吗

吗 ma is a sentence-final particle whose single job is to turn a statement into a yes-no question. You build the statement exactly as you would to assert it, then add 吗 at the very end. Nothing else changes: no inversion, no auxiliary, no shift in word order. This makes Mandarin questions remarkably easy compared with English. 他是老师 ("he is a teacher") becomes 他是老师吗？("is he a teacher?") with one syllable.

The character is built from 口 kǒu (mouth) plus a phonetic, marking it as a spoken particle, and it carries neutral tone (ma, light and unstressed). Its meaning is purely grammatical: it asks the listener to confirm or deny the whole statement. Because it questions the entire sentence, 吗 cannot be added to a sentence that already contains a question word like 谁 (who) or 什么 (what); those are already questions and adding 吗 would be wrong.

Mandarin has no single word that always means "yes" or "no." You answer a 吗 question by echoing the verb, in positive or negative form. To 你是老师吗？("Are you a teacher?") the answers are 是 ("I am") or 不是 ("I'm not"). To 你去吗？("Are you going?") they are 去 ("yes") or 不去 ("no"). To 你有钱吗？("Do you have money?") they are 有 or 没有. The verb of the question is the seed of the answer.

For confirming or denying a whole statement, 对 ("correct, right") and 不对 ("not right") are common, as is 是的 ("yes, that's so") for a softer, fuller affirmation. The English habit of starting every answer with "yes" or "no" does not transfer; reaching for the verb instead is the single most useful reflex to build when learning to answer Chinese questions. For more on the 是…的 confirmation pattern, see the dedicated 是…的 entry.

The A-not-A pattern is a second way to ask a yes-no question, formed by stating the verb or adjective in positive-then-negative sequence: 去不去 (go-not-go), 好不好 (good-not-good), 是不是, 有没有. It asks the same thing as a 吗 question and is slightly more neutral in tone, simply laying out the two options.

Two cautions. First, never combine the two forms: a sentence has either 吗 or A-not-A, not both (你忙不忙吗 is wrong). Second, A-not-A does not work when a degree adverb like 很 is present, because 很好不好 is ungrammatical; with 很, use 吗 (你很忙吗？). In practice, 吗 is the more common everyday choice, while A-not-A is handy for offering a clear either-or and for the very frequent 是不是 ("is it the case that…?") used to seek confirmation.