吗 (ma): yes-no question marker

Meanings

1 yes-no question marker

Characters

吗

ma

question particle

口 (mouth) + 马 (horse) — the horse supplies the sound, neutralised to toneless ma when used as a particle.

Examples

你好吗？

Nǐhǎo ma?

How are you?

你是学生吗？

Nǐ shì xuésheng ma?

Are you a student?

你喜欢中国吗？

Nǐ xǐhuan Zhōngguó ma?

Do you like China?

Tips

grammar

Tack 吗 onto the end of any statement to turn it into a yes-no question — no word-order change, no extra particles. The simplest question pattern in Chinese: 你是学生 ("you are a student") + 吗 = "are you a student?"

mistakes

Don't pair 吗 with a question word (什么, 哪, 谁): the question word already does the work. Also keep the readings separate — toneless ma is the yes-no particle here, but rising 吗 carries the colloquial "what?" meaning inside 干吗, and third-tone 吗 appears bound inside 吗啡 (morphine). Each reading has its own entry.

Components

radical

口 kǒu

mouth

Left mouth radical (Kangxi #30) — the indexing radical. Anchors 吗 as a particle uttered through the mouth, the question marker that turns a statement into a yes-no question (你好吗？ "how are you?"). Same radical groups all spoken-particle characters: 吧, 啊, 呢, 嘛 — the conversational toolkit.

phonetic

马 mǎ

horse

Right phonetic 马 supplies the sound, neutralised to toneless ma for the question particle (and shifted to má or mǎ for the other two readings). The simplified 3-stroke shape replaced the 10-stroke traditional 馬. Same phonetic powers a tight family: 妈 (mum), 骂 (scold), 码 (code), 蚂 (ant) — spotting 马 on the right cues all mā/má/mǎ/mà readings.