Mandarin · Chapter 7 · Lesson 2 · Grammar primer
Degree questions duo
Grammar for HSK 2.
The short version
Always ask 多 (duō) from the large end of the scale
Mandarin asks how-big, never how-small, whatever the real answer turns out to be. A child's age is still 你多大 (nǐ duō dà) and a short road is still 多长 (duō cháng). The large-pole adjective names the dimension neutrally; 多矮 (duō ǎi) presupposes the answer and lands as loaded, exactly like 'how short are you?'.
他多大？ tā duō dà
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
Read the full article · 11 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
10-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end. There are 24 in all: practise more afterwards if you want them.
Lesson 2 of 12 in this chapter