Shanghainese question words: how to ask anything

Six question words and one particle will get you most of the way. None of the six is the Mandarin word, one of them means something else in Mandarin, and the word order is easier than English — because nothing moves.

Updated 20 September 2026 · 5 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Shanghainese examples play the recordings from Verbavia’s course, made with a Shanghainese voice; Mandarin examples play a Mandarin voice.

The six words

Five of the six are built on one root. 啥 sa ‘what’ is what, and the others are compounds of it, which makes them far easier to learn than their Mandarin equivalents:

Learn 啥 sa ‘what’ and you have most of the set. It is also one of the fastest ways to identify the language: a sentence with 啥 in it is not Mandarin, whatever else is going on.

For quantities there are two more. 几 ci ‘how many’ asks for a small countable number and takes a classifier after it; 几化 ci ho ‘how much, how many’ asks for a larger or unknown quantity — Wiktionary’s example for it is exactly the one you will use, how much does it cost.

The false friend

哪能 na nen ‘how’ is the one to be careful with, and it is careful in an unusual direction: the trap is not that it looks unfamiliar but that it looks familiar.

Those two characters exist in Mandarin too, and there they do something else. Mandarin uses 哪能 in rhetorical questions that amount to a denial — how could it possibly, meaning it could not. In Shanghainese 哪能 is the ordinary, neutral word for how. A Mandarin speaker who reads 哪能 na nen ‘how’ as a rhetorical flourish will hear objection where none was meant.

Wiktionary flags the difference explicitly, and it is the sort of thing that causes real misunderstanding rather than mere confusion, which is why it gets its own section here.

Nothing moves

This is the good news, and it is a genuine simplification over English. English hauls its question word to the front of the sentence and rearranges what is left: you are seeing whom becomes whom are you seeing. Chinese languages do not. The question word goes exactly where the answer would go, and nothing else changes.

• 侬是啥人？ non zy sa nyin ‘who are you?’ — literally you are what-person.
• 侬要啥？ non iau sa ‘what do you want?’ — you want what.
• 伊勒海做啥？ yi leh he tsu sa ‘what is he doing?’ — he is-in-the-middle-of doing what.
• 侬啥辰光来？ non sa zen kuaon le ‘when are you coming?’ — you what-time come.
• 为啥勿来？ we sa veh le ‘why aren’t you coming?’

So the way to build a question is to build the statement first and then swap in the question word. If you can say it, you can ask it, and the basic sentence shape is on the grammar page.

Yes-or-no questions: 伐

For a question with no question word, Shanghainese adds a particle to the end of an ordinary statement. Wikipedia calls it the most common way of forming questions in the language. The particle is 伐 va ‘(question particle)’:

• 侬好伐？ non hau va ‘how are you?’ — you well, plus 伐.
• 侬去伐？ non chi va ‘are you going?’
• 侬吃饭了伐？ non chih vae 'leh va ‘have you eaten?’
• 好伐？ hau va ‘all right?’ — tacked onto the end of a proposal, the way English adds okay?

It sits in the same slot as Mandarin’s 吗 and does the same job, which makes it the cleanest one-to-one swap in the whole language for anyone arriving from Mandarin.

The other way, and where it belongs

There is a second Wu strategy for yes-or-no questions that puts a particle before the verb instead of after the sentence: 阿 a ‘(question prefix)’. So 阿有位子？ a yeu we tsy ‘are there any seats?’ rather than putting 伐 at the end.

Here is the honest position on it. Wikivoyage’s Wu phrasebook, which gives Suzhou and Shanghai forms side by side, lists the 阿-prefix pattern as the Suzhou way and the sentence-final 伐 as the Shanghai way — the same sentence appears as 啊有招牌菜 for Suzhou and as 招牌菜有𠲎 for Shanghai. This course’s own word list does gloss 阿 as a yes-no question prefix in Shanghainese. Both can be true: constructions like this do not stop at city limits. But if you want the form that is unambiguously Shanghai, put 伐 at the end.

Answering, when there is no word for yes

There is no Shanghainese word for yes and none for no. You answer by giving back the verb, positive or negative, which is the same mechanism as in every other Chinese language:

Note which negator goes with which verb. 勿 veh ‘not’ is the general one, but to have is negated by 呒没 m meh ‘not to have’ and never by 勿 — the same split that governs the past tense, which is on the aspect page.

对 te ‘right, correct’ is the other useful answer, for confirming rather than agreeing to something: that’s right.

A word that is on its way out

场化 zan ho ‘place’ gives an older word for where, 啥场化, built the same way as 啥地方 sa di faon ‘where’ but on a different noun. Wiktionary marks it as dated in Shanghainese while still current elsewhere in northern Wu, which makes it a small example of the pattern described on the old and new Shanghainese page: the distinctive local form retreating, the more widely shared one staying.

The whole thing on one card

• 啥 sa ‘what’ · 啥人 sa nyin ‘who’ · 啥地方 sa di faon ‘where’ · 啥辰光 sa zen kuaon ‘when’ · 为啥 we sa ‘why’ · 哪能 na nen ‘how’
• 几 ci ‘how many’ for a small count, 几化 ci ho ‘how much’ for everything else.
• Leave the word where the answer would go. Do not move anything.
• For a yes-or-no question, say the statement and add 伐 va ‘(question particle)’.
• To answer, repeat the verb, or negate it with 勿 veh ‘not’ — or with 呒没 m meh ‘not to have’ if the verb was have.

That is enough to ask for directions, a price, a time and a name, which is most of what a visitor needs. The phrases those questions turn up in are on the phrases page.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Shanghainese — the particle 𠲎 (va) as the most common way of forming questions, with 儂好𠲎; SVO word order; the negators 勿 and 嘸沒
2. Wiktionary: 啥人 — “what” plus “person”, with a Wu example sentence
3. Wiktionary: 啥地方
4. Wiktionary: 啥辰光
5. Wiktionary: 為啥 — Shanghainese 6we-sa
6. Wiktionary: 哪能 — the Shanghainese “how” against the Mandarin rhetorical-negation use
7. Wiktionary: 幾化 — “how many; how much”, with 幾化銅鈿？
8. Wiktionary: 啥場化 — an adverb in northern Wu, dated in Shanghainese
9. Wikivoyage: Wu phrasebook — the 啊- prefix given as the Suzhou form and sentence-final 𠲎 as the Shanghai form
10. Omniglot: Shanghainese phrases — 侬好伐？ and 饭吃过伐？