Example sentences
zhè这gè个duō多shǎo少qián钱？
How much is this?
nǐ你men们yǒu有duō多shǎo少rén人？
How many people are there?
The story behind the character
多
Two 夕 stacked up. Here 夕 isn't evening. It's an old form of 肉 (meat). Two pieces of meat, that's 多. Xu Shen wrote 多, 重也. The ancients measured "a lot" in slabs of meat.
少
Take 小 and chip one more dot off the bottom, and you get 少. The logic is neat: 小 is already small, remove a bit more, and it's "few." It literally reads "small, minus a dot."