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Everyday Spoken Burmese

Unexpected ပါလား | ba2 la3

A wow factor, or something unexpected is encountered . Sometimes a challenge is called for.

AUDIO Romanization English
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
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
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?"

Try 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
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
စမ်းကြည့်ရအောင် sun3 kji1 ya1 oun2 Let's try this.

Possibility or Possession | 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.