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Everyday Spoken Burmese

Everyday Spoken Burmese is for those seriously learning to understand and speak Burmese in a short time. It covers the most fundamental building blocks of the colloquial Myanmar Language.

Burmese language has parts of speech known as particles and post-positional markers which play critical roles in sentence structures. Heavy emphasis is placed on those words. Color-coding is used to make grammar study easier. Explanation is concise. Words are carefully selected for completeness. One cannot fully understand Burmese until those words are understood.

Everyday Spoken Burmese

Download Everyday Spoken Burmese in PDF format.

Revision: E
Date: 2021-01-17
File Size: 2,145 KB
Number of Pages: 112

MAIN MENU. Click (or touch) table headers to sort by English, Burmese, or Romanization.
# ↑↓ ENGLISH ↑↓ BURMESE ↑↓ ROMANIZE ↑↓
1 Confirmation word တယ် deare2
2 Question word လား la3
3 Intention မယ် meare2
4 Question မလား ma1-la3
5 Expectation လိမ့်မယ် lain1 meare2
6 About to happen တော့မယ် dau1 meare2
7 Do this now တော့ dau1
8 Negative pair မ -- ဘူး ma1-xxxx bu3
9 No longer မ--တော့ဘူး ma1-xxxx dau1 bu3
10 Do you still want to ဦးမလား ome3 ma1-la3
11 Making a suggestion with polite ပါ ba2
12 Don't မ -- နဲ့ ma1-xxxx neare1
13 With နဲ့ neare1
14 Pronouns နာမ်စား nun2-za3
15 This ဒါ da2
16 Here ဒီမှာ de2 hma2
17 Already ပြီ byi2
18 Still သေးတယ် thay3 deare2
19 Not yet မ---သေးဘူး ma1-xxxx thay3-bu3
20 Plurals ဗဟုဝုစ်ကိန်း ba1-hu1-woat-kain3
21 Concern words ရဲ့လား yeare1 la3
22 Possessive ရဲ့ yeare1
23 Only if you are sure မှ hma1
24 Conditional if ရင် yin2
25 In that case ဆိုရင် hso2-yin2
26 If this is the case ဒါဖြင့် da2-pfyin1
27 But ဒါပေမဲ့ da2-bay2-meare1
28 Do this first အရင် a-yin2
29 Pre-requisite မ --- ခင် ma1-xxxx khin2
30 Without မ -- ဘဲ ma1-xxxx beare3
31 A sure request ခဲ့ပါ kheare1 ba2
32 A promise ခဲ့မယ် kheare1 meare2
33 Have just done ခဲ့တယ် kheare1 deare2
34 Experienced before ဖူးတယ် pfu3 deare2
35 Even (I/him/this) တောင် doun2
36 Present Participle နေတယ် nay2 deare2
37 Middle of something နေတုန်း nay2 dome3
38 The continuity ထား hta3
39 Only and exactly this ပဲ beare3
40 Only and just him သာ dtha2
41 Want word ချင် chin2
42 Of course တာပေါ့ da2 bau1
43 Whatever တာ da2
44 Extreme degree လိုက်တာ lite da2
45 Better than expected သားပဲ dtha3 beare3
46 A positive statement တာပဲ da2 beare3
47 Question Words ဘာ - လဲ ba2 xxx leare3
48 Question Words ဘယ်- လဲ beare2 leare3
49 Question Word တုံး dome3
50 May this happen ပါစေ ba2 zay2
51 Please let me ပါရစေ ba1-ya1 zay2
52 Unexpected ပါလား ba2 la3
53 Look- try and see - with care ကြည့် kji1
54 Experience or asking for intention လို့ lo1
55 Multiple meanings လိုက် lite
56 Let's do something စို့ zo1
57 Let's try something ရအောင် ya1 oun2
58 Possibility or Possession ya1
59 In order to အောင် oun2
60 He says xxxx တဲ့ deare1
61 What are you waiting for? xxxx လေ lay2
62 Very သိပ် thate
63 Can /possible/ capable နိုင် nine2
64 Still possible နိုင်သေး nine2 dthay3
65 No longer possible မ -- နိုင်တော့ဘူး ma1- --- nine2 dau1 bu3
66 Do something first နှင့် hnin1
67 Location indicator in/on/at မှာ hma2
68 Skill and Knowledge တတ် tut
69 Has done the act of သွား thwa3
70 From where or the subject is က ga1
71 To ကို go2
72 Direction to or from a person ဆီ hsi2
73 Do something for someone ပေး pay3
74 Every တိုင်း dine3
75 Without a care or concern ပစ် pyit
76 Mistakenly or by chance မိ mi1
77 Seldom ခဲ kheare3
78 Also / too လည်း leare3
79 Also ကော gau3
80 Completion of action ပြီး pyi3
81 Simultaneous activities ရင်း yin3
82 Something happens while တုန်း dome3
83 Because ကြောင့် joun1
84 Becoming လာ la2
85 As လို lo2
86 Something like လိုလို lo2-lo2
87 Same တူ tu2
88 Exactly like အတိုင်း a-tine3
89 Almost / nearly နီးပါး ni3-ba3
90 Near နား na3
91 Exact amount တိတိ ti1-de1
92 Perfect fit ကွက်တိ kwet-ti1
93 Just right အနေတော် a-nay2-dau2
94 More than ထက် htet
95 Over ကျော် kjau2
96 Approximately လောက် lout
97 Until အထိ a-hti1
98 For အတွက် a-twet
99 For ဖို့ pfo1
100 Dare to ရဲ yeare3
101 Stay behind / left behind ရစ် yit
102 Fully satisfied wa1
103 Each စီ si2
104 All လုံး lone3
105 Earlier time တုန်းက dome3-ga1
106 Since that time ကတည်းက ga1-deare3-ga1

Confirmation word တယ် | deare2

This ending postpositional marker indicates that something is positive and agreeable, or simply states something "is" what it is in the present state described by the adjective. It describes what you experience with the five senses and what you feel and think.

AUDIO Romanization English
ဟုတ်တယ် hote deare2 Yes (correct)
ပူတယ် pu2 deare2 It's hot.
လှတယ် hla1 deare2 You're pretty.

Question word လား | la3

This ending particle word is a simple question mark.

AUDIO Romanization English
ပူလား pu2 la3 Is it hot?
ပူတယ် pu2 deare2 Yes.

Intention မယ် | meare2

The activity indicated by the verb is going to happen in the near future. There is intention to do something.

AUDIO Romanization English
သွားမယ် thwa3 meare2 I'm about to go. Good bye!
ယူမယ် yu2 meare2 I will take it. I intend to take it.

Question မလား | ma1-la3

Asking for intention described by the verb. The word | ma1 before the question mark လား | la3 is a short spoken sound of မယ် | meare2.

AUDIO Romanization English
ယူမလား yu2 ma1-la3 Do you want it? Do you intend to take it?
ယူမယ် yu2 meare2 Yes.

Expectation လိမ့်မယ် | lain1 meare2

The event indicated by the verb is going to happen in the near future, but one has no control over it. There is expectation or anticipation, not intention like မယ် | meare2.

AUDIO Romanization English
ဧည့်သည်လာလိမ့်မယ် eare1-theare2 la2 lain1 meare2 Visitors will be here anytime soon.

la2 = to come
မိုးရွာလိမ့်မယ် mo3-ywa2 lain1 meare2 It's going to rain.

About to happen တော့မယ် | dau1 meare2

တော့ | dau1 is a verb-suffix particle to indicate that the action is imminent or about to happen in the near future.

AUDIO Romanization English
စားတော့မယ် sa3 dau1 meare2 I am about to eat.
စားတော့မလား sa3 dau1 ma1-la3 Are you going to eat now?
စားတော့မယ် sa3 dau1 meare2 Yes.
သွားတော့မယ် thwa3 dau1 meare2 I am about to go.
သွားတော့မလား thwa3 dau1 ma1-la3 Are you about to go?
သွားတော့မယ် thwa3 dau1 meare2 Yes.

Do this now တော့ | dau1

တော့ | dau1 without မယ် | meare2 is a persuasion or an advice to do something immediately.

AUDIO Romanization English
သွားတော့ thwa3 dau1 Go now. It's time.
အိပ်တော့ ate dau1 Sleep now. It's time.

တော့ | dau1 can also be used as an emphasis between two repeating verbs or adjectives. But, there is unmentioned negative side to it.

AUDIO Romanization English
တော်တော့တော်ပါတယ် tau2 dau1 tau2 ba2 deare2 (She) is bright alright.
ကောင်းတော့ကောင်းပါတယ် koun3 dau1 koun3 ba2 deare2 It's good, but...(expensive, etc.)

Negative pair မ -- ဘူး | ma1-xxxx bu3

This is how you say "no" in Burmese.

AUDIO Romanization English
မလိုဘူး ma1-lo2 bu3 No need. I don't need it.
မကြိုက်ဘူး ma1-kjite bu3 I don't like it.
ကြိုက်လား kjite la3 Do you like it?
မကြိုက်ဘူး ma1-kjite bu3 No.
ကြိုက်တယ် kjite deare2 Yes.
ဝယ်မယ် weare2 meare2 I will buy it.
ပူလား pu2 la3 Is it hot?
မပူဘူး ma1-pu2 bu3 No.
ပူတယ် pu2 deare2 Yes.

No longer မ--တော့ဘူး | ma1-xxxx dau1 bu3

Immediate plan has changed if immediate action before တော့ | dau1 is combined with negative pair မ -- ဘူး | ma1 xxxx bu3.

AUDIO Romanization English
မစားတော့ဘူး ma1-sa3 dau1 bu3 I am not eating anymore.
မသွားတော့ဘူး ma1-thwa3 dau1 bu3 I am not going anymore.
မလိုတော့ဘူး ma1-lo2 dau1 bu3 I don't need it anymore.

Do you still want to ဦးမလား | ome3 ma1-la3

The person asking the question expects somewhat a negative answer.

AUDIO Romanization English
စားဦးမလား sa3 ome3 ma1-la3 Do you still want to eat it?
မစားတော့ဘူး ma1-sa3 dau1 bu3 No. (no longer)
စားဦးမယ် sa3 ome3 meare2 Yes. (still)

Making a suggestion with polite ပါ | ba2

This polite word softens the tone.

AUDIO Romanization English
စား sa3 Eat!
စားပါ sa3 ba2 Please eat!
စားပါဦး sa3 ba2 ome3 Won't you please eat?
စားပါဦး အဘ sa3 ba2 ome3 a-ba1 Won't you please eat, Grandpa?

Don't မ -- နဲ့ | ma1-xxxx neare1

Someone is telling you not to do something. Polite ပါ | ba2 softens the tone from ordering tone to a suggestion to prevent something unpleasant.

AUDIO Romanization English
မစားနဲ့ ma1-sa3 neare1 Don't eat that.
မစားပါနဲ့ ma1-sa3 ba2 neare1 Please don't eat that.
မစားပါနဲ့ ဦးလေး ma1-sa3 ba2 neare1 u3-lay3 Please don't eat that, Uncle.

Color Codes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, particles, postpositional markers, interjections.