Everyday Spoken Burmese

Becoming လာ | la2

As a verb this word means to come. As a verb suffix particle, it means something starts to happen. After the adjective, it means becoming something.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
မိုးရွာလာပြီ	mo3 ywa2 la2 byi2	It starts to rain.
နေပူလာပြီ	nay2 pu2 la2 byi2	The sun is getting hot. nay2 = the sun
ကလေးတွေကြီးလာပြီ	kha1-lay3 dway2 kji3 la2 byi2	Kids are growing big.

Becoming လို | lo2

The word လို | lo2 as a verb is associated with the need or want as in လိုချင် | lo2 chin2.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
(၁၀)မိနစ်လောက်လိုသေးတယ်	hseare2 ma1-nit lout lo2 thay3 deare2	Still needs about 10 minutes.

As a suffix particle, it means "as" something.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒါမြန်မာလိုဘာခေါ်လဲ	da2 myan2-ma2 lo2 ba2 khau2 leare3	What do you call this in Burmese?
ဒီလိုလုပ်	de2 lo2 loat	Do like this.

Something like လိုလို | lo2-lo2

The particle လို | lo2 can be doubled up to show similarity.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
တရုတ်စာလိုလို ဂျပန်စာလိုလိုပဲ	ta1-yoat sa2 lo2-lo2 ja1-pan2 sa2 lo2-lo2 beare3	It's like Chinese or Japanese word.
ဟိုလိုလို ဒီလိုလို မလုပ်နဲ့	ho2 lo2-lo2 de2 lo2-lo2 ma1-loat neare1	Don't try to fool me by giving different excuses. (doing like this and that.)

Same တူ | tu2

To be the same is stronger and more definite in showing similarity.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီနှစ်ခုဈေးတူတယ်	de2 hna1 khu1 zay3 tu2 deare2	Those two items cost the same.
အရွယ်တူတယ်	a-yweare2 tu2 deare2	They are the same size.
အရသာတူတယ်	a-ya1-dtha2 tu2 deare2	They have the same taste.
အတူတူပဲ	a-tu2-du2 beare3	They are the same.

Exactly like အတိုင်း | a-tine3

This word is a particle if comparing two nouns and postpositional marker if used to show compliance. Comparison is subjective and not in terms of exact numbers.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
သားက အဖေအတိုင်းပဲ	tha3 ga1 a-pfay2 a-tine3 beare3	The son is exactly like father.
ပြောတဲ့အတိုင်းလုပ်ပါ	pyau3 deare1 a-tine3 loat ba2	Please do exactly what I say. (exact compliance)

Almost / nearly နီးပါး | ni3-ba3

This word and another word နီးနီး | ni3-ni3 have the same meaning. နီး | ni3 means to be near or close by. နီးနီးနားနား | ni3-ni3 na3 na3 refers to vicinity

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီလူ အရပ် (၆)ပေ နီးပါးရှိတယ်	de2 lu2 a-yut chout pay2 ni3-ba3 shi1 deare2	That man is almost 6 feet tall. a-yut = height

Near နား | na3

As a noun, it means an ear. The particle နား | na3 following a noun or a pronoun is a short spoken form of အနား | a-na3 meaning vicinity.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီနားမှာအိမ်သာရှိလား	de2 na3 hma2 ain2-tha2 shi1 la3	Is there a toilet around here?

Exact amount တိတိ | ti1-de1

Measurement for quantity, short length, time, weight and volume.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
(၄) နာရီတိတိရှိပြီ	lay3-na2-yi2 ti1-de1 shi1 byi2	It's exactly 4 O' clock.
(၁)ပိဿာ တိတိ ရှိတယ်	da1-bate-tha2 ti1-de1 shi1 deare2	It's exactly 1 Viss. (equivalent to 3.6 lb or 1.6 kg)

Note: 4 O' Clock and 1 Viss are taken as pronouns since they refer to the nouns "Yangon Time" and "Chicken".

Perfect fit ကွက်တိ | kwet-ti1

This is a popular expression which means exact fit, exact timing, or perfect execution of plan.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ကွက်တိပဲ	kwet-ti1 beare3	Perfect!

Just right အနေတော် | a-nay2-dau2

The taste is just right: not too salty, not too sweet. The sweater fits nicely: not too tight, not too loose. Air-conditioner setting is perfect: not too cold, not too warm. It tastes, looks, or feels just right.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
အနေတော်ပဲ	a-nay2-dau2 beare3	Just right!

More than ထက် | htet

In the literary Myanmar language, this word is a conjunction that connects two nouns in comparison where the first noun is more in degree than the second. In spoken form, the first noun can be omitted if it is the subject of the conversation.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီဆိုင်က ဟိုဆိုင်ထက်ပိုကောင်းတယ်	de2 hsine2 ga1 ho2 hsine2 htet po2 koun3 deare2	This shop is better than that shop.
ဟိုဆိုင်ထက်ပိုကောင်းတယ်	ho2 hsine2 htet po2 koun3 deare2	(This shop is) better than that shop.

Note: ပိုကောင်း | po2 koun3 = more + good.

Over ကျော် | kjau2

This word is not for comparing two similar items. It is used to say something or someone is over and exceeds a number that can be measured such as weight, length, or height.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
အရပ် (၆)ပေ ကျော်တယ်	a-yut chout-pay2 kjau2 deare2	He is over 6 feet. a-yut = height.

Approximately လောက် | lout

As a verb it means to be enough or sufficient. This word can also be used for comparing two similar items as well as for rough estimation of numbers.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီလူဟိုလူလောက်မဝဘူး	de2 lu2 ho2 lu2 lout ma1-wa1 bu3	This man is not as fat as that man. wa1 = to be fat, or be full and satisfied.
ဒီလူဟိုလူလောက်ဝတယ်	de2 lu2 ho2 lu2 lout wa1 deare2	This man is as fat as that man.
(၅)မိုင်လောက်ဝေးတယ်	nga3-mine2 lout way3 deare2	It's about 5 miles away. way3 = to be far

Until အထိ | a-hti1

This postpositional marker comes right after the distance, time or place.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
မန္တလေးအထိပဲသွားမယ်	mun3-da1-lay3 a-hti1 beare3 thwa3 meare2	(This bus) will go only until Mandalay.
(၄)နာရီ အထိပဲလုပ်မယ်	lay3 na2-yi2 a-hti1 beare3 loat meare2	We will work only until 4 O'Clock.
အိမ်အထိလိုက်ပို့ပေးပါ	ain2 a-hti1 lite-po1 pay3 ba2	Please accompany or take me to my house. Please come along with me till the house (sometimes to help deliver items.)

It can also be used as a conjunction to connect two verbs.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ကားပြင်ပြီးတဲ့အထိစောင့်မယ်	ka3 pyin2 pyi3 deare1 a-hti1 soun1 meare2	I will wait till car repair is done. deare1 refers to the time that repair is done.

For အတွက် | a-twet

For someone or something is this word. As a postpositional marker it comes right after someone or something, not before like in English.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒါကအဖေအတွက်	da2 ga1 a-pfay2 a-twet	This is for father.
မင်းအတွက်ပါဝယ်လာခဲ့တယ်	min3 a-twet ba2 weare2 la2 kheare1 deare2	I bought this for you also.
မနက်ဖြန်အတွက်ကော	ma1-net-pfyan2 a-twet gau3	What about for tomorrow?

For ဖို့ | pfo1 (bo1)

If this word follows a person (noun or pronoun), it is a postpositional marker meaning for someone in the same sense as in အတွက် | a-twet.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒါမင်းဖို့	da2 min3 bo1	This is for you.

If this word follows a verb, it is a particle that converts the verb to the noun clause where the reference noun is for the purpose of something.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဘာလုပ်ဖို့လဲ	ba2 loat pfo1 leare3	What purpose? (What is the purpose of this thing?)
ပေးဖို့	pay3 bo1	This is the thing to give someone.
ပေးဖို့မလိုဘူး	pay3 bo1 ma1-lo2 bu3	No need to give. (The thing you are preparing to give is not necessary.)

In longer phrases, it can also be used as a conjunction where in order to achieve a particular result, an action is done (or urged.)

Desired result + ဖို့ | pfo1 + Action + (should do).

Dare to ရဲ | yeare3

The word ရဲ | yeare3 as a noun refers to police. As a verb, it means to be brave and daring. It can appear after an another verb as a suffix particle to say having the courage to speak, do, go, etc..

AUDIO	Romanization	English
မင်းတစ်ယောက်တည်းသွားရဲလား	min3 ta1-yout-hteare3 thwa3 yeare3 la3	Do you dare to go alone?

Stay behind / left behind ရစ် | yit

To be left behind or to stay behind.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
နေရစ်ခဲ့	nay2 yit kheare1	Stay here (while we go).

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ပိုက်ဆံအိတ်ကျန်ရစ်ခဲ့ပြီ	pike-hsun2-ate kjan2-yit kheare1 byi2	I think I left behind the purse! (upon discovering that it was missing.)

Fully satisfied ဝ | wa1

As an adjective, it describes being fat or plump.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ဒီကလေးအတော်ဝတာပဲ	de2 kha1-lay3 a-tau2 wa1 da2 beare3	This child is so fat!

It can be a verb to mean having a full stomach, have a good night sleep, or to be fully satisfied with whatever one does.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
စားလို့ဝရဲ့လား	sa3 lo1 wa1 yeare1 la3	Are you full? Is your stomach filled?
အိပ်ရေးဝရဲ့လား	ate-yay3-wa1 yeare1 la3	Did you sleep well?

AUDIO	Romanization	English
ကစားလို့မဝသေးဘူး	ga1-za3 lo1 ma1-wa1 thay3 bu3	I am not done with playing.
အိပ်ရေးမဝဘူး	ate-yay3 ma1-wa1 bu3	I did not sleep well.
ဝသွားပြီ	wa1 thwa3 byi2	I am full (or fully satisfied.)

Each စီ | si2

This "each" word is for number of items that is received or given away.

AUDIO	Romanization	English
တစ်ယောက်နှစ်ခုစီရမယ်	ta1-yout hna1-khu1 si2 ya1 meare2	Each person will get two each. ( 1 person + 2 items + each + will get.)

Use လူတိုင်း | lu2 dine3 if each and every person does something. (Refer to Every တိုင်း | dine3)