question about the word Shenme

[Shanny]

Hi!

Is there more than one way to write shen me? (what) Other than... 什么 ? I saw it written in other way somewhere, just curious about it. (I don't know so much about writing chinese yet)

Thank you

[skylee]

Other ways (traditional Chinese) of writing it - 甚麽 and 什麽.

[dona]

何 in Accient Chinese means shenme in Mandarin. Just the same in Japanese.

[Glenn]

But 何 is hé, not shénme. Do you ever read 何 as shénme?

[tooironic]

Of course 何's not read as shénme. @dona was just saying that they have similar meanings.

Perhaps the character that @Shanny saw was 啥 shá, the Northern dialect word for "what".

[Glenn]

But they asked about ways to write "shenme", not synonyms for it or words for "what".

[daofeishi]

We shouldn't forget the netspeak form 神马

[Glenn]

I feel like I should clear something up here. One of the reasons I made the comment I did and asked the question I did is that I'm coming from a language where you could in fact see 何 but not read it as you would expect, so to me, and I assume some other beginners, the statement that 何 is like 甚麽 doesn't mean you can't ever read 何 as "shenme" or write "shemne" as 何. That may just be Japanese doing weird things to my head, though. It seems weird now that I type it all out.