Questions ending with 么: Do 么 and 吗 have the exact same meaning? I was chatting online with a Chinese person and he sometimes added 么 at the end of questions:


你觉得汉语难么？
是因为声调掌握不好么？


Can 么 and 吗 be used interchangeably? Do they have the exact same meaning?
么 at the end of the sentence can both have the meaning of 吗 or that of 嘛. If you look-up 吗 and 嘛 in 《现代汉语词典》 么 is mentioned as alternative (but the pinyin is still ma!). 吗 and 嘛 seem to be newer variants of 么.
These last years I've seen it used a lot in songs, on QQ and Weibo. Especially young people use it, but they often pronounce it me.
I've found a very interesting (but not always very accurate) &quot;homework&quot; about 么 and 吗.
Apparently at the time 鲁迅 (Luxun) it was used systematically used by most writers.
In the article the author give this example “孔乙已，你当真不识字么？” (but actually this contains an error, 鲁迅 actually wrote &quot;你当真识字么&quot;, and in the same story there is the more famous sentence &quot;你读过书么？&quot;).
Other famous writers such as 茅盾 and 曹禺 also systematically used 么. New editions of there books still often have 么 instead of 吗 and this usage hasn't completely disappeared.
么 was apparently already used during the Qing and Ming dynasties, but during the Spring Autumn Period they used 乎.