B1
呢, 啊 and 嘛 — the words that carry the tone
The Chinese sentence-final particles beyond 吗 and 吧 — what 呢, 啊 and 嘛 each do to a sentence, and why 嘛 is not a variant of 吗.
Chinese carries in these particles a great deal of what English carries in intonation. None of them changes what a sentence says; all of them change how it lands, and a sentence without one can sound colder than you meant.
呢 — and what about…
Its most useful job: turning a noun into a question that inherits the topic from what came before.
我很好，你呢？
Wǒ hěn hǎo, nǐ ne?
I’m fine — and you?
我的钥匙呢？
Wǒ de yàoshi ne?
Where are my keys?
That second one is a whole question in three syllables. With no verb at all, 呢 asks where something is — which is worth having ready.
It also softens a question word, taking the edge off what would otherwise sound like an interrogation, and marks something as ongoing.
你在做什么呢？
Nǐ zài zuò shénme ne?
What are you up to?
啊 — warmth, surprise, insistence
The most flexible and the hardest to pin down. It softens, it exclaims, it urges.
好啊！
Hǎo a!
Sure!
你怎么才来啊？
Nǐ zěnme cái lái a?
Why are you only getting here now?
快点儿啊！
Kuài diǎnr a!
Come on, hurry up!
好 alone is agreement. 好啊 is agreement with some enthusiasm in it. The word means nothing on its own and it is the difference between sounding curt and sounding friendly.
In speech it changes shape depending on what precedes it — 呀, 哪, 哇 — which is a sound change rather than a different word.
嘛 — obviously
嘛 marks what is being said as self-evident, and often carries a hint of I shouldn’t have to explain this.
这不是很简单嘛。
Zhè bú shì hěn jiǎndān ma.
Well, it’s perfectly simple.
你去问他嘛。
Nǐ qù wèn tā ma.
Just go and ask him, then.
你去嘛？
你去吗？
嘛 and 吗 are different characters doing opposite jobs — 吗 asks a question, 嘛 asserts that the answer is obvious. They sound identical, both neutral tone, and only the writing tells them apart.
Why bother
These are among the last things a learner picks up and among the first things a native speaker notices. A sentence that is grammatically perfect and carries no particle at all reads as flat, or brusque, in a way nothing in the words explains.