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呢

ne / ní
particle HSK 1 #59

Meanings

  1. 1 and what about...?
  2. 2 marks an ongoing state or action
  3. 3 discourse pause-emphasis marker

Examples

你呢？
Nǐ ne?
And you? / What about you?
我很好，你呢？
Wǒ hěn hǎo, nǐ ne?
I'm fine, and you?
他在看书呢。
Tā zài kàn shū ne.
He's reading (right now).

Tips

grammar
Three sentence-final jobs. First, bounce a question back: 你呢？ = 'and you?'. Second, mark an ongoing state or action, often paired with 在 or 正在 (他在看书呢). Third, soften a wh-question or signal the speaker is mulling something over (怎么样呢？).
mistakes
Don't use 呢 for yes/no questions — that role belongs to 吗. 你好吗？ asks 'are you well?'; 你好呢？ only makes sense as a comeback after someone else already answered.

Components

radical
口 kǒu
mouth
Left mouth radical, the indexing radical for 呢. Marks the character as something coming out of the mouth, here a sentence-final particle rather than a meaning-bearing word. Same role as in 吗, 啊, 呀, 啦 — the small grammatical particles that lubricate spoken Chinese all carry the mouth radical.
phonetic
尼 ní
Buddhist nun (phonetic)
Right phonetic 尼 supplies the sound. The fabric-noun reading keeps the rising ní; the particle reading neutralises the tone to ne. 尼 also shows up as a transliteration char in 尼姑 'Buddhist nun' and 印度尼西亚 'Indonesia'. Pure phonetic role; no semantic contribution.

Stroke Order

呢 ne