怎么
zěn me
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Traditional: 怎麼
How — placed before a verb to ask the way something is done; also 'how come'. 这个怎么说? 'how do you say this?', 怎么去? 'how do I get there?'. Asking about a reason, it shows surprise: 你怎么不去? 'how come you are not going?'. 怎么样? asks for an opinion: 'what is it like?', 'how about it?'. 么 has a neutral tone.
Đại từ nghi vấn hỏi cách thức: thế nào, làm sao; cũng dùng để hỏi “sao lại”. Đứng trước động từ: 这个怎么说? (cái này nói thế nào?), 怎么去? (đi bằng cách nào?). Khi hỏi lý do thì có ý ngạc nhiên: 你怎么不去? (sao bạn không đi?). 怎么样? dùng để hỏi ý kiến: “thế nào?”, “được không?”. 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 “怎么” mean?
How — placed before a verb to ask the way something is done; also 'how come'. 这个怎么说? 'how do you say this?', 怎么去? 'how do I get there?'. Asking about a reason, it shows surprise: 你怎么不去? 'how come you are not going?'. 怎么样? asks for an opinion: 'what is it like?', 'how about it?'. 么 has a neutral tone.
Is “怎么” formal or informal?
怎么 is generally neutral.