lo / /
particle #1,976

Meanings

  1. 1 sentence-final particle indicating obviousness or settled change of state
  2. 2 colloquial variant of 了

Examples

Hǎo lo, wǒmen zǒu ba.
Alright then, let's go.
Chīfàn lo!
Time to eat!
Xiàyǔ lo!
It's raining!

Tips

usage
is a southern-flavored colloquial cousin of . It signals that something is obvious, has just become so, or is being announced casually. Lighter and more playful than plain ; common in Cantonese-influenced Mandarin and informal speech everywhere.
mistakes
Only the particle sense is . As an onomatopoeia (咯咯 = cluck/giggle) it reads gē; in the medical compound 咯血 (cough up blood) it reads kǎ. Three different readings, three separate dictionary entries.

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth (radical)
Left radical — a small open square marking as a sound from the mouth. Same indexing radical as other particles and onomatopoeia: , , , .
phonetic
each; every (phonetic)
Right phonetic supplies the sound family (gè drifts to lo, gē, and kǎ across the three readings). Same phonetic appears in , , , — all in the gè/luò sound family. The 'each' meaning is not contributed here; is purely phonetic.

Stroke Order

lo