Everyday Spoken Burmese
Unexpected ပါလား | ba2 la3
A wow factor, or something unexpected is encountered . Sometimes a challenge is called for.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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တယ်ဟုတ်ပါလား | teare2 hote ba2 la3 | Wow! |
တယ်တော်ပါလား | teare2 tau2 ba2 la3 | Wow! You're so good!(be clever, be skillful) |
တယ်လှပါလား | teare2 hla1 ba2 la3 | Wow! You're so pretty! |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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စမ်းကြည့်ပါလား | sun3 kji1 ba2 la3 | Why don't you try and see? |
မယုံရင် စမ်းကြည့်ပါလား | ma1-yone2 yin2 sun3 kji1 ba2 la3 | If [you] don't believe me, why don't you try and see? |
ခင်ဗျား မယုံရင် စမ်းကြည့် ပါလား | kha1-mya3 ma1-yone2 yin2 sun3 kji1 ba2 la3 | If you don't believe me, why don't you try and see? |
သတ္တိရှိရင် စမ်းကြည့်ပါလား | thut-ti1 shi1 yin2 sun3 kji1 ba2 la3 | If [you] are brave, why don't you try and see? |
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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ဒီလိုလုပ်ကြည့်ပါလား | de2 lo2 loat kji1 ba2 la3 | Why don't you try doing like this? |
လုပ်လို့မရပါလား | loat lo1 ma1-ya1 ba2 la3 | How come I can't do that? |
Look- try and see - with care ကြည့် | kji1
As a verb, it simply means to look with eyes.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဟိုမှာကြည့် | ho2 hma2 kji1 | Look over there! |
ကြည့်ရအောင် | kji1 ya1 oun2 | Let's have a look! |
It can be used as a verb-suffix particle to mean try and see. The Coca Cola Ad below says: "Why don't you try feeling the taste of Coca-Cola?"
အရသာကိုခံစားကြည့်ပါ | a-ya1-dtha2 go2 khan2-za3 kji1 ba2.
အရသာ | a-ya1-dtha2 - taste
ကို | go2 - to
ခံစား | khan2-za3 - feel
ကြည့် | kji1 - see
ပါ | ba2 - polite ending suggestion
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
စားကြည့်ပါလား | sa3 kji1 ba2 la3 | Why don't you try eating (taste) it? |
ပြောကြည့် | pyau3 kji1 | Why don't you talk to him and see? |
If this word comes before the verb, it is an adverb meaning with care or tactfully.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ကြည့်ပြော | kji1 pyau3 | Be careful with what you say. (Tactfully say it.) |
Experience or asking for intention လို့ | lo1
This word can have several meanings. It can be a verb-suffix particle to describe a person's experience when doing something. It can be equivalent to “as” or “as regard to” in English. It can also be used in questions asking for reasons.
1. A person experiences something when doing something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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လုပ်လို့မရပါလား | loat lo1 ma1-ya1 ba2 la3 | How come I can't do that? |
ပြောလို့မရဘူး | pyau3 lo1 ma1-ya1 ba2 la3 | 1. It's hard to say. (unpredictable.) 2. Can't tell the child. (He won't listen.) |
စားလို့ကောင်းတယ် | sa3 lo1 koun3 deare2 | It's delicious! sa3 koun3 = delicious |
ကြည့်လို့မရဘူး | kji1 lo1 ma1-ya1 bu3 | 1. Can't stand him. (find him unacceptable.) 2. TV is broken. kji1 = to watch or to look |
2. English equivalent of "as" or "as regard to this".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဒါစက်ဘီးလို့ ခေါ်တယ် | da2 set-bain3 lo1 khau2 deare2 | This is called "bicycle". (named as bicycle.) |
ပြောလို့မဆုံးဘူး | pyau3 lo1 ma1-hsone3 bu3 | He can't finish talking. (As for the way he speaks, he can't stop bragging, blaming, etc..) |
မရှိဘူးလို့ပြောလိုက် | ma1-shi1 bu3 lo1 pyau3 lite | Tell him I am not in. ma1-shi1 bu3 = not present |
3. Questions asking for reasons.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဘာဖြစ်လို့လဲ | ba2 pfyit lo1 leare3 | Why? What's the reason? What happened? |
ဘာဖြစ်လို့လုပ်တာလဲ | ba2 pfyit lo1 loat ta2 leare3 | Why did you do it? |
ဘာဖြစ်လို့ မစားတာလဲ | ba2 pfyit lo1 ma1-sa3 ta2 leare3 | Why didn't you eat? |
Multiple meanings လိုက် | lite
1. Used as a verb-suffix particle to give a green light or go ahead to do something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
စားလိုက်ရမလား | sa3 lite ya1 ma1-la3 | Can I finish (eat) what's left? |
စားလိုက် | sa3 lite | Go ahead (eat it all.) |
ပေးလိုက်ပါ | pay3 lite ba2 | Just give it (to him). |
2. It can be a verb-suffix word to indicate something did or did not happen.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
မြင်လိုက်လား | myin2 lite la3 | Did you see that? |
မြင်လိုက်တယ် | myin2 lite deare2 | I saw it. |
မမြင်လိုက်ဘူး | ma1-myin2 lite bu3 | I didn't see. |
3. It can be a particle used for emphasis "so much". ( Also see လိုက်တာ | lite da2.)
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
လှလိုက်တာ | hla1 lite da2 | So beautiful! |
အိုက်လိုက်တာ | ike lite da2 | It's too stuffy! (feel warm) |
4. It can be a verb to follow or to come along.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
လိုက်ခဲ့ရမလား | lite kheare1 ya1 ma1-la3 | Do you want me to follow you? |
လိုက်ခဲ့ | lite kheare1 | OK. |
5. It can be a noun in this common word used in restaurant and eating places.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
လိုက်ပွဲ | lite pweare3 | Extra dish for second helping. |
6. It can be used as a verb meaning compatible or pleasing to the eyes.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
အင်္ကျီအဖြူနဲ့ ဘောင်းဘီအညိုနဲ့ လိုက်တယ် | ain3-ji2 a-pfyu2 neare1 boun3-be2 a-nyo2 neare1 lite deare2 | White shirt goes well with brown trousers. |
Let's do something စို့ | Zo1
This word tells others that it's about time to do something. There is nothing new about the activity which is routine. ကြ | ja1 is a plural form to do that activity together, but sometimes it is omitted.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
စားကြစို့ | sa3 ja1 zo1 | Let's eat. It's about time. |
သွားကြစို့ | thwa3 ja1 zo1 | Let's go. It's about time. |
သွားစို့ | thwa3 zo1 | Let's go. It's about time. |
Let's try something ရအောင် | ya1 oun2
This word is slightly different from စို့ | Zo1 meaning let's. It's usually trying something new like taking a new road, trying out a new way of doing something, or doing something that has not been done for a while, like visiting family in an another town.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
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စမ်းကြည့်ရအောင် | sun3 kji1 ya1 oun2 | Let's try this. |
Possibility or Possession ရ | ya1
The first meaning is to get or to have something.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဘီယာရမလား | be2-ya2 ya1 ma1-la3 | Can I have beer? Do you have beer? |
ကျွန်တော် မိန်းမ ရသွားပြီ | kja1-nau2 main3-ma1 ya1 thwa3 byi2 | I've got married. (Lit: I have got a woman.) |
If there is a verb in front, it is a verb-suffix particle on whether something can or needs to be done or not.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ကားမရပ်ရ | ka3 ma1-yut ya1 | No parking. (To park a car is not allowed.) |
လက်မှတ်ဝယ်ရမယ် | let-hmut weare2 ya1 meare2 | You need to buy a ticket. |
Let's try something အောင် | oun2
This conjunction missing in English connects action to desired result.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဖြစ်အောင်လုပ် | pfyit oun2 loat | Make (so that) it happens. |
အဆင်ပြေအောင်လုပ်ပေးပါ | a-hsin2-pyay2 oun2 loat pay3 ba2 | Please help to make (so that) everything goes smoothly. |
He says xxxx တဲ့ | deare1
This word can have two meanings. The first usage is to relay a message.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
(၅၀၀၀) ပေးမယ် | nga3-htoun2 pay3 meare2 | A. I will give 5,000. |
သူဘာပြောလဲ | thu2 ba2 pyau3 leare3 | B. What did he say? |
(၅၀၀၀) ပေးမယ် တဲ့ | nga3-htoun2 pay3 meare2 deare1 | C. He said he will give 5,000. |
The second usage means "that which is" or "he who is".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
လိုတဲ့လူကိုပေးပါ | lo2 deare1 lu2 go2 pay3 ba2 | Give it to someone who needs it. |
What are you waiting for? xxxx လေ | lay2
A simple one word after the verb urges for action.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
သွားလေ | thwa3 lay2 | Go! What are you waiting for? |
စားလေ | sa3 lay2 | Eat! What are you waiting for? |
Don't you know? Are you dumb or something?.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ဟုတ်တယ်လေ | hote deare2 lay2 | Yes, don't know know? |
ဒီဟာလေ | de2 ha2 lay2 | This is the one, don't you know? |
Very သိပ် | thate
This adverb is a useful intensifier equivalent to "very", "so", "too".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
နေသိပ်မကောင်းဘူး | nay2 thate ma1-koun3 bu3 | I am not feeling very well. |
သိပ်မဆာသေးဘူး | thate ma1-hsa2 thay3 bu3 | I am not too hungry yet. |
သိပ်လှတာပဲ | thate hla1 da2 beare3 | It's so beautiful! |
Can /possible/ capable နိုင် | nine2
As a verb itself, this word means to win.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
မြန်မာနိုင်ပြီ | myan2-ma2 nine2 byi2 | Myanmar Won! (has won) |
Another meaning is to be able to manage or carry the load or workload either physically, mentally, or financially.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
နိုင်ရဲ့လား | nine2 yeare1 la3 | Can you carry it? Is it too heavy for you? |
When used as a verb-suffix word, it can mean "can", "may", or "possible".
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
သွားနိုင်ပြီ | thwa3 nine2 byi2 | You may go. |
မိုးရွာနိုင်တယ် | mo3-ywa2 nine2 deare2 | It may rain. |
Still possible နိုင်သေး | nine2-dthay3
verb is followed by particles for possible and still.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
ရနိုင်သေးတယ် | ya1 nine2 dthay3 deare2 | It can still be done. |
ဖြစ်နိုင်သေးတယ် | pfyit nine2 dthay3 deare2 | It is still possible. |
No longer possible မ -- နိုင်တော့ဘူး | ma1---- nine2 dau1 bu3
The possibility is negated by မ -- ဘူး | ma1---- bu3.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
မရနိုင်တော့ဘူး | ma1-ya1 nine2 dau1 bu3 | It can't be done anymore. Can't get it done anymore. |
မဖြစ်နိုင်တော့ဘူး | ma1-pfyit nine2 dau1 bu3 | It's no longer possible. It can no longer happen. |
မစားနိုင်တော့ဘူး | ma1-sa3 nine2 dau1 bu3 | I am full. I Can't eat anymore. |
Do something first နှင့် | hnin1
Do something ahead of others.
AUDIO | Romanization | English |
---|---|---|
သွားနှင့်ရမလား | thwa3 hnin1 ya1 ma1-la3 | Do you want me to go first? Should I go first? |
သွားနှင့် | thwa3 hnin1 | Yes, go ahead. |
စားနှင့် | sa3 hnin1 | Eat first. (Have the meal by yourself. Don't want for us.) |
Color Codes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, particles, postpositional markers, interjections.