Particle Dynamics

One of the most fascinating things for me about learning Chinese is seeing how the various characters are put together and form words.  One aspect to this is that the Chinese have words, called “particles,” which function much like punctuation does in English.

For example, consider the word “hello,” which in Chinese is nǐ hǎo.  Literally translated this means “you good.” It works just like “hello” does in English, you say it to someone and they say it back to you, completing the interchange.  However, if you want to say “how are you” in Chinese you say nǐ hǎo and then add the particle má at the end.  This acts like a question mark, and turns “You good” into “You good?” So, consider this conversation.

“Hello.”
“Hello.”
“How are you?”

In Chinese this would go:

“Ni hao.” (You good.)
“Ni hao.” (You good.)
“Ni hao ma.” (You good?)

Fascinating stuff.