The stables burn. Confucius comes back from court and asks after the people, not the horses. This is the ordinary case: no translator gives 乎 a word of its own. What answers it is word order rather than a word. “Anyone has been hurt” becomes “Has anyone been hurt?”, and putting the verb first is doing 乎’s job.

• “Was anyone hurt?”: Slingerland, Ni, Ames & Rosemont, Lau, Watson, Chin
• Legge: “Has any man been hurt?”
• Roberts: “Was anyone injured?”

Eight sentences, one question, and not a particle among them.

A question reported rather than asked: the Minister of Justice of Chen wants to know whether Duke Zhao, Confucius’s own former ruler, understood ritual. A reported question has no question mark to end on, so English has to supply a word:

• “whether”: Legge, Ni, Lau, Watson
• “if”: Roberts
• Slingerland, Ames & Rosemont, and Chin turn it back into a direct quote, “Did Duke Zhao understand the rites?”, and the question mark does the work again

Confucius answers yes, and gets corrected a moment later. The duke had married a woman of his own surname.

Two 乎 in one sentence, and only the first gets an English word. The fronted 信乎 turns the whole report into a question:

• Six of the eight open with the same two words: “Is it true that your master⋯” (Legge, Slingerland, Ni, Lau, Watson, Chin)
• Roberts reports it: “asked Gongming Jia whether⋯”
• Ames & Rosemont: “Are we to believe that⋯”

The 乎 at the very end, all eight leave silent. One line, and both of the particle’s ordinary fates.

乎哉 stacks two question particles for emphasis, not to ask twice. Only three of the eight give the pair a word of its own:

• Slingerland: “Is Goodness really so far away?”
• Lau: “Is benevolence really far away?”
• Ames & Rosemont: “How could authoritative conduct be at all remote?”

The line then answers itself in the next breath, 我欲仁，斯仁至矣, which is the surest sign it was never a real question.

豈⋯乎 is the frame of flat denial. 豈 opens the question, 乎 closes it, and the answer wanted is no. Chen Ziqin is suggesting that Zigong outshines Confucius and is only being polite about it. A fronted question, so the English begins exactly where the Chinese ends: “How can” (Legge, Ni, Chin), “How could” (Slingerland, Roberts, Ames & Rosemont, Watson), and Lau drops the question and states the denial outright: “Surely Chung-ni is not superior to you”.

無乃⋯乎 is the hedged cousin of 不亦⋯乎, and this passage has both, one sentence apart. Zhonggong isn’t contradicting Confucius so much as showing where the Master’s own standard leads if you follow it one step further:

• Ni catches the hedge: “isn’t that excessively easygoing?”
• Roberts: “isn’t that a bit too lenient?”
• Slingerland softens it all the way down: “seems to me to be taking simplicity too far”

不亦⋯乎 is the book’s great tag-question frame, and its first line. It asks for a nod, not an answer. The literal shape, kept by seven: “is he not”, “is this not”, “isn’t it”, and Roberts writes out what the frame is actually doing: “now that is truly princely, wouldn’t you agree?”.

That’s why his sentence is the one shown here.

Here the two particles flank the clause instead of following it, 富哉言乎, and Lau puts them both into one word tucked in after the adjective: “Rich, indeed, is the meaning of these words.” The others:

• Watson fronts the same force: “How rich in meaning”
• Legge and Ni: “Truly rich is his saying”
• Slingerland and Chin: “What a wealth⋯”

Proof that the exclamation doesn’t have to begin the English sentence.

Where does the admiration go in English? Everybody has to pick a spot:

• Up front: Legge “How imposing is the manner of Zhang!”, Slingerland “How full of himself Zizhang is!”, Ni “How majestic is Zhang!”
• Tucked in later: Lau “Grand, indeed, is Chang”, Watson “Zizhang is imposing indeed”
• Chin: “What a grand presence Zizhang has!”

Grammarians treat this 乎 as a suffix fused to the doubled adjective 堂堂 rather than a free particle. That changes nothing about where the feeling lands in English.

Confucius’s verdict on Zhou civilization frames the exclamation twice over, 乎 in the middle and 哉 at the end, and most translators answer the pair with one word:

• “How”: Ni “How rich and well developed is their culture!”, and Legge, Slingerland, Roberts
• “Such”: Ames & Rosemont “Such a wealth of culture!”
• Chin keeps the exclamation with inverted word order alone: “Splendid is her culture!”
• Lau and Watson flatten it into a statement

The purest locative in the book: 浴乎沂 is 浴於沂, bathe in the Yi. All seven translators whose text reaches this line write “in”. Four characters later the sentence does it again, 風乎舞雩, and now the preposition changes with the noun:

• Lau: “on the Rain Altar”
• Legge and Watson: “among”
• Slingerland: “upon”
• Ni, Ames & Rosemont, Chin: “at”

Neither 乎 is asking anything.

This one is mine. 攻乎異端 has 乎 sitting between a verb and its object, so it’s 於, and the plain choices are “on”, “to”, or “from”.

• Legge reads it as “of”: “The study of strange doctrines”
• Lau has “from”: “To attack a task from the wrong end”
• I translated 攻 as “laboring” and wanted to keep the image of a road, so I went with “along”: laboring along the byways

Same particle, and the whole interpretation of the passage rides on the verb in front of it.

This is where the modern word 幾乎, “almost”, comes from, and here it’s still two words. 幾 is the predicate, Watson’s “come close”, and 乎 is 於, pointing it at the whole clause after it: 不幾乎[一言而興邦]乎. The passage uses 幾 on its own a moment earlier, 言不可以若是其幾也, which is the proof the two hadn’t fused yet. Five translators keep the pieces apart, “come close” from Slingerland, Watson, and Chin, “close” from Ames & Rosemont, “fairly close” from Roberts. Legge, Ni, and Lau collapse them into the later adverb, “almost”. The 乎 at the end of the line is a different word again, the plain question particle wrapping the whole comparison in a question. And Confucius builds the sentence a second time at the end of the passage, in reverse: 不幾乎一言而喪邦乎.

Yu’s eulogy sets three 乎 in one balanced sentence, and every one of them is 於 taking an object. The particle never changes; the English preposition changes with the noun. Legge’s three:

• 致孝乎鬼神: filial piety “towards the spirits”
• 致美乎黻冕: elegance “in his sacrificial cap and apron”
• 盡力乎溝洫: all his strength “on the ditches and water-channels”

Slingerland, Roberts, Ames & Rosemont, and Lau all answer the first with a plain “to”.

賢乎已 is 賢於已. The 乎 marks the standard of comparison, and six of the eight translators answer it with “than”: Legge’s “still better than doing nothing at all”. The other 乎 in the same line is doing something else entirely. 不有博弈者乎, “are there not games?”, is the plain question particle, and all eight write a question. One sentence, both jobs, and only the position tells them apart.

Sitting between the verb 貴 and its object 道, this 乎 couldn’t be a final particle even if you wanted it to be.

• Watson gives it the fullest treatment of the eight, by fronting the whole phrase: “With regard to the Way, there are three things the gentleman prizes”
• A plain “in”: Ni, Roberts, Ames & Rosemont, Lau, Chin
• Legge and Slingerland fold it away