Modalpartikel: How To Sound Like A Native

Speaker Of German
In your conversations with German native speakers, its possible that
you have heard some words whose meaning you couldnt quite
figure out. These so-called modal particles are words (often short)
that do not have a clear meaning, nor are required by any
grammatical rule. Then, what are they for? Well, they are generally
used to emphasize what the speaker wants to say. In addition, some
sentences just sound weird without them.

No meaning and no grammar? So, how can I learn these words?

Unfortunately, that is actually the problem. While the best way to
learn them would be to live in a German environment and hear them
every day, not everybody has this opportunity. So, instead, I will
simply try to explain them by providing real-world examples and
situations in which they would typically be used by a native speaker.

The most common modal particles are:

denn
mal
blo

 doch
ja
eigentlich
aber
ruhig
sowieso
einfach
halt
eben
schon
vielleicht

While some of these, such as ja, aber, ruhig, einfach,

blo and vielleicht, also have an actual meaning, this meaning only
exists when they are not being used as modal particles. In this
article, we will see how this difference works.

denn

Lets start with a typical situation. You are at a friends place or at a

party and you start talking with somebody you dont know. You might
even ask them some questions about their job or where they are
from. Lets compare these two sentences:

Woher kommen Sie?

Woher kommen Sie denn?

Here, denn is being used as a typical modal particle; it has no

meaning at all. So, please dont get it confused with the
conjunction denn, which means because. The conjunction version
is used to connect two sentences and is always placed at the
beginning of the second sentence. In contrast, the modal particle
version appears in the middle (or at the end) of either a question or a
sentence.

So, what is the difference between these two questions? Well, you
are actually asking almost the exact same thing in both examples
and it is very likely that each will elicit very similar responses.
However, you might find that you get different reactions though.

So why is this? The most obvious answer is that the second question
is slightly longer. Thats it? Well, kind of. The truth is that the first
question sounds a bit like a police interrogation: too direct and fairly

rude. With the addition of the modal particle, the question simply
becomes longer, and therefore more polite and acceptable.

Another possible situation could occur if you accidently bump into a

friend on the train or the bus:

Wo fhrst du denn hin? or Wohin fhrst du denn?

Wo fhrst du hin? or Wohin fhrst du?

First of all, as you can see, there are two ways of saying the same
thing. The version withwohin is the standard question that you will
find in textbooks. However, in spoken language,wo and hin are often
split into two parts. Therefore, both versions are included above.

In each pair of examples, the version without the modal

particle denn makes the speaker seem overly inquisitive. In fact,
only a certain intonation could make this question seem appropriate
without using denn. Again, the difference lies in the degree of
politeness.

Finally, the modal particle denn can also be used to express

surprise.

 Wo kommst du denn her? (Where do you come from? Here,

it is more of a rhetorical question.)
Wie siehst du denn aus? (You look terrible! Literally: How do
you look like?)
Was machen Sie denn da? (What the hell are you doing?)

mal
The particle mal can make a request sound more polite. It makes it
seem as though the speaker only wants to bother the other person
for a brief period of time.

Knnten Sie mir (bitte) mal helfen? (Could you please help
me just for a short moment?)
Knnte ich (bitte) mal Ihren Stift haben? (Could I please
borrow your pen only for a few seconds?)

In the second sentence, it is implied that the pen will be returned as

soon as possible. Withoutmal, one might think that the speaker
wanted to keep the pen forever. With bitte, the sentence obviously
becomes even more polite. One could say, the longer the sentence
is or the more modal particles it contains, the more polite it is.

 Kommen Sie (her)! (Please come over here!)

Kommen Sie bitte (her)!
Kommen Sie doch bitte (her)!
Kommen Sie doch bitte mal (her)!

From the first through the fourth sentences, the meaning remains
completely the same, but the degree of politeness increases. This
means that the modal particles have the ability to change the tone of
the sentence. her, which means towards the speaker, makes the
whole issue a bit more complicated, however. While Kommen
Sie! could be considered acceptable in certain
circumstances, Kommen Sie her! sounds pretty rude (imagine an
angry general calling a soldier).

schon
Have you ever noticed that when Germans speak English, they use
the word already quite frequently? This is probably because the
German word for already (schon) is used in a way that is different
from English.

For instance, when asking whether you have ever done something,
you would use schon mal.

Warst du schon mal in Berlin? (Have you ever been to

Berlin?)
Ja, ich war schon mal da. (Yes, I have.)
Nein, ich war noch nie/nicht da. (No, I havent.)

The responses to schon (mal) in the negative are noch

nie and noch nicht.

Similarly, you can use this word when asking about whether
something has been done.

Haben Sie den Brief schon geschrieben? (Have you written

the letter?)
Ja, ich habe ihn schon geschrieben. (Yes, I have. Literally: I
have written it already.)
Nein, ich habe ihn noch nicht geschrieben. (No, I havent.
Literally: I havent written it yet.)

eigentlich
eigentlich sometimes has a meaning that is similar to actually.

Hast du eigentlich ein Auto?

Here, the speaker is expressing that they are unsure about whether
or not the other person has a car. Again, without eigentlich, the
question might sound somewhat rude.

doch
Ich habe es dir doch schon erzhlt. (I have told you that
already.)

Here, doch emphasizes schon. For example, this sentence could be

a response to another speaker who had just expressed that they
were unsure about being told something previously. Thus, this
answer is a little bit like saying How can you not remember? I have
already told you, so you should know.

In other, more positive contexts, doch can be used to express

surprise, such as in:

Das ist doch toll! (That is really great!)

Sometimes, doch can be used to express a slight degree of doubt.

Das ist doch dein Auto, oder? (That is your car, isnt it?)

ruhig
As a modal particle, ruhig doesnt mean calm or silent as it does
when it is being used as an adjective. It means something more
along the lines of dont worry, no problem.

Kommen Sie ruhig rein! (Dont worry! Come in!)

Nehmen Sie sich ruhig Zeit! (No worries, take your time!)

halt/eben
halt or eben both express resignation. Typically, the speaker would
shrug their shoulders at the same time:

Das ist halt so. (Thats just the way it is!)

Da kann man halt nichts machen. (There is nothing that can
be done about it.)

sowieso
A typical mistake that I often hear is wie so, which is probably
intended to mean like that. This is not correct. Instead, if one wants
to say, I like it like that in German, they should use: I mag es so.
However, this mistake might be due to the student having heard a
word that is very similar: sowieso. This word is more or less
equivalent to anyway. Lets see some examples:

Er kommt sowieso nicht mehr. (Anyway, he will not come

anymore.)

 Ich habe sowieso keine Lust darauf, heute Abend ins Kino
zu gehen. (Anyway, I am not keen on going to the movies
tonight.)
Das ist sowieso besser so. (Anyway, its better this way.)

aber
Generally, aber is used as a conjunction meaning but. However, as
a modal particle, it means something along the lines of though, and
is used to contradict what has just been said before or to emphasize
the content.

Das ist aber gar nicht so schlecht. (Thats not bad, though.)
Das passt mir heute aber gar nicht. (It doesnt suit me
today.)
Das ist aber eine berraschung! (That is a surprise.)

ja

As a modal particle, ja does not mean yes, but instead is used to

emphasize something positive.

Das ist ja interessant/toll/super! (Thats really

interesting/great.)

blo
Ordinarily, blo has a very similar meaning to nur (only). However,
as a modal particle, it is often used in a warning.

Sagen Sie das blo nicht zu laut! (Dont say that aloud!)
Sei blo vorsichtig! (Be careful!)

Kontaktiert mich doch einfach, wenn ihr Fragen dazu

habt! (Please contact me if you have any questions!)

Behind The Scenes: Chinese

Characters

In our last article, Learning Characters is like Playing with Legos,we learned how to write
threeChinese characters:

sn

These characters mean one, two and three respectively. Now, in this article, we are going to
continue to learn to write characters, but this time we are going to learn some really fun ones!

Pictographic characters (the ones we are going to learn about today) are fun because you can
figure out the meaning of the character just by deciphering its shape. And what about other
characters in which this is not possible? Well, we can still use character etymology and imagination
to make it easy and fun to learn those characters too!

Lets talk about radicals

In the previous article, I spoke about strokes being the basic components of character structure.
However, we have another building block, which is the radical. Basically, they are like a Lego block
inside another Lego block. Lego-ception?

Radicals consist of anywhere from one to seventeen strokes. Most (but not all) radicals are
characters themselves too! Learning non-character radicals will definitely help you to remember how
to write actual characters, being that they themselves are used in the their construction.
Furthermore, radicals can help you to understand the common semantic and phonetic meanings of
characters, so that you can quickly and efficiently decipher them!

So, lets start by having a look back at m and m from the first article in this series,Getting
Started with Mandarin.

The character m is built from the radicals n and m n, specifically, means

female/woman. So just knowing the n component alone, we now know that m is related to
something female. Do you remember what m means?

On the other hand, m is built with two ku components and and one m

Specifically, ku is a radical and a character that means mouth. So just knowing the meaning of
the ku character, we now know that this word has something to do with a mouth. So, do you
remember what m means?

Fun Tip: If you happen to have a hard copy of a Chinese dictionary, then you can look up a
character by its radical. We use radicals to index our characters.

Todays Characters
We are going to look at three different characters today, two of which are radicals. For each
character, we will look at the etymology and at additional tips for remembering them. Since there are
different explanations for the character etymology, I picked out the ones that are most interesting for
our characters today.

The three characters that we looked at last time used only horizontal strokes, which are
called hng. This time, we are going to learn about ones with vertical strokes. The name for the
vertical stroke is sh. Remember:

To write hng, we go from left to right, from point A to point B.

To write sh, we go from top to bottom, from point A to point B.

hng

sh

Horizontal stroke

Vertical stroke

Before you proceed: The stroke order is important for several reasons when you are learning to
write Chinese characters. However, for the purposes of this article, we are going to focus on
recognizing the characters only. Thus, keep in mind that the way that I will explain the characters will
generally ignore the stroke order.

Character One

For our first character, we are going to take the character for the number one and draw a vertical
line right through the middle of it, forming a cross.

So you should do something like this:

Step #1: Write one in Chinese.

Step #2: Add sh.

 sh is the number ten. It is an ideogram which highlights the four directions: north, south, east
and west (ArchChinese). Think of a compass! Each endpoint points to a different direction
respectively.

However, it looks nothing like the value ten, so we are going to have to use a memorization tip to
remember this character. The most popular one used by my students is to remember the English
letter T from ten. This is actually a tip that one of my young students came up with!

Interesting cultural note: We have hand signs for the numbers one through ten, and the way that
we represent ten is by crossing our index fingers, thus forming the shape of its character. So, if
you were aware of this concept already, then remembering the character for ten will be super easy!

Character Two

For this character, we are going to build upon the Chinese character for the number two. However,
this time we are going to draw a vertical line only through the middle of the first horizontal line, and
stop at the second horizontal one.

Step #1: Write two in Chinese.

Step #2: Add sh.

Another way to remember how to write this character is to add one horizontal line after you write the
character ten, which actually follows the correct stroke order as well.

t is a pictographic character that means a mound () on the ground () (YellowBridge).

In other words, it means soil, dirt, or earth. Two examples that use the t radical and have a
similar meaning are d (land) and chn (dust, dirt).

If the character etymology it not helping much, we can also use a little imagination!

Imagine the Chinese character sh (ten) as being a cross or a tombstone. Then ask yourself what
do we do with dead bodies? We bury them and put a tombstone on top. And where do we bury
them? Under the ground. So imagine the bottom line being the ground and the top part of the
character being the tombstone. And voila, you have the character for dirt or ground.

Character Three

For the last character, we are going to take the Chinese character for the number three and draw a
vertical line as well. For this character, the vertical line goes from the middle of the top horizontal
line all the way down to the middle of the bottom one.

Step #1: Write three in Chinese.

Step #2: Add sh.

In the character t, the horizontal line on the bottom means ground (or earth). This concept stays
the same here. The middle line represents humanity and the top line represents heaven/sky. We
have one vertical line that connects all three, or one person who can reach heaven, humanity, and
earth (ArchChinese).

Think about it. Back in the old days, who had the power over all the people and the land? Everything
under the sky belonged to him. The people were his subjects.

So, did you guess king? wng is the character for king. It is also a common surname! Who
wouldnt want the last name King?

Conclusion
Now that we are done, did you notice that for each of these three characters, I either referenced the
character etymology or made up a story to help you remember them? What kind of images or
stories come to mind when you see these three characters? Remember: its alright if these images
only make sense to you! On the other hand, if you feel that the character etymology is enough to
help you remember them, then you dont need to use any additional creative images!

This is as far as we will go with characters for now. In our next article, we are going to look at a
magic trick with , and to instantly increase your vocabulary eleven times! Stay tuned
for more fun and cool Chinese Mandarin articles!