啥 (shá): what

Meanings

1 what
2 anything

Characters

啥

shá

what (colloquial)

Examples

你说啥？

Nǐ shuō shá?

What did you say?

啥都行。

Shá dōu xíng.

Anything is fine.

Tips

register

啥 is the colloquial/dialectal version of 什么. Very common in northern Chinese dialects and casual speech. It's widely understood everywhere but sounds informal.

usage

啥 can replace 什么 in almost any context: 干啥 (what are you doing), 啥时候 (when), 啥意思 (what does it mean).

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left indexing mouth radical - marks 啥 as a spoken-language word. Anchors it among colloquial particles and question-words alongside 吗 (question marker), 呢 (ne particle), 哪 (which), 啊 (ah). 啥 is fundamentally a sound - a contracted oral form of 什么.

phonetic

舍 shè

house (here phonetic)

Right 舍 supplies the sound (shè → shá with vowel shift). 啥 was coined relatively late as a written form of the colloquial contraction of 什么, which northern speech had already shortened to 'shá' in everyday use. The 舍 phonetic was chosen for its near-match in initial.