Could you guys please do a 'Qing Wen' on the many mysteries of “呢”？

hi, ahem, hotballs, yes, that's a great suggestion. we will!

呢 is frequently used in chinese. e.g. where r u come from? u can say 你来自哪个国家? /你来自哪个国家呢? What happened?=出了什么事?/出了什么事呢? Which one do u prefer? =你喜欢哪一个?/你喜欢哪一个呢?Where did u go?=你上哪去了?/你上哪去了呢?How old r u?=你多大了?/你多大了呢? From what we discuss above, u can see that 呢 can add at the end of Special Questions. :)

This would be interesting, but I think your best best bet with these things is to just listen to people use it. As a starting point, and continuing from ivyzhang's post, the use of 呢, other to mean, "and how about x", as in "I'm fine, how about you?", which is how it is first taught, there is another key use. It just adds to the sentence a feeling that you have already begun a dialogue and the question isn't come out of nowhere. It might be translated as "well, then . . . " Using ivyzhang's example, we can translate the following as so: 你上哪去了? Where did you go? 你上哪去了呢? Well, then, where did you go? The first is a direct question presuming no background conversation. The second is used when there has a been a background conversation, you and the speaker have already been talking about where he/she, you, or someone went or something at least related such that the question isn't totally unexpected. So adding this tag word of 呢 makes it feel like the question isn't coming out of the blue, but is part of a string of questions. I hope that helps as a start before the qingwen comes out!

Or maybe "So, then, where did you go?"