Chinese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Chinese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
For example, if I turn a street corner and find there is some kind of situation, for example a crashed car or whatever, and I want to ask someone nearby if they saw what happened, what should I say?
Is it 你看到发生了什么事吗？or are there any better ways to express this?
Your sentence along with others in answers are all correct. The closest idiomatic one I can think of is 你刚才看到这里出什么事了(did you see what happen here just now). In practice, it can be shortened as: 这里出什么事了? or 出什么事了?.
You could say
刚才你看到了吗？
Or similarly
你刚才看到了吗？
你看到发生了什么事吗 is correct without doubt. But I myself prefer to say 刚这里怎么了？ or 你刚看到这里怎么了没？ These two expressions are very colloquial but more natural to me. I think 发生了什么 is more used when we are typing or writing.
I would translate it into “你看到刚刚这里发生了什么事吗？”
“刚刚” refer to something happened just a few minutes before, it a past tense.
I would say 你有看到刚刚发生什么事吗？.
Did you see what (just) happened?
Most answers above are right.
But let me tell you an extremely native expression, esp. in northeast China.
咋的了？
meaning "what happened?"/"What's wrong?"
you can specify the location to eliminate ambiguities.
这(儿)咋的了？
"What happened here?"
Zhe (er) Za de Le?
2 stressed syllables only, simple and easy.
