How to say "how often" in Chinese?

[tooironic]

I've often wanted to say (or been asked to translate) "how often do you do X"? in Chinese. But I don't know if there is any equivalent expression.

My first reaction is "你经常做X吗？" (literally: "Do you often do X?") but of course that's a bit different to the original English.

My second reaction is "你几次做X？" (literally: "How many times have you done X"?) but again, that's not very close either.

My third reaction is "你做X的频率是多少？" (literally: "What is the frequency of you doing X"?). Not a great translation either.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[SuEn]

I've been saying 多长时间做x一次 . I'm curious if there is a better way to say this, though.

[daofeishi]

I can't think of a catch-all translation, but I think one of the more idiomatic ways of expressing it is by inferring something about how often it could be and asking

你（平均）每周看几部电影？

你一年见父母多少次？

你一个星期跑几次步？

or by asking indirectly:

你每天都跑步吗？

[skylee]

Consider -

你（隔）多久跑一次步？

你多久看一次電影？

你多久上一次館子？

你多久去一次旅行？

隔 is usually not used.

[Michaelyus]

多久一次 also comes to my mind as well. In practice, I think I would likely substitute a specific time frame.

"How" + adjective always strikes me as such a "Germanic" thing... I'd be hard pressed to find an equivalent in the Romance languages as well. I hardly use "tous les combiens" and would prefer something with "fréquence" in French. </off-topic>

[zoe]

"how often do you do X"? in Mandarin this sentence will not be literally translated.

1. "你经常做X吗？" (literally: "Do you often do X?") can be an option for a Chinese. i.e. 你经常去香港吗？

2. "你几次做X？" (literally: "How many times have you done X"?) this sentence is not correct. To express "have done" we say (v. + 过). i.e. 你去过几次香港？

2. "你做X的频率是多少？" (literally: "What is the frequency of you doing X"?). this sentence sounds quite formal. 频率 is a formal word means frequency.

my suggestions is: 你多久do一次sth.？ or 你常常do sth. 吗？

i.e. 你多久去一次香港？（How often do you go to HK?）

你常常去香港吗？

i.e. 你多久健一次身？ ( How often do you go to gym？)

你常常去健身吗？

[Shirley_Chen]

how often ? = 你多久?

[tooironic]

Thanks everyone for the very informative replies, particularly Zoe. I'm confused though, because I thought 多久 meant "how long (has someone done something)". Thus 你多久做sth by itself wouldn't work unless you added 一次, right?

[Shirley_Chen]

Thanks everyone for the very informative replies, particularly Zoe. I'm confused though, because I thought 多久 meant "how long (has someone done something)". Thus 你多久做sth by itself wouldn't work unless you added 一次, right?

Right. how long = 需要多长时间

[zoe]

Thanks everyone for the very informative replies, particularly Zoe. I'm confused though, because I thought 多久 meant "how long (has someone done something)". Thus 你多久做sth by itself wouldn't work unless you added 一次, right?

"你多久do 一次 sth." in this sentence pattern, 多久doesn't mean "how long" but "how often".

See this one: 我一个月看一次电影。Is that structure familiar to you?

Question for this one is: 你多久看一次电影？

Then it is clear and reasonable enough, that when asking about duration we always use 多久 to make a question.

[HusbandOfWuhan]

I agree with daofeishi. The options given in his/her reply were all the idiomatically accurate Chinese ways of asking “how often".

You cannot directly translate "how often".

[knickherboots]

"I've often wanted to say (or been asked to translate) "how often do you do X"? in Chinese. But I don't know if there is any equivalent expression."

The short answer, as revealed in the discussion, is that there is no good equivalent. It depends on context. 多久 can cover some circumstances, but its use for frequency is not nearly as common as its dominant use: as an interrogative for measuring duration (e.g., 你有多久没有回过家了？人不吃饭能活多久？). The best thing to do would be to look at the context and go from there.

My sense is that this is one area where the vastly different way English and Chinese handle verbs creates a difficulty. Because of the looser verb tense structure in Chinese, it's more common to approach a discussion of frequency in Chinese with a time marker, as demonstrated in daofeishi's examples.

[suMMit]

So glad to see I'm not the only person who has struggled with this one. 

 

My teacher has corrected me "incidentally" on this as it's come up while we've been free-talking. It hasn't seemed to stick. I was thinking, well eventually the unit will come up where this is discussed. So I looked through my textbook . And looked and looked - not in there. I looked through another textbook - not in there. 

 

So I searched online and found this beautiful answer from John Pasden and a nice video on YouTube. I suspect, as John points out its not an Hsk point, thus its largely skipped. But such a BASIC grammar point that's much different from English! F*** Hsk. 

 

https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Expressing_"how_often"

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpK29H_X7vM

[ZhuoMing]

3 hours ago, suMMit said:

But such a BASIC grammar point that's much different from English! F*** Hsk

 

As basic and common this construction is in English, I don't think I would call it basic in Chinese. There is the translation as described in that Chinese grammar wiki page, but even this is not as flexible as the English "how often", and is rarely used by native speakers in comparison to asking for frequency within a specific time period. 

[shakuan]

In Taiwan we can say 多常。however do be perfectly honest I don't know if it's grammatically correct nor if China also uses this way of saying