IDENTITY
吗maquestion particle (neutral tone)
HSK 1Top 80
CORE MEANING
question particle (neutral tone)
- Part of speech
- particle
- Register
- neutral
Senses
- 1.yes/no question particleHSK1
FORM & BREAKDOWN
- Radical
- 口mouth radical (kǒu)
- strokes
- 6
- Structure
- left-right compound
- IDS sequence
- ⿰口马
- mouth; asking
- gives the sound ma
USAGE
Common words
好吗hǎo mais it okay
是吗shì mais that so
Graded examples
你是学生吗？Nǐ shì xuésheng ma?HSK1
Are you a student?
RELATIONS
Lookalike — don’t mix up
LEARNING
Memory aid
A mouth (口) riding the sound of the horse (马) — the question tag ma. (From 嗎.)
- HSK version
- 3.0
- Frequency rank
- #80
- Memory aid
- memory-aid
TRUST & SOURCES
- Reviewed by
- AI-assisted editorial review
- Last reviewed
- 2026-08-15
Sources
- CC-CEDICT 2026-01-01
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