少
few; little; less
HSK level
- Pinyin
- shǎo
- Part of speech
- adjective
- Level
- HSK 1
- Strokes
- 4
- Register
- neutral
- In episodes
- 3
Stroke order for 少
少 is written with 4 strokes. The animation replays automatically.
What does 少 mean?
少 (shǎo) means 'few / little / not much' — the opposite of 多 (duō, 'many/much').
It's a stative adjective: 朋友很少 'I have few friends,' 钱少 'little money.' Two things English speakers should know: first, 少 covers both 'few' (countable: few people) and 'little' (uncountable: little money), unlike English, which distinguishes them; second, 少 has a second reading — pronounced shào (fourth tone), it means 'young' and appears in 少年 (shàonián, 'youth / teenager') and the surname/title 少爷 (shàoye, 'young master').
HSK 1 only tests the shǎo reading. The most common HSK 1 pattern is the 多少 (duōshǎo) question word — literally 'much-few' — meaning 'how much / how many,' used for numbers above ten or unknown quantities (多少钱 'how much money').
Note: Note: read as shào (fourth tone), 少 means 'young' (少年 'youth,' 少女 'young woman'). HSK 1 only covers the shǎo 'few/little' sense.
Memory hook: 少 looks like 小 ('small') with an extra slash — when a small amount has even less, you get 少.
Hear 少 in real episodes
少 appears in 3 Fluentide podcast episodes at natural native speed. Each sentence plays at the easiest difficulty it exists in — switch it to hear the same moment at your level, with full pinyin and English throughout.
我们每天走多少步好呢？
How many steps should we walk every day?
Must You Walk 10,000 Steps? Research Finds Benefits Around 7,000
一个学生说：我们的学校，老师太少了。
One student said: our school has too few teachers.
French High-School Students Walk Out Over Missing Teachers: 250,000 March, Thousands Arrested and 500 Schools Shut
这10个人，用牙刷刷舌头，口臭少了45%。
When these 10 people brushed their tongues with a toothbrush, bad breath went down by 45%.
Tongue Scrapers Beat Toothbrushes at Fighting Bad Breath — and Your Tongue's Bacteria May Help Lower Your Blood Pressure
Example sentences
我的朋友很少。
Wǒ de péngyǒu hěn shǎo.
I have very few friends.
neutral
请少放盐。
Qǐng shǎo fàng yán.
Please add less salt.
polite
这里人很少。
Zhèlǐ rén hěn shǎo.
There are very few people here.
neutral
你有多少钱？
Nǐ yǒu duōshǎo qián?
How much money do you have?
spoken
Common phrases with 少
Don't confuse 少 with
小 ('small') describes SIZE; 少 ('few') describes QUANTITY. 小猫 'small cat' vs 猫少 'few cats.' Beginners constantly mix these because the characters look alike (one stroke apart) and both translate as 'small' in some English phrases.
省 ('save / province') contains 少 as its bottom component, but means something different. Don't be thrown off by the visual similarity — 省钱 'save money' is not 少钱.
Frequently asked questions
Related words from the same episodes
Acquire it by listening
Meet 少 again — in real Chinese, at your level.
You just saw 少 in 3 episodes. Fluentide keeps feeding you news episodes at your level, so this word — and thousands like it — resurface in real sentences until they stick. Full pinyin and translation every time. Free to start.