问
wèn
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 問
To put a question to someone, or to ask about something. The person asked follows directly: 问路 'to ask the way', 问他一个问题 'to ask him a question'. Requests use a different verb, 请: 请他来 'ask him to come'.
Hỏi: đặt câu hỏi cho ai, hỏi về điều gì. Người được hỏi đứng ngay sau: 问路 (hỏi đường), 问他一个问题 (hỏi anh ấy một câu). Cũng như tiếng Việt phân biệt “hỏi” với “nhờ”, “mời”, tiếng Trung nhờ ai làm gì thì dùng 请, không dùng 问.
VerbRegister: neutral
Examples
Editorial example (illustrative, not a corpus attestation) — awaiting a native-speaker check
Sources & notes
Hán-Việt bridge batch 064 (2026-11-14). Headword, Traditional form and pinyin checked against CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0) source ↗ · Hán-Việt reading: Unihan kVietnamese source ↗ ; en.wiktionary Vietnamese entries via kaikki.org extract, snapshot 2026-07-31 (CC BY-SA 4.0): Hán-Việt reading 问/問 = vấn · 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 “问” mean?
To put a question to someone, or to ask about something. The person asked follows directly: 问路 'to ask the way', 问他一个问题 'to ask him a question'. Requests use a different verb, 请: 请他来 'ask him to come'.
Is “问” formal or informal?
问 is generally neutral.