Repeating question words are a really cool feature of Chinese grammar. Chinese
question words are pretty interesting in general, as they function very
logically and can be swapped in and out of sentences quite easily. One aspect of
this is that you can repeat question words and use them as ‘place-holders’ for
some sort of information.
I recently saw a little joke that demonstrates this
quite well, but let’s have a look at it here from a more grammatical
perspective. This is a great feature of the language to know, as it makes you
much more flexible in forming sentences etc.
The way it works is pretty simple. You use a question word once, and then when
you use it again in the sentence, it refers back to the first one. Hence the
term “place-holder question words”. Here’s an example:
That’s a really common thing to say in restaurants - you’re letting the other
person choose what to order and you’ll eat whatever it is. Look how the sentence
works in Chinese - literally “you order what I eat what”. This is a really nice
feature to use because it’s so elegant. You can express a lot of things this
way.
Repeating question words: a bit like programming
This kind of sentence is slightly like programming or maths. The repeated
question word is a bit like a variable - it holds one bit of
information consistently wherever you put it. Or, it’s a bit like x in
an equation - “you order x I eat x”.
Anyway, let’s have look at some different question words being repeated as
place-holders. You’ll see that Chinese question words are very versatile and
quite an elegant feature of the language.
谁 (shéi): whoever
You can very easily create sentences that would involve “whoever” in English by
repeating 谁. Some examples:
Pretty cool, right? There’s something very pleasing about those Chinese
sentences. They seem neat and efficient, and very easy to understand once you
know the repeating question words structure.
什么 (shénme): whatever
You can do the same thing with any question word you like. Let’s have a look at
some example sentences for 什么:
As you can see, you’ve just got to put in the relevant question word to hold the
place of whatever thing you want, and the sentence works.
哪儿 (nǎr): wherever
Moving on, you can talk about places in this way using 哪儿. Some examples:
怎么 (zěnme): however
Finally, you can talk about actions in this way using 怎么. Some examples:
Note that we’ve gone through a few question words here, but you can do this with
any question word in Chinese - there are loads more possibilities!