吗

turns a sentence into a yes-or-no question

No. 75 most used · 0.66% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 152.

How it's built

• 口mouth
• 马horseGives the sound: mǎ

A way to remember it

A mouth (口) plus a horse (马) for the sound: a spoken question mark.

Words

• 干吗

  gàn má

  variant of 干嘛

Sentences

• 上个月是十一月吗？

  shàng gè yuè shì shí yī yuè ma

  Was last month November?
• 他不是意大利人吗？

  tā bú shì yì dà lì rén ma

  Isn't he Italian?
• 他们都是一样的吗？

  tā men dōu shì yí yàng de ma

  Are they all the same?
• 你不想知道原因吗？

  nǐ bù xiǎng zhī dào yuán yīn ma

  Don't you want to know the reason?

Your progress is saved in this browser. In the app it comes with you, along with your own songs and videos. Get the app

How often characters are written: wordfreq by Robyn Speer, CC BY-SA 4.0, with data from Google Books Ngrams and SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert and others. Meanings: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sentences: Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR. How often they're said: FrequencyWords and OPUS, from OpenSubtitles.