Example sentences
wǒ我men们zǒu走ba吧。
Let's go.
nǐ你chī吃fàn饭ba吧。
Go ahead and eat.
The story behind the character
吧
口 on the left, 巴 on the right carrying the sound. 吧 is a mouth character because it only lives in speech, and it is not in the old dictionaries at all. It got written down late, traced by linguists to 罢, the word for "stop, that's all," softened over centuries of talking. 走吧, 好吧, 吃吧. Put it at the end of a sentence and the hard edge comes off.