You know how English has him (accusative) and to him (dative)? Chinese doesn’t do that. Nouns don’t decline, there is no case. How does Chinese express the idea of a verb happening TO something and changing the thing so affected? And that’s where ba comes in! It literally means “handle” What happened to the milk? “Me handle cow milk drink completed” is literally what 我把牛奶和了 says. “Me handle book place table on” is literally what 我把书放在桌子上 says. The “completed” 了 particle indicates the action was completed. Of course we translate those sentences properly as “I drank the milk up” “I put the book on the table.” In 我把书放在桌子上 maybe i didn’t use 了 because you or I next plan to pick the book back up: point is 了 here is a colocation. It’s not required but it usually appears to indicate the action resulted in a change of state – “I drank the milk up.” Here “up” functions like le 了 it indicates the completion of the action. Although English doesn’t have particles Russian does. le, ba, ma 了 把 吗 are particles. They mark grammar: state change, accusative case, questions. Notice also this ba has a hand determinant on the left 把. Mouthy ba 吧 is also a particle, it functions to form rhetorical questions and is easily translated with “, ok?” so for example “let’s start, ok?” 让我们开始吧 rang women kai shi ba. The other ba has no determinant and basically means “looking forward to, longing for”. 巴 also nominalizes words. Ba looks a lot like se 色 which means colorful, sex and is, I kid you not, a picture of two people having sex. See? Chinese is really interesting!
