Asking How Much With Duōshǎo

We learned Jǐ + measure word + noun as “how many / how much” in week 2. And we are going to learn another way of asking “how much”. Most of the time, jǐ question word and duōshǎo question word are interchangeable. However, if you want to know the difference between the two, you can read this article: Jǐ vs Duōshǎo.

Duōshǎo + (measure word) + noun

Nǐ yǒu duōshǎo péngyǒu？ ——> How many friends do you have? 你有多少朋友？

Nǐ kàn guò duōshǎo běn shū？ ——> How many books have you read? 你看过多少本书？

Nǐ zuótiān hē le duōshǎo jiǔ？ ——> How much alcohol did you drink yesterday? 你昨天喝了多少酒？

Zhège duōshǎo qián？——> How much is this? 这个多少钱？

nǐ xiànzài yǒu duōshǎo shíjiān？——> How much time do you have right now? 你现在有多少时间？

Note that the measure word is optional when using duōshǎo. It is not optional when using jǐ. In duōshǎoqián, we can‘t replace duōshǎo with jǐ. In the last sentence, the shíjiān is uncountable. When the noun is uncountable, we don’t need to have measure word at all.