Discussion of 吗/嗎 [ma] used at the end of a question or a rhetorical question; used within a sentence to mark a pause

Discussion of 吗/嗎

To include posts you need to register at trainchinese.com

In this post, we compare two particles: 吗 and 吧.

- 吗 is a modal particle indicating interrogation. When the speaker does not know about something and expects an answer, he can put 吗 at the end of a statement to form a yes/no question.

- 吧 can also be used to form a question. When 吧 is used at the end of a statement, the speaker is not very sure about something but he has an estimate. A question mark is usually used at the end of such a sentence to indicate a mild tone.

Example 1a. 你结婚了吗？ [phr] Are you married?
is a real question. The speaker does not know the interlocutor is married or not, so he is posing a question and expects an answer. Now if we use 吧 in this sentence instead:

Example 1b. 你结婚了吧？
The speaker already has an estimate that the interlocutor is probably married but he is a bit uncertain. The English translation is a bit different. We can put it in this way: You are married, right?

lisaC

This app is very good for every child that don’t know Chinese

sinymz

Show 1 reply

You you can select to receive personal notifications on the app or via email for important contributions to words that you are learning in the account settings .