Learn about the particle 啊 (a)
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Intro |
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| Hi everybody! Yinru here. Welcome to Ask a Teacher, where I’ll answer some of your most common Chinese questions. |
| The Question |
| The question for this lesson is: How do I use the final particle 啊 a? |
| Explanation |
| In Chinese language, especially colloquial Chinese, you’ll often see particles at the end of a sentence. They usually don’t have any substantive meaning themselves, but they do play a very important role in carrying out the intonation of a sentence. We call those “final particles.” Words like 吗 ma, 吧 ba, 啊 a, 哦 o are all particles that appear at the end of a sentence to show the emotions of the speaker. |
| Today we’ll be talking about one of the most common final particle: 啊 a. |
| Generally speaking, 啊 can be put at the end of a greeting, a question, an exclamation, or an imperative. It can soften the tone, strengthen the emotion, and make the conversation more colloquial. |
| Let’s look at some examples. |
| When you want to ask: “Who is it?” you can say: |
| 是谁？ shì shéi? This sounds very intense. |
| But if you say: |
| 是谁啊？ shì shéi a? The tone is much softer and less impersonal. |
| To agree with someone, you can use the word 好 hǎo, 对 duì, 是 shì, etc. |
| Many times, you’ll hear 好啊 hǎo a, 对啊 duì a, 是啊 shì a in conversations. For example: |
| A: 这里的人好多啊！(zhèlǐ de rén hǎo duō a! “So many people here!”) |
| B: 是啊／对啊。每天都这样。(shì a /duì a. Měi tiān dōu zhèyàng. “Yeah. It’s like this every day.”) |
| 今天天气真好啊！Jīntiān tiānqì zhēn hǎo a! is an exclamation. We use 啊 to emphasize the fact that the weather is really very nice. |
| 快吃啊！Kuài chī a! is an imperative. You’ll often hear parents say that to their kids, to make them hurry up and eat their food. |
| Here’s another example of how to use 啊: |
| 动物园里有很多动物，老虎啊，狮子啊，大象啊，骆驼啊，长颈鹿啊等等. Dòngwùyuán lǐ yǒu hěnduō dòngwu, lǎohǔ a, shīzi a, dàxiàng a, luòtuo a, chángjǐnglù a děngděng. It means “There are lots of animals in the zoo, such as tigers, lions, elephants, camels, giraffes, and so on.” |
| 啊 here is used when listing a series of things in spoken language. |
| Generally speaking, 啊 is a final particle we use in colloquial language to make the speech softer, less abrupt, and more conversational. |
| 是不是很有意思啊？Shì bú shì hěn yǒu yìsi a? “Interesting, right?” |
Outro |
| How was it? Pretty interesting, right? |
| Do you have any more questions? Leave them in the comments below, and I’ll try to answer them! |
| I’ll See you next episode. 我们下期再见吧。Wǒmen xià qī zàijiàn ba. Bye! |
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