什么
shén me
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 什麼
What — the question word for things; before a noun, 'what kind of'. It sits exactly where the answer will go, so the word order does not change: 这是什么? 'what is this?' (word for word 'this is what?'), 什么茶? 'what kind of tea?'. Do not add 吗 to such a question. 么 has a neutral tone.
Đại từ nghi vấn: gì, cái gì. Đứng đúng vào chỗ của câu trả lời nên trật tự từ không đổi, giống tiếng Việt: 这是什么? (đây là cái gì?), 什么茶? (trà gì?). Câu đã có 什么 thì không thêm 吗 nữa. Chữ 么 đọc thanh nhẹ.
PronounRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 063 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ · No Vietnamese entry is linked as its twin; the Hán-Việt reading is given character by character. Definition, literal gloss and example sentence are original; the example has not had a native-speaker check yet.
Common questions
What does “什么” mean?
What — the question word for things; before a noun, 'what kind of'. It sits exactly where the answer will go, so the word order does not change: 这是什么? 'what is this?' (word for word 'this is what?'), 什么茶? 'what kind of tea?'. Do not add 吗 to such a question. 么 has a neutral tone.
Is “什么” formal or informal?
什么 is generally neutral.