Everyday Spoken Burmese
Only and exactly this ပဲ | beare3
Constraint in choice or time. Lack of freedom to do something else. This only and nothing else.
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English
သူပဲ
thu2 beare3
That's him! (He , exactly !)
ဒီလူပဲ
de2 lu2 beare3
That's the man! (That man , exactly !)
သူ့ကိုပဲပေး
thu1 go2 beare3 pay3
Give it to him only .
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English
ဒါပဲလား
da2 beare3 la3
Only this ?
ဒါပဲ
da2 beare3
Yes.
After being said what was to be said in a phone call or in a letter --
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Romanization
English
ဒါပါပဲ
da2 ba2 beare3
That 's all for now.
ဒါပဲနော်
da2 beare3 nau2
That 's all for now, OK?
Only and just him သာ | dtha2
This is an another word for "only". There is a slight difference in meaning compared to ပဲ | beare3 . "Just give it to him " here could refer to a task because he is most qualified, not because he needs it the most such as food or money.
In the second example, there is something odd about him to be thinking that way.
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Romanization
English
သူ့ကိုသာပေးလိုက်
thu1 go2 dtha2 pay3 lite .
Just give it to him .
သူကသာထင်နေတာ
thu2 ga1 dtha2 htin2 nay2 ta2 .
Only he is thinking that way.
Another usage of သာ | dtha2 is in combination with ဆိုရင် | hso2 yin2 meaning "if" as in "If I were him I would do things differently."
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English
ကျွန်တော်သာဆိုရင်ဒီလိုမလုပ်ဘူး
kja1-nau2 dtha2-hso2-yin2 de2 lo2 ma1 -loat bu3 .
I wouldn't have done like this if I were him .
Want word ချင် | chin2
The want word is not a stand-alone verb but a verb-suffix particle that comes after the verb.
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Romanization
English
စားချင်တယ်
sa3 chin2 deare2
I want to eat .
Of course တာပေါ့ | da2 bau1
Words of agreement.
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ဟုတ်တာပေါ့
hote da2 bau1
Of course!
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English
သွားတာပေါ့
thwa3 da2 bau1
Of course, we will go .
သွားကြမလား
thwa3 ja1 ma1 -la3
Shall we go ?
သွားကြတာပေါ့
thwa3 ja1 da2 bau1
Of course.
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Romanization
English
ရမလား
ya1 ma1 -la3
Can this be done?
ရတာပေါ့
ya1 da2 bau1
Of course!
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Romanization
English
ကြည့်ကြသေးတာပေါ့
kji1 ja1 thay3 da2 bau1
We will see about that. (till then, I agree.)
တော်သေးတာပေါ့
tau2 thay3 da2 bau1
You were lucky. It was a good thing. It could have been worse. (still suitable .)
ရယ်တာပေါ့
yi2 da2 bau1
You're funny! (laughing at your threat.)
Whatever တာ | da2
This suffix particle changes a verb or an adjective into a noun clause.
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Romanization
English
ကြိုက်တာယူ
kjite da2 yu2
Take what you like .
kjite = to like. kjite da2 = kjite da2 = thing that you like
ကြိုက်တာယူ ၅၀၀၀
kjite da2 yu2 nga3 htoun2
Take what you like , only 5,000 .
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Romanization
English
လုပ်ချင်တာလုပ်
loat chin2 da2 loat
Do what you want (to do) .
ကြီးတာရွေးယူ
kji3 da2 yway3 yu2
Choose and take the big one .
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Romanization
English
ညာတာ မကြိုက်ဘူး
nya2 da2 ma1 -kjite bu3
I don't like lies . nya2 = to lie
ညာတာ လုံးဝ မကြိုက်ဘူး
nya2 da2 lone3-wa1 ma1 -kjite bu3
I absolutely don't like lies .
Extreme degree လိုက်တာ | lite ta2
The verb or adjective is still changed into a noun , but it refers to
the experience or encounter with something to the extreme degree.
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Romanization
English
ဆာလိုက်တာ
hsa2 lite da2
I am so hungry .
တော်လိုက်တာ
tau2 lite da2
You are so good/skillful .
ပူလိုက်တာ
pu2 lite da2
It's so hot .
(Also see လိုက် | lite .)
Better than expected သားပဲ | dtha3 beare3
Something turned out to be right or better than expected. It can be pronounced either tha3 or softer dtha3 .
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Romanization
English
ဟုတ်သားပဲ
hote tha3 beare3
That's right ! (Not what I thought, though.)
တော်သားပဲ
tau2 tha3 beare3
Hey, he's quite good! (or) Hey, the trousers fits !
ရသားပဲ
yah1 tha3 beare3
Wow, it could be done! (be possible )
A positive statement တာပဲ | da2 beare3
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English
သိပ်ကောင်းတာပဲ
thate koun3 da2 beare3
That's very good .
ဒါလည်းဟုတ်တာပဲ
da2 leare3 hote da2 beare3
That too is right !
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Romanization
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ဒီလိုလုပ်
de2 lo2 loat
Do like this .
ရတာပဲ
ya1 da2 beare3
Sure, why not?
ဒါလည်းရတာပဲ
da2 leare3 ya1 da2 beare3
It can be done like that , too .
Question Words ဘာ - လဲ | ba2 xxx leare3
What and why. ဘာ | ba2 can be either pronoun or adjective . If you just point to a noun without mentioning it, it is a pronoun .
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Romanization
English
ဘာလဲ
ba2 leare3
What ? What's the matter?
ဒါဘာလဲ
da2 ba2 leare3
What is this ?
ဒါဘာတွေလဲ
da2 ba2 dway2 leare3
What are those ?
ဒါဘာကားလဲ
da2 ba2 ka3 leare3
(1) What model is this car ?
(2) What number is this bus ?
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Romanization
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ဘာကြိုက်လဲ
ba2 kjite leare3
What do you like ?
ဘာဟင်းကြိုက်လဲ
ba2 hin3 kjite leare3
What dish do you like ?
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Romanization
English
ဘာမှာမလဲ
ba2 hma2 ma1 -leare3
What do you want to order ?
ဘာဟင်းမှာမလဲ
ba2 hin3 hma2 ma1 -leare3
What dish do you want to order ?
Second ba2 is adjective because the noun hin3 (dish) follows it.
In an exception case, it sounds more like "how" in English.
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ဘာလုပ်ရမလဲ
ba2 loat ya1 ma1 -leare3
What should I do ?
ဘာဆက်လုပ်ရမလဲ
ba2 hset loat ya1 ma1 -leare3
How should I proceed ?
Why or why didn't you ?
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Romanization
English
ဘာဖြစ်လို့လဲ
ba2 pfyit lo1 leare3
Why?
ဘာဖြစ်လို့သွားတာလဲ
ba2 pfyit lo1 thwa3 da2 leare3
Why did you go? (why + reason for going )
ဘာဖြစ်လို့မသွားတာလဲ
ba2 pfyit lo1 ma1 -thwa3 da2 leare3
Why didn't you go? (why + reason for not doing )
ဘာဖြစ်လို့လုပ်တာလဲ
ba2 pfyit lo1 loat da2 leare3
Why did you do? (why + reason for doing )
ဘာဖြစ်လို့မလုပ်တာလဲ
ba2 pfyit lo1 ma1 -loat da2 leare3
Why didn't you do? (why + reason for not doing )
Why is --? What's the reason?
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Romanization
English
ဘာကြောင့်လဲ
ba2 joun1 leare3
Why?
လှုပ်နေတာဘာကြောင့်လဲ
hloat nay2 ta2 ba2 joun1 leare3
Why is it shaking? (reason to be shaking)
မီးမလာတာဘာကြောင့်လဲ
mi3 ma1 -la2 da2 ba2 joun1 leare3
Why is there no light? (reason for mi3 ma1 -la2 = light not come ).
In an exception, ဘာ | ba2 is not a question of "what" or "why", but more like "which" in English.
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ဘာကားစီးရမလဲ
ba2 ka3 si3 ya1 ma1 -leare3
Which bus should I take? What (number) + vehicle + ride + Should I
ဘယ်ကားစီးရမလဲ
beare2 ka3 si3 ya1 ma1 -leare3
Which bus or car should I take?
In the second question, the cars or buses are in sight. The first question can be asked even before leaving the house. City of Yangon has new bus routes starting January 16th, 2017. See all the routes with maps and names of bus stops at http://ygnbusdirectory.com/ .
Question Words ဘယ်- လဲ | ba2 xxx leare3
Where, which, who, whose, how much, how many, when, how, questions all contain those two words.
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Romanization
English
ဘယ်လဲ
beare2 leare3
Where to?
ဘယ်မှာလဲ
beare2 hma2 leare3
Where is it?
ဘယ်မလဲ
beare2 ma1 -leare3
Where is it?
ဘယ်သွားမလဲ
beare2 thwa3 ma1 -leare3
Where are you go ing? [Taxi driver to passenger]
ဘယ်သွားကြမလဲ
beare2 thwa3 ja1 ma1 -leare3
Where are you (guys) go ing?
ဘယ်သွားမလို့လဲ
beare2 thwa3 ma1 -lo1 leare3
Where are you go ing? [For example, upon seeing changing clothes.]
ဘယ်မှမသွားဘူး
beare2 hma1 ma1 -thwa3 bu3
I am not go ing anywhere.
ဘယ်သွားချင်လဲ
beare2 thwa3 chin2 leare3
Where do you want to go ?
ဘယ်ဟာလဲ
beare2 ha2 leare3
Which one ?
ဘယ်သူလဲ
beare2 dthu2 leare3
Who ?
ဒါဘယ်သူလဲ
da2 beare2 dthu2 leare3
Who is this ?
ဒါဘယ်သူ့ပိုက်ဆံအိတ်လဲ
da2 beare2 dthu1 pike hsun2 ate leare3
Whose purse is this?
ဘယ်လောက်လဲ
beare2 lout leare3
How much?
ဘယ်ဈေးလဲ
beare2 zay3 leare3
How much?
ပိုက်ဆံဘယ်လောက်လိုချင်လဲ
pike hsun2 beare2 lout lo2 chin2 leare3
How much money do you want ?
ဘယ်နှယောက်လဲ
beare2 hna1-yout leare3
How many persons?
ကားဘယ်နှစီးလာလဲ
ka3 beare2 hna1-si3 la2 leare3
How many cars came ?
ဘယ်တော့လာမလဲ
beare2 dau1 la2 ma1 -leare3
When will you come ?
ဘယ်အချိန်လာမလဲ
beare2 a-chain2 la2 ma1 -leare3
What time will you come ?
ဘယ်လိုလဲ
beare2 lo2 leare3
How was it? How did it go?
ဘယ်လိုသွားမလဲ
beare2 lo2 thwa3 ma1 -leare3
How shall we go ?
In some exceptions, ဘယ်လို | beare2 lo2 sounds better if translated as "what" in English.
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Romanization
English
ဘယ်လိုလုပ်ကြမလဲ
beare2 lo2 loat ja1 ma1 -leare3
What should we do now?
Question Word တုံး | dome3
This ending word is sometimes used in place of လဲ | leare3.
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Romanization
English
ဘယ်တုံး
beare2 dome3
Where to?
ဘာတုံး
ba2 dome3
What?
ဘယ်လိုတုံး
beare2 lo2 dome3
How did it go?
May this happen ပါစေ | ba2 zay2
A wish and letting things happen.
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Romanization
English
စားပါစေ
sa3 ba2 zay2
Let him eat .
ကျန်းမာပါစေ၊ ချမ်းသာပါစေ
kjan3-ma2 ba2 zay2 chan3-dtha2 ba2 zay2
May you be healthy , find peace and happiness.
sate -chan3-dtha2 = mind to be wealthy = happy
နေပါစေတော့
nay2 ba2 zay2 dau1
Never mind. Let it be.
Please let me ပါရစေ | ba1-ya1 zay2
A permission is requested.
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Romanization
English
သွားပါရစေ
thwa3 ba1-ya1 zay2
Please let me go . Please release me.