Abstract: “X ba” is a popular linguistic cultural phenomenon. As a blending of alienculture with traditional Chinese culture, it meets the psychological demands ofmodern metropolitans on their lookout for whatever is novel and in their pursuitof fashionable taste and high-graded life, whether in linguistic form or in concrete content and style. Being made a morpheme, the borrowed ba becomes a new word-building affix, effecting the change of potential words into actual words in the Chinese language.

Key words: ba, word-building suffix, potential, actuality, linguistic culture