Mandarin Particles app for iPhone and iPad

Chinese Modal Particles

The function of modal particles is to help the speaker express his or her mood and attitude towards the content of the utterance. Modal particles play crucial roles in the oral communication of Mandarin Chinese. Appropriate use of them will enable you to convey your emotions, feelings and other paralinguistic information accurately. However, your sentence may sound incomplete and the meaning might also become vague and unclear if you omit them.

The most frequently used modal particles in Mandarin Chinese include 啊 (ā), 呢 (ne), 吗 (ma), 吧 (ba), 的 (de), 了 (le) and 啦 (lā). In most cases, they are added to the end of a sentence, but occasionally they are also placed within a sentence to form a purposeful verbal pause. They cannot be translated, as there is no direct English equivalent of the above seven Chinese modal particles. To most Mandarin learners, modal particles are confusing and very difficult to use.

The purpose of building this educational app is to help Mandarin learners remove this grammatical obstacle. In this app, all the usages of Chinese modal particles are thoroughly explained in simple English, and all of the example sentences are written in Chinese for everyday living. Your listening comprehension and speaking abilities will largely improve if you listen to the audio and read the example sentences aloud everyday.

Features:

1. Explains thoroughly the usages of Chinese modal particles:
啊 (ā), 呢 (ne), 吗 (ma), 吧 (ba), 的 (de), 了 (le) and 啦 (lā)

2. More than 250 example sentences are included.

3. All of the example sentences are written in conversational Chinese.

4. All of the example sentences are clearly pronounced by an experienced Chinese narrator.

5. Hanyu Pinyin and English translations are always placed right below the Chinese characters.

6. Switches between simplified and traditional Chinese characters with a button.