German modal particles ( or Abtönungspartikel) are uninflected words that are used mainly in the spontaneous spoken language in colloquial registers in German. Their dual function is to reflect the mood or the attitude of the speaker or the narrator and to highlight the sentence's focus. Often, a modal particle has an effect that is vague and depends on the overall context. Speakers sometimes combine several particles, as in doch mal, ja nun or ja doch nun mal. It is a feature typical of the spoken language. Most German words can be translated into English without any problems but modal particles are a challenge to translate because English has no real equivalent to them. List of modal particles Halt, eben and einmal (in this context always in full) and nun einmal (shortened: nun mal) imply that the often-unpleasant fact expressed in a sentence cannot be changed and must be accepted. Halt and nun mal are more colloquial than eben. In English, they could be rendered by "as a matter of fact" or "happen to": Gute Kleider sind eben teuer. ("Good clothes are expensive, and it can't be helped." / "Good clothes happen to be expensive.") Er hat mich provoziert, da habe ich ihn halt geschlagen. ("He provoked me so I hit him – what did you expect?") Es ist nun einmal so. ("That's just how it is.") Einmal, shortened to mal (literally "once", roughly "for once") also indicates a certain immediacy to the action or can even imply a command. On the other hand, it can give a kind of casualness to a sentence and so makes it sound less blunt: Hör mal zu! (Listen!" or "Listen to me"!) Beeile dich mal! ("Do hurry up!") Sing mal etwas Schönes! ("Why don't you sing something pretty?") Schauen wir mal. (lit.: "Let's take one look." meaning: "Let's just relax and then we'll see what we'll be doing.") Ja ("you know"/"everyone knows"/"I already told you") indicates that the speaker thinks that the fact should already be known to the listener and intends the statement to be more of a reminder or conclusion: Ich habe ihm ein Buch geschenkt, er liest ja sehr gerne. ("I gave him a book as, you know, he likes to read.") Heidi ist ja ein Kind. ("Heidi is a child as you can see.") Doch can have several meanings. (See also .) It can be used affirmatively or to