Intermediate Mandarin Chinese: "The Bride is Beautiful Isn't She?" with eChineseLearning

1,019 views · Published 6 October 2018 · 5:41 · Indexed 28 September 2026

Channel: eChineseLearning · 2018 · Education

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In a previous lesson, Teacher Ellie showed you how to use the particle "吧 (ba)" to indicate suggestions before.

In today's lesson, Teacher Ellie will show you how to use "吧 (ba)" to indicate suppositions.

The commonly-used sentence structure is:

Subject + 很 (hĕn) + adjective + 吧 (ba)?
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In Chinese, when you have a presumption about something, but are not completely sure, the particle "吧 (ba)" can be added at the end of the sentence to form a question.

The equivalent in English is the "tag question" such as "isn't that right?".

For example: 

Xīnniáng hěn piàoliang ba?
新娘很漂亮吧?
The bride is beautiful, isn't she?

新娘 (xīnniáng) = bride
很 (hěn) = very
漂亮 (piàoliang) = beautiful 

Xīnniáng hěn piàoliang.
新娘很漂亮.
The bride is beautiful.

When we add the particle "吧 (ba)" to this sentence to ask for reassurance, it reads like this:

Xīnniáng hěn piàoliang ba?
新娘很漂亮吧?
The bride is beautiful, isn't she?
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Mápó dòufu hěn là ba?
麻婆豆腐很辣吧?
Mapo tofu is spicy, isn't it?

Nĭ kàn, tā hěn kě'ài ba?
你看, 她很可爱吧?
Look, she is cute, isn't she?
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In spoken Chinese, the "subject" in this structure can be omitted:

Instead of:
subject + 很 (hĕn) + adjective + 吧 (ba) 

You can use:
很 (hĕn) + adjective + 吧 (ba)?

Hěn kù, ba?
很酷, 吧?
Pretty cool, isn't it?
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For a helpful lesson on how to write the stroke order of particle you can real our FULL LESSON with us here: https://goo.gl/vshZVi
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