吧 meaning in English
(modal particle indicating suggestion or surmise); ...right?
Meaning of 吧
Definitions from CC-CEDICT.
- (modal particle indicating suggestion or surmise)
- ...right?
- ...OK?
- ...I presume.
- bar (loanword) (serving drinks, or providing Internet access etc)
- to puff (on a pipe etc)
- (onom.) bang
- abbr. for 貼吧|贴吧[tie1 ba1]
- (onom.) smack!
How to use 吧
As a neutral-tone particle (ba), 吧 goes at the end of a sentence to make a suggestion or to guess and check something. 我们走吧。(Wǒmen zǒu ba.) Let's go. With first tone (bā), it means a bar or a place offering a service, as in 酒吧 (jiǔbā) and 网吧 (wǎngbā).
吧 combines 口 (mouth) with 巴 (bā), which gives the sound. Picture a mouth adding a soft little "ba" at the end of a sentence to make it sound gentle or unsure.
Common mistake: Learners often mix up 吧 (ba) and 吗 (ma). 吗 asks a true yes or no question, while 吧 shows you already expect a yes, as in 你是学生吧 (Nǐ shì xuésheng ba) "You're a student, right?" Also keep 吧 distinct from 爸 (bà, dad), which has 父 on top instead of 口 on the left.
吧 in example sentences
Real sentences from the Tatoeba project, with pinyin and English.
Stroke order for each character
Open a character for its meaning, components and more words.
吧 ba · modal particle indicating suggestion or… · 7 strokes
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Related words
Words that share a character with 吧.
Questions about 吧
What does 吧 mean?
吧 (ba) means "(modal particle indicating suggestion or surmise); ...right?" and is used as a auxiliary verb.
How do you write 吧?
吧 is made of 1 character: 吧 (7 strokes). That is 7 strokes in total.
Is 吧 an HSK word?
Yes. 吧 is on the HSK 1 vocabulary list of the HSK 3.0 standard.
Is it rude to use 吧 in commands?
No. Adding 吧 usually softens a command into a suggestion, so 坐吧 (zuò ba) sounds like "go ahead and sit" rather than a bare order. It is common and polite in everyday speech.
Why is 吧 used for bars and Internet cafés?
In the bā reading, 吧 was borrowed to represent the English word "bar." It then came to mean a place offering drinks or a service, which gives words like 酒吧 (jiǔbā) bar and 网吧 (wǎngbā) Internet café.