Everyday Spoken Burmese
Becoming လာ | la2
As a verb this word means to come. As a verb suffix particle, it means something starts to happen. After the adjective, it means becoming something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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မိုးရွာလာပြီ | mo3 ywa2 la2 byi2 | It starts to rain. |
နေပူလာပြီ | nay2 pu2 la2 byi2 | The sun is getting hot.
nay2 = the sun |
ကလေးတွေကြီးလာပြီ | kha1-lay3 dway2 kji3 la2 byi2 | Kids are growing big. |
Becoming လို | lo2
The word လို | lo2 as a verb is associated with the need or want as in လိုချင် | lo2 chin2.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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(၁၀)မိနစ်လောက်လိုသေးတယ် | hseare2 ma1-nit lout lo2 thay3 deare2 | Still needs about 10 minutes. |
As a suffix particle, it means "as" something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒါမြန်မာလိုဘာခေါ်လဲ | da2 myan2-ma2 lo2 ba2 khau2 leare3 | What do you call this in Burmese? |
ဒီလိုလုပ် | de2 lo2 loat | Do like this. |
Something like လိုလို | lo2-lo2
The particle လို | lo2 can be doubled up to show similarity.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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တရုတ်စာလိုလို ဂျပန်စာလိုလိုပဲ | ta1-yoat sa2 lo2-lo2 ja1-pan2 sa2 lo2-lo2 beare3 | It's like Chinese or Japanese word. |
ဟိုလိုလို ဒီလိုလို မလုပ်နဲ့ | ho2 lo2-lo2 de2 lo2-lo2 ma1-loat neare1 | Don't try to fool me by giving different excuses. (doing like this and that.) |
Same တူ | tu2
To be the same is stronger and more definite in showing similarity.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီနှစ်ခုဈေးတူတယ် | de2 hna1 khu1 zay3 tu2 deare2 | Those two items cost the same. |
အရွယ်တူတယ် | a-yweare2 tu2 deare2 | They are the same size. |
အရသာတူတယ် | a-ya1-dtha2 tu2 deare2 | They have the same taste. |
အတူတူပဲ | a-tu2-du2 beare3 | They are the same. |
Exactly like အတိုင်း | a-tine3
This word is a particle if comparing two nouns and postpositional marker if used to show compliance. Comparison is subjective and not in terms of exact numbers.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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သားက အဖေအတိုင်းပဲ | tha3 ga1 a-pfay2 a-tine3 beare3 | The son is exactly like father. |
ပြောတဲ့အတိုင်းလုပ်ပါ | pyau3 deare1 a-tine3 loat ba2 | Please do exactly what I say. (exact compliance) |
Almost / nearly နီးပါး | ni3-ba3
This word and another word နီးနီး | ni3-ni3 have the same meaning. နီး | ni3 means to be near or close by. နီးနီးနားနား | ni3-ni3 na3 na3 refers to vicinity
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီလူ အရပ် (၆)ပေ နီးပါးရှိတယ် | de2 lu2 a-yut chout pay2 ni3-ba3 shi1 deare2 | That man is almost 6 feet tall.
a-yut = height |
Near နား | na3
As a noun, it means an ear. The particle နား | na3 following a noun or a pronoun is a short spoken form of အနား | a-na3 meaning vicinity.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီနားမှာအိမ်သာရှိလား | de2 na3 hma2 ain2-tha2 shi1 la3 | Is there a toilet around here? |
Exact amount တိတိ | ti1-de1
Measurement for quantity, short length, time, weight and volume.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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(၄) နာရီတိတိရှိပြီ | lay3-na2-yi2 ti1-de1 shi1 byi2 | It's exactly 4 O' clock. |
(၁)ပိဿာ တိတိ ရှိတယ် | da1-bate-tha2 ti1-de1 shi1 deare2 | It's exactly 1 Viss. (equivalent to 3.6 lb or 1.6 kg) |
Perfect fit ကွက်တိ | kwet-ti1
This is a popular expression which means exact fit, exact timing, or perfect execution of plan.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ကွက်တိပဲ | kwet-ti1 beare3 | Perfect! |
Just right အနေတော် | a-nay2-dau2
The taste is just right: not too salty, not too sweet. The sweater fits nicely: not too tight, not too loose. Air-conditioner setting is perfect: not too cold, not too warm. It tastes, looks, or feels just right.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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အနေတော်ပဲ | a-nay2-dau2 beare3 | Just right! |
More than ထက် | htet
In the literary Myanmar language, this word is a conjunction that connects two nouns in comparison where the first noun is more in degree than the second. In spoken form, the first noun can be omitted if it is the subject of the conversation.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီဆိုင်က ဟိုဆိုင်ထက်ပိုကောင်းတယ် | de2 hsine2 ga1 ho2 hsine2 htet po2 koun3 deare2 | This shop is better than that shop. |
ဟိုဆိုင်ထက်ပိုကောင်းတယ် | ho2 hsine2 htet po2 koun3 deare2 | (This shop is) better than that shop. |
Over ကျော် | kjau2
This word is not for comparing two similar items. It is used to say something or someone is over and exceeds a number that can be measured such as weight, length, or height.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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အရပ် (၆)ပေ ကျော်တယ် | a-yut chout-pay2 kjau2 deare2 | He is over 6 feet. a-yut = height. |
Approximately လောက် | lout
As a verb it means to be enough or sufficient. This word can also be used for comparing two similar items as well as for rough estimation of numbers.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီလူဟိုလူလောက်မဝဘူး | de2 lu2 ho2 lu2 lout ma1-wa1 bu3 | This man is not as fat as that man. wa1 = to be fat, or be full and satisfied. |
ဒီလူဟိုလူလောက်ဝတယ် | de2 lu2 ho2 lu2 lout wa1 deare2 | This man is as fat as that man. |
(၅)မိုင်လောက်ဝေးတယ် | nga3-mine2 lout way3 deare2 | It's about 5 miles away. way3 = to be far |
Until အထိ | a-hti1
This postpositional marker comes right after the distance, time or place.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
မန္တလေးအထိပဲသွားမယ် | mun3-da1-lay3 a-hti1 beare3 thwa3 meare2 | (This bus) will go only until Mandalay. |
(၄)နာရီ အထိပဲလုပ်မယ် | lay3 na2-yi2 a-hti1 beare3 loat meare2 | We will work only until 4 O'Clock. |
အိမ်အထိလိုက်ပို့ပေးပါ | ain2 a-hti1 lite-po1 pay3 ba2 | Please accompany or take me to my house. Please come along with me till the house (sometimes to help deliver items.) |
It can also be used as a conjunction to connect two verbs.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ကားပြင်ပြီးတဲ့အထိစောင့်မယ် | ka3 pyin2 pyi3 deare1 a-hti1 soun1 meare2 | I will wait till car repair is done. deare1 refers to the time that repair is done. |
For အတွက် | a-twet
For someone or something is this word. As a postpositional marker it comes right after someone or something, not before like in English.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒါကအဖေအတွက် | da2 ga1 a-pfay2 a-twet | This is for father. |
မင်းအတွက်ပါဝယ်လာခဲ့တယ် | min3 a-twet ba2 weare2 la2 kheare1 deare2 | I bought this for you also. |
မနက်ဖြန်အတွက်ကော | ma1-net-pfyan2 a-twet gau3 | What about for tomorrow? |
For ဖို့ | pfo1 (bo1)
If this word follows a person (noun or pronoun), it is a postpositional marker meaning for someone in the same sense as in အတွက် | a-twet.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒါမင်းဖို့ | da2 min3 bo1 | This is for you. |
If this word follows a verb, it is a particle that converts the verb to the noun clause where the reference noun is for the purpose of something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဘာလုပ်ဖို့လဲ | ba2 loat pfo1 leare3 | What purpose? (What is the purpose of this thing?) |
ပေးဖို့ | pay3 bo1 | This is the thing to give someone. |
ပေးဖို့မလိုဘူး | pay3 bo1 ma1-lo2 bu3 | No need to give. (The thing you are preparing to give is not necessary.) |
In longer phrases, it can also be used as a conjunction where in order to achieve a particular result, an action is done (or urged.)
Desired result + ဖို့ | pfo1 + Action + (should do).
Dare to ရဲ | yeare3
The word ရဲ | yeare3 as a noun refers to police. As a verb, it means to be brave and daring. It can appear after an another verb as a suffix particle to say having the courage to speak, do, go, etc..
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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မင်းတစ်ယောက်တည်းသွားရဲလား | min3 ta1-yout-hteare3 thwa3 yeare3 la3 | Do you dare to go alone? |
Stay behind / left behind ရစ် | yit
To be left behind or to stay behind.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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နေရစ်ခဲ့ | nay2 yit kheare1 | Stay here (while we go). |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ပိုက်ဆံအိတ်ကျန်ရစ်ခဲ့ပြီ | pike-hsun2-ate kjan2-yit kheare1 byi2 | I think I left behind the purse! (upon discovering that it was missing.) |
Fully satisfied ဝ | wa1
As an adjective, it describes being fat or plump.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီကလေးအတော်ဝတာပဲ | de2 kha1-lay3 a-tau2 wa1 da2 beare3 | This child is so fat! |
It can be a verb to mean having a full stomach, have a good night sleep, or to be fully satisfied with whatever one does.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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စားလို့ဝရဲ့လား | sa3 lo1 wa1 yeare1 la3 | Are you full? Is your stomach filled? |
အိပ်ရေးဝရဲ့လား | ate-yay3-wa1 yeare1 la3 | Did you sleep well? |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ကစားလို့မဝသေးဘူး | ga1-za3 lo1 ma1-wa1 thay3 bu3 | I am not done with playing. |
အိပ်ရေးမဝဘူး | ate-yay3 ma1-wa1 bu3 | I did not sleep well. |
ဝသွားပြီ | wa1 thwa3 byi2 | I am full (or fully satisfied.) |
Each စီ | si2
This "each" word is for number of items that is received or given away.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
တစ်ယောက်နှစ်ခုစီရမယ် | ta1-yout hna1-khu1 si2 ya1 meare2 | Each person will get two each. ( 1 person + 2 items + each + will get.) |
Use လူတိုင်း | lu2 dine3 if each and every person does something. (Refer to Every တိုင်း | dine3)
Color Codes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, particles, postpositional markers, interjections.