‘干啥?’ and ‘干吗?’

The Chinese character 啥 (shá ) is used in the same way as the word 什么 (shén mè ) , both words have the same meaning (which is ‘what’). The character啥 (shá ) is frequently used among the people who live in the north part of China.

Here are two examples of the character啥 (shá ) and the word 什么 (shén mè ) in usage. The meaning of the phrase doesn’t change when you switch between 啥 (shá ) and 什么 (shén mè ). ‘你在干什么？’ ( nǐ zài gàn shén mè) which means ‘ what are you doing?’ can also be shortened to ‘你在干啥?’ (nǐ zài gàn shá ), which has exactly the same meaning as the previous sentence. Another example is ‘干什么?’ (gàn shén mè) which literally means ‘ doing what?’, generally is used when you are not sure what he/she is doing. When we replace 什么 (shén mè ) with 啥 (shá ) the meaning of the sentence doesn’t change. So ‘干什么?’ (gàn shén mè) is the same as ‘干啥?’ (gàn shá).

The character ‘吗’ (mā) is often used at the end of a sentence to make it into a question. However, ‘吗’ (mā) can also replace什么 (shén mè ) or 啥 (shá ) in colloquial speech. For example, ‘干什么?’ (gàn shén mè) can be shortened to ‘干吗?’ (gàn má ), notice the pronunciation of the character吗’ (mā) has changed to ‘吗’ (má), but the meaning of the phrase is the same.

If you are in China you are most likely to hear people saying ‘干啥?’ (gàn shá) or ‘干吗?’ (gàn má ), make sure you know those words are shortened forms of ‘干什么?’ (gàn shén mè).