喇 (la): sentence-final particle (Canton…

Meanings

1 sentence-final particle (Cantonese, = 了/啦)
2 sound of wind or rain (onomatopoeia)

Characters

喇

la

sentence-final particle / whoosh

Examples

我走喇！

Wǒ zǒu la!

I'm off now! (Cantonese: ngo5 zau2 laa3)

食饭喇。

Shífàn la.

Time to eat. (Cantonese sentence)

风吹得喇喇响。

Fēng chuī de lā lā xiǎng.

The wind howled with a whooshing sound.

Tips

register

In Cantonese writing 喇 (laa3) is one of the most common sentence-final particles — roughly the completive/softener 了+啦. In Mandarin the same character is also onomatopoeia for wind/rain (读 lā), which is where CC-CEDICT's entries come from.

mistakes

Don't confuse 喇 with 啦 (la) or 了 (le). In Mandarin texts 啦 is the usual softener; seeing 喇 at the end of a sentence strongly signals the writing is Cantonese.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left-side mouth radical — pictograph of an open mouth, the indexing component. 喇 names sounds and instruments that come from a mouth-like opening: 喇叭 trumpet / horn, 喇嘛 lama (where the mouth is used in religious chant). Same radical heads most onomatopoeia: 啊, 哦, 呢, 哈.

phonetic

剌 là

to slash; contrary (here phonetic)

Right 剌 supplies the sound — là with a slight tone shift to lǎ / la. 剌 itself is 束 bound bundle plus 刂 knife, originally 'to cut against the grain.' Here only the sound matters. Same right side, same reading appears in 喇嘛, 哺喇, where 喇 functions as a syllabic transliteration character.