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
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
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
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
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.)

Note: rice noodle with fish gravy မုန့်ဟင်းခါး | mone1-hin3-ga3 is Myanmar's favorite breakfast.

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
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
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
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
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!