How to say 'Do you have any money?'

[Miss H]

有钱 How to ask if someone has any money as opposed to asking if they are rich...

 

If 有钱 means rich/wealthy, how does one ask "Do you have any money?" (As an example scenario perhaps you are with a friend and are short of change for a bus or something like that)  Would 你有钱吗？be appropriate or does it always mean "are you rich?" 

[Demonic_Duck]

“你有钱吗？” would usually be understood correctly in context, but for disambiguation, consider the following alternatives:

• 你很有钱吗？ Are you rich?
• 你身上有钱吗？ Do you have cash on you?
• 你有零钱吗？ Do you have change?
• 你有张一百块钱吗？ Do you have a 100 yuan note?

[889]

你没带钱呢？

 

”You didn't bring money, huh?"

[Miss H]

@Demonic_Duck thankyou. 

 

  

 

[Jim]

Colloquially, like in your bus example, you can also bring money up front which makes it a topic: 钱你有吗？or even 钱有吗？

[xinoxanu]

For double entendres likes this I like to be specific if context is not enough: use 现在 or 带

[anonymoose]

7 hours ago, Miss H said:

If 有钱 means rich/wealthy, how does one ask "Do you have any money?" (As an example scenario perhaps you are with a friend and are short of change for a bus or something like that)  Would 你有钱吗？be appropriate or does it always mean "are you rich?"

 

First of all, 有钱 meaning "rich" is an adjective, and thus, if you wanted to ask someone if they were rich, you would have to preface this with 很：你很有钱吗？

When meaning "having money", then 有 functions as a verb, so the question would be 你有钱吗？

This is not absolute though, and context is important. For example, a rich person is 有钱人.

 

Also, there's a distinction between being short of change and short of money.

You could say 你有钱吗？ but this would be more suitable in a situation where you didn't have any money, and you were asking the other person to pay.

If you were simply short of change, then you would say 你有零钱吗？ which means "do you have any change?", and you are not necessarily asking the other person to pay for you.