to know how to ask “how much is it?” Jesse Edbrooke talks with ShaoLan about how to ask the price of something in Chinese in a polite way, avoiding a cultural mistake that ShaoLan recently made while in a restaurant in the USA! ShaoLan also teaches how to do some bargaining, which is important if you are in China, particularly if you are buying anything from a local market, where prices can vary quite a lot depending on your bargaining skill! Jesse and ShaoLan move on to discuss some other Chinese words that follow the same pattern as the words for “how much?”, allowing you to quickly learn how to ask a number of other extremely useful questions!

The way to ask “how much?” in Chinese is 多少. The first character 多 means “a lot” and 少 means “a little”, so together 多少 means “a lot a little?” or “how much?” Just add the character for “money” to be specific about asking the price of something “多少錢/多少钱?”