lo / luō
particle #3,461

Meanings

  1. 1 sentence-final particle indicating obviousness or a reminder
  2. 2 softer-toned variant of 了

Examples

Kuài zǒu lo, yào chídào le!
Let's go already, we're going to be late!
Fàn zuòhǎo lo, lái chī ba.
Food's ready, come eat.

Tips

grammar
is a colloquial sentence-final particle, a softer cousin of . It adds a friendly, reminding tone and is very common in casual speech and southern dialects.
usage
Same character, different word: read luō when it means 'long-winded', as in . As the sentence-ender here it is the light neutral-tone lo.

Components

radical
kǒu
mouth
Left indexing mouth radical . It marks as a vocal particle, something said rather than meant. The same radical anchors the family of sentence-final and exclamatory characters: , , , , , .
phonetic
luó
net; gauze (phonetic)
Right component supplies the sound: luó reduces to a light lo in particle use. itself pictures a hand-net spread to catch birds; here it is purely phonetic. The same phonetic drives , , and .

Stroke Order

lo