Everyday Spoken Burmese
Location indicator in/on/at မှာ | hma2
Prepositions in/on/at in English that come before the location word can be represented by this postpositional marker in Burmese that goes after the location word.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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မင်းအခုဘယ်မှာလဲ | min3 a-khu1 beare2 hma2 leare | Where are you at now? |
လမ်းထိပ်မှာ | lun3 htate hma2 | I'm at the street corner. (htate = top) |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ကားသော့ဘယ်မှာလဲ | ka3-thau1 beare2 hma2 leare3 | Where is the car key? |
ကားထဲမှာ | ka3 hteare3 hma2 | It's in the car. |
စားပွဲပေါ်မှာ | za1-bweare3 pau2 hma2 | It's on the table. |
ခုံအောက်မှာ | khone2 out hma2 | It's under the seat/chair. |
Unlike in English, ထဲ | hteare3 meaning "in", ပေါ် | pau2 meaning "on" and အောက် | out meaning "under" must still be followed by မှာ | hma2 meaning "at".
Skill and Knowledge တတ် | tut
This word by itself is a verb meaning "know how to" or "be able to". but it mostly appears as a verb-suffix after the verb such as "swim".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ကားမောင်းတတ်လား | ka3 moun3 tut la3 | Do you know how to drive a car? |
မောင်းတတ်တယ် | moun3 tut deare2 | Yes. |
မမောင်းတတ်ဘူး | ma1-moun3 tut bu3 | No. |
Has done the act of သွား | thwa3
Usually, this word is a verb meaning to go. It can be used as a verb-suffix particle to indicate that the act was done not long ago.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဟိုလူကြီးပြန်သွားပြီ | ho2 lu2-ji3 pyan2 thwa3 byi2 | That gentleman has left. |
ငွေစာရင်းရှင်းသွားတယ် | ngway2-sa1-yin3 shin3 thwa3 deare2 | He has settled his money account. |
ဘာမှာသွားလဲ | ba2 hma2 thwa3 leare3 | Did he leave any word? What reminded? |
ဘာမှာသွားသေးလဲ | ba2 hma2 thwa3 thay3 leare3 | What else did he say? What else reminded? |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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မုန့်ဟင်းခါးရဦးမလား | mone1-hin3-ga3 ya1 ome3 ma1-la3 | Do you still have Mont-hin-Ga? [Can I still have?] |
ကုန်သွားပြီ | kone2 thwa3 byi2 | No more. (kone2 = run out; sold out.) |
From where or the subject is က | ga1
This postpositional marker after the noun or question pronoun is used to describe or ask for the source "from".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဘယ်ကပြန်လာလဲ | beare2 ga1 pyan2 la2 leare3 | Where did you come back from? (greeting) |
ရုံးကပြန်လာတာလား | yone3 ga1 pyan2 la2 da2 la3 | Did you come back from the office? [the case of coming back from office?] |
ဈေးကပြန်လာတာပါ | zay3 ga1 pyan2 la2 da2 ba2 | I just came back from the market. |
It can be used to clarify the subject who acts something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဟိုလူက ပိုက်ဆံ ပေးလိုက်တယ် | ho2 lu2 ga1 pike-hsun2 pay3 lite deare2 | That man gives the money. |
ဟိုလူက ခင်ဗျားကို ပိုက်ဆံ ပေးလိုက်တယ် | ho2 lu2 ga1 kha1-mya3 go2 pike-hsun2 pay3 lite deare2 | That man gives you the money. (gives money to you.) |
To ကို | go2
This postpositional marker after the noun can be a person, an object, or any living thing. If it is used after a place, it means destination "to".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒီသေတ္တာကိုဟိုမှာချထား | de2 thit-ta2 go2 ho2 hma2 cha1 hta3 | Put this suitcase down over there.
(Action is done to the suitcase.) |
ဟိုလူကိုဒါပေးလိုက် | ho2 lu2 go2 da2 pay3 lite | Give this to that man. |
ရန်ကုန်ကိုမနက်ဖြန်ရောက်မယ် | yan2-gome2 go2 ma1-net-pfyan2 yout meare2 | We will be at Yangon tomorrow.
(To Yangon + tomorrow + will reach) |
Direction to or from a person ဆီ | hsi2
In spoken language, က | ga1 is used to describe coming from a place, but ကို | go2 meaning "to" is not used to describe the act of going to a place.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ရန်ကုန်ကရောက်လာတာ | yan2-gome2 ga1 yout la2 da2 | (He) came from Yangon.
da2 converts verb to noun clause: "it's the case that". |
ရန်ကုန်သွားမယ် | yan2-gome2 thwa3 meare2 | I am going to Yangon. |
To say from or to in the direction of a person, ဆီ | hsi2 is added.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒေါ်ပုဆီကရလာတာ | dau2-pu1 hsi2-ga1 ya1 la2 da2 | I got this from Daw Pu. |
သူ့ဆီသွား | thu1 hsi2 thwa3 | Go to him. |
Do something for someone ပေး | pay3
pay3 as a verb means to give. When this word is used as a suffix word after an another verb, it becomes a particle meaning to do something for someone, or on the behalf of someone.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒီနံပါတ်ခေါ်ပေးပါ | de2 nun2-but khau2 pay3 ba2 | Please call this number for me. |
ဒါသယ်ပေးပါ | da2 theare2 pay3 ba2 | Please help me carry this. |
Every တိုင်း | dine3
This noun-suffix particle is pronounced dine3 and it means "every". When used as "region" in the country, it is pronounced "tine3" such as Yangon Region.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
နေ့တိုင်းဆိုင်ဖွင့်တယ် | nay1-dine3 hsine2 pfwin1 deare2 | The shop opens every day. |
ဆိုင်တိုင်းလူအပြည့်ပဲ | hsine2 dine3 lu2 a-pyay1 beare3 | Every shop is full of people. (is fully occupied) |
အိမ်တိုင်းလိုလို TV ရှိကြတယ် | ain2 dine3 lo2-lo2 TV shi1 ja1 deare2 | Each and every house alike has a TV. |
When used as a conjunction, it connects the first verb clause to the second.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒီဗေဒင်ဆရာ ဟောတိုင်း မှန်တယ် | de2 bay2-din2 hsa1-ya2 hau3 dine3 hmun2 deare2 | This fortune teller is right every time he makes a prediction. |
Without a care or concern ပစ် | pyit
As a verb, it could mean a few things: to shoot, to throw away or to abandon. When used as a verb-suffix, it calls for action without thinking or worrying too much..
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
စားပစ်လိုက် | sa3 pyit lite | Eat it all! |
ဖျက်ပစ်လိုက် | pfyet pyit lite | Destroy it! (or) Delete it! |
Mistakenly or by chance မိ | mi1
As a verb, it means be caught, get caught or to catch (a cold). As a verb-suffix particle, the word is usually associated with regret or worry after the action. The action could also be casual and by chance without regret.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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အိပ်ခန်းသော့ တွေ့မိသလား | ate-khan3 thau1 tway1 mi1 dtha1-la3 | Have you by chance seen the bedroom key? |
ဆေးမှားစားမိလို့ | hsay3 hma3 hsa3 mi1 lo1 | because I've taken the (wrong) medicine by mistake. hma3 = make a mistake hsa3 = eat |
Seldom ခဲ | kheare3
Infrequent activity.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
မြို့ထဲသွားခဲတယ် | myo1 hteare3 thwa3 kheare3 deare2 | I seldom go to downtown. myo1 = town; city hteare3 = inside |
Also / too လည်း | leare3
This "also" or "too" word is not often used in questions.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ကျွန်တော်လည်းလိုက်ခဲ့မယ် | kja1-nau2 leare3 lite kheare1 meare2 | I want to come along, too. |
ဒါလည်းယူမယ် | da2 leare3 yu2 meare2 | I will take this also. |
Also ကော | gau3
This "also" or "too" word is more often used in questions. When used in a statement, it usually refers to more than one item.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ခင်ဗျားကောလိုက်ဦးမလား | kha1-mya3 gau3 lite ome3 ma1 la3 | Do you want to come along with us too? |
ဒါကော ဒါကော ယူမယ် | da2 gau3 da2 gau3 yu2 meare2 | I will take this and this. |
Completion of action ပြီး | pyi3
It is a verb to mean "completed", "done", or "finished".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ပြီးပြီလား | pyi3 byi2 la3 | Done? |
ပြီးပြီ | pyi3 byi2 | Yes |
It can be a verb suffix particle used as post event or action.
ထမင်းစားပြီးပြီလား | hta1-min3 sa3 pyi3 byi2 la3 | Have you eaten (rice)? |
It can also be a conjunction that connects two actions in sequence immediately one after another.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
လမ်းသေသေချာချာကြည့်ပြီးကူး | lun3 thay2-dthay2-cha2-ja2 kji1 pyi3 ku3 | Cross the road after thoroughly checking the traffic. kji1 = to look |
Simultaneous activities ရင်း | yin3
This is a conjunction word used to describe two actions that are being performed at the same time.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ရေချိုးရင်းသီချင်းဆိုနေတယ် | yay2-cho3 yin3 tha1-chin3-hso2 nay2 deare2 | He is singing while taking a bath. |
Something happens while တုန်း | dome3
This is also a conjunction 'while'. Unlike the conjunction ရင်း | yin3 which means doing something while doing something else, conjunction တုန်း | dome3 describes what one is doing at the time something occurs.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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စားနေတုန်း ဧည့်သည်ရောက်လာတယ် | sa3 nay2 dome3 eare1-theare2 yout la2 deare2 | Visitor came while I was eating. [I was still eating when the visitor came.] |
Without the second clause to connect, တုန်း | dome3 itself is a particle meaning "still".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
စားနေတုန်း | sa3 nay2 dome3 | I am still eating. |
Because ကြောင့် | joun1
The reason or the cause points to someone or something. The word itself is not a reason. It is like an arrow that points to a reason.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဘာကြောင့်လဲ | ba2 joun1 leare3 | Why? What's the reason?
What → ( ) ? |
သူ့ကြောင့် ဒီလိုဖြစ်ရတာ | thu1 joun1 de2 lo2 pfyit ya1 da2 | Something like this happens because of him. |
ဪ ဒါကြောင့်ကိုး | au2 da2 joun1 go3 | Oh, that's why. I see now!
Oh, that ← I see! |
Color Codes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, particles, postpositional markers, interjections.