le

Change of state with "le"

Sentence-final 了 reports that things are now different from before.

New Situation + 了

How it works

我25岁了 — I'm 25 now, meaning I've just turned 25. Without 了 it's a bare fact; with it, it's news.

It works with adjectives (天黑了), nouns (春天了) and verbs (他来了).

This is the same 了 as in 下雨了 at HSK 1, seen across a wider range of sentence types.

Examples

  • wǒ èr shí wǔ suì le

    我二十五岁了。

    I've turned twenty-five.

  • tiān hēi le

    天黑了。

    It's got dark.

  • tā huì shuō zhōng wén le

    他会说中文了。

    He can speak Chinese now.