了

marks something finished or changed

No. 8 most used · 2.3% of everyday spoken Chinese: about 1 character in every 44.

Also read: liǎo 了解

How it's built

A single shape: nothing smaller to learn.

A way to remember it

A little hook at the end of a line: that's done.

Words

• 为了

  wèi le

  for; for the purpose of; in order to
• 了解

  liǎo jiě

  to understand; to know about; to learn about; to find out
• 不了

  bù liǎo

  (as a resultative verb suffix) unable to (do sth); (pattern: {verb} + 个 + ~) without end; incessantly
• 太好了

  tài hǎo le

  very good
• 除了

  chú le

  apart from; besides; in addition to (used to exclude, as in 除了他，除了他，谁也没来 "apart from him, nobody came", or to include, as in 除了英語，除了英语，他也会法语 "in addition to English, he also knows French"); (used to introduce one of two habitual alternatives in the pattern 除了 + A + 就是 + B, "either A or B")
• 算了

  suàn le

  let it be; let it pass; forget about it

Sentences

• 今天发生了什么事？

  jīn tiān fā shēng le shén me shì

  What happened today?
• 从此以后我自由了。

  cóng cǐ yǐ hòu wǒ zì yóu le

  Now I am free.
• 他一个人去了国外。

  tā yí ge rén qù le guó wài

  He has gone abroad by himself.
• 他不是很了解日本。

  tā bú shì hěn liǎo jiě rì běn

  He doesn't know much about Japan.

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How often characters are written: wordfreq by Robyn Speer, CC BY-SA 4.0, with data from Google Books Ngrams and SUBTLEX by Marc Brysbaert and others. Meanings: CC-CEDICT, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sentences: Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR. How often they're said: FrequencyWords and OPUS, from OpenSubtitles.