Sentence pattern · Band 3
不是……吗: is it not obvious?
不是 A 吗？
不是……吗 asks a question that already knows the answer: are you not a student, surely you are? It gently polices the world, double checking dates, returning lost phones, nudging a friend who forgot a promise. English bends the voice upward; Mandarin writes the disbelief straight into the words.
Hear it in a sentence
Mistakes people make
The 不是 frame expects a yes and wants 吗; 吧 melts it into a soft guess and drains the point.
The 不 rides inside the sentence right after the subject; it never opens the line.
Words in this pattern
Quick answers
What does 不是……吗 mean?
不是……吗 asks a question that already knows the answer: are you not a student, surely you are? It gently polices the world, double checking dates, returning lost phones, nudging a friend who forgot a promise. English bends the voice upward; Mandarin writes the disbelief straight into the words.
How do you build it?
不是 A 吗？
What is the most common mistake?
你不是学生吧？ → 你不是学生吗？
The 不是 frame expects a yes and wants 吗; 吧 melts it into a soft guess and drains the point.
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