Sports phrases ⚽ in Burmese

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a new craze in Myanmar after Myanmar born Aung La N Sang won the World Middle Weight Championship belt in 2017 and proudly displayed Myanmar flag in the ring. Popularly known as "Burmese Python", 6 feet 1 Kachin ethnic fighter was born in Myitkyina and has a huge following in Myanmar.

Back in the glorious days of several decades ago, Burma was the powerhouse of South East Asia in sports, with the football team that made the country proud. Somehow, the country took the wrong turn, and the glory and the pride of the land of the fast and the strong had faded away along the dusty road of economic and political struggles.

In 2013, Myanmar hosted the 27th South East Asia Games after the long gap of 44 years since the last hosting in 1969. As a host, Myanmar had a decent showing with the second position in medal tallies after Thailand.

Sports in Burmese is called အားကစား | ah3-ga1-za3.

Alternatively, you can also say ကစားပွဲ | ga1-za3-bweare3 or အားကစားပွဲ | ah3-ga1-za3 bweare3.

We have seen this word ပွဲ | pweare3 before in lesson 26. It generally refers to a festival where people have fun and watch shows and entertainment complete with roadside stalls selling food, snacks, souvenirs and various merchandizes — kind of like a carnival.

Let's go watch a football pweare3

When it comes to sports, the word ပွဲ | pweare3 is equivalent of the word "match" or "event" as in "sporting event" in English.

For example, ဘောလုံး | bau2-lone3 means a football (soccer ball), and ဘောလုံးပွဲ | bau2-lone3 bweare3 means a football match.

Football (soccer) is, by far, the most popular sport in Myanmar. Nowadays, Burmese football fans seem to hero-worship Manchester United team in particular, and the names of several local football clubs end with "United", such as "Zwekabin United", "Yangon United", and so on. To bring up the level of Myanmar football back to international standards, Myanmar local football clubs hire several foreign coaches and players.

ဘောလုံးပွဲ | bau2-lone3 bweare3 — football match (ball + match)

သွား | thwa3 — go

ကြည့် | kji1 — to watch or take a look

ကြ | ja1 — plural word to indicate more than one person

မယ် | meare2 — future tense; will; going to

ဘောလုံးပွဲ သွားကြည့်ကြမယ်

bau2-lone3 bweare3 thwa3 kji1 ja1 meare2 — We will go watch a football match.

ဘယ်တော့လဲ | beare2 dau1 leare3 — When?

အခု | a-khu1 — Now!

Let's play a game of Burmese Verb: play

Let's play football.

Let's play basketball.

Let's play volleyball.

Let's play water polo

Let's play badminton.

Lets play tennis.

Let's play table-tennis.

Let's play golf.

In the above English phrases, there is a common verb "play". All you need to do is to substitute the name of the game or sport using the pattern:

"Let's play xxxx".

In Burmese Language, the word ကစား | ga1-za3 is generally used for the verb "to play", but some other verbs are also used for different types of sports. Here's how Burmese people would say if you directly translate those phrases into English:

Let's kick football.

Lets play basketball.

Let's play volleyball.

Let's play water polo

Let's strike badminton.

Let's strike tennis.

Let's strike table-tennis.

Let's strike golf.

Do you see the pattern? Generally, the word "strike" ရိုက် | yite is used if you hold something in the hand such as tennis racket or golf club and strike an object. You use the word "play" ကစား | (ga1-za3) for the rest with the exception of kicking and tossing the ball around using your foot.

Let's review different types "let's"

Back in lesson 3, we have seen the word ကြစို့ | ja1 zo1, and ja1 meare2 which both refer to the word Let's.

Earlier in this lesson, we used the phrase

သွားကြည့်ကြမယ် | thwa3 kji1 ja1 meare2,

which means "Let's go watch..."

In lesson 19, the word ရအောင် | ya1 oun2 is used, which also means "Let's".

Also in lesson 19, we use the word ကြရအောင် | ja1 ya1 oun2, which is the plural form of the word ရအောင် | ya1 oun2.

The word ကြ | ja1 in ကြရအောင် | ja1 ya1 oun2 indicates that the activity will take place for more than one person.

In lesson 21, we used yet an another word ပါစို့ | ba2 zo1 to express the word "Let's".

What's the difference among different types of "Let's" in Burmese? When you use the words

ကြစို့ | ja1 zo1 or

ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2

you are taking the role of leadership position to suggest something to someone or to a small group of people.

The word ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2 is almost certain that some event WILL take place without objections.

The word ပါစို့ | ba2 zo1 has more determination and courage in it, and is used to make a proposal to provoke and incite a larger audience.

The words ရအောင် | ya1 oun2 or ကြရအောင် | ja1 ya1 oun2 don't have the ordering tone used by the leader of the pack as in: "I want to play. How about you?"

More phrases with "ja1 ya1 oun2"

ကစားကြရအောင်

ga1-za3 ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play. (play + plural + let's)

ဘော်လုံးကန် ကြရအောင်

bau2-lone3 kun2 ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play football. (soccer ball + kick + plural + let's)

ဘတ်စကက်ဘော ကစား ကြရအောင်

but-sa1-ket-bau3 ga1-za3 ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play basketball.(basketball + play + plural + let's)

ဘော်လီဘော ကစား ကြရအောင်

bau2-li2-bau3 ga1-za3 ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play volleyball. (volleyball + play + plural + let's)

ကြက်တောင်ရိုက် ကြရအောင်

kjet-toun2 yite ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play badminton. (badminton + strike + plural + let's)

တင်းနစ် ရိုက်ကြရအောင်

tin3-nit yite ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play tennis. (tennis + strike + plural + let's)

ပင်ပေါင် ရိုက်ကြရအောင်

pin2-poun2 yite ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play table-tennis. (table-tennis + strike + plural + let's)

ဂေါက်သီး ရိုက်ကြရအောင်

gout-thi3 yite ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's play golf. (golf + strike + plural + let's)

Let's learn more of the word "ja1 meare2"

We will build up the complexity of the phrase using the word ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2 explained above.

ကစား | ga1-za3 means "to play". So,

ကစားကြမယ် | ga1-za3 ja1 meare2 means "Let's play."

Remember, ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2 is a plural word to indicate that some event WILL take place.

When the phrase does not contain the pronoun "they", "we", or the names of the parties involved such as in the phrase

ကစားကြမယ် | ga1-za3 ja1 meare2,

by default, it refers to "us". In another words, "We will play."

ကစားကြမယ် | ga1-za3 ja1 meare2 — (We) will play; let's play.

How can I say Myanmar will play with Malaysia?

မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar

နဲ့ | neare1 — with

မလေးရှား | ma1-lay3-sha3 — Malaysia

ကစား | ga1-za3 — play

ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2 — will

မြန်မာနဲ့ မလေးရှား ကစားကြမယ်

myan2-ma2 neare1 ma1-lay3-sha3 ga1-za3 ja1 meare2 — Myanmar will play with Malaysia.

ဘယ်တော့လဲ

beare2 dau1 leare3 — When?

ဒီည

de2 nya1 — tonight! (this + night)

Here's a longer sentence:

ဒီည | de2 nya1 — tonight (this + night)

ဗမာ | ba1-ma2 — Myanmar

နဲ့ | neare1 — with

မလေးရှား | ma1-lay3-sha3 — Malaysia

နဲ့ | neare1 — with

ကစား | ga1-za3 — to play

ကြမယ် | ja1 meare2 — will

ဒီည ဗမာနဲ့ မလေးရှားနဲ့ ကစားကြမယ်

de2 nya1 ba1-ma2 neare1 ma1-lay3-sha3 neare1 ga1-za3 ja1 meare2 — Tonight, Myanmar will play with Malaysia.

No, it's not a typo error. "With" is repeated in the above sentence. The literary form of the colloquial word နဲ့ | neare1 used as a conjunction in the sentense is နှင့် | hnin1hnin1.

ဗမာ | ba1-ma2 refers to Burma. This is also the name of the majority Burmese ethnic people. In the original National Anthem after the independence, the word ဗမာပြည် | ba1-ma2 pyi2 was used. It was later changed to မြန်မာပြည် | myan2-ma2-pyi2 to reflect the inclusion of more than 100 ethnic people. My translation of Myanmar into English is "the land of the fast and the strong".

So, who won the game?

Colloquially speaking, people will usually ask "who" won the game instead of "which team" won the game.

ဘယ်သူ | beare2-dthu2 — who (which + person or "he/she")

နိုင် | nine2 — win

သွား | thwa3 — go (changed the sentence into past tense)

လဲ | leare3 — ?

ဘယ်သူ နိုင်သွားလဲ

beare2-dthu2 nine2 thwa3 leare3 — Who won the game?

The word သွား | thwa3 is the verb "to go". In the above phrase, it is used as a particle and modifies an another verb nine2 (to win) into the past tense "won". It's kind of like asking: "How did it go?" Refer to lesson 14 for more examples.

ဗမာ | ba1-ma2 — Myanmar

နိုင် | nine2 — win

သွား | thwa3 — go (changed the sentence into past tense)

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ဗမာ နိုင်သွားတယ်

ba1-ma2 nine2 thwa3 deare2 — Myanmar team has won the game. 🏆

ဗမာ | ba1-ma2 — Myanmar

ရှုံး | shone3 — lose

သွား | thwa3 — go (changed the sentence into past tense)

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ဗမာရှုံးသွားတယ်

ba1-ma2 shone3 thwa3 deare2 — Myanmar team has lost the game.

သရေ | tha1-yay2 — a draw game

ကျ | kja1 — be in certain state or condition

သွား | thwa3 — go (changed the sentence into past tense)

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

သရေကျသွားတယ်

tha1-yay2 kja1 thwa3 deare2 — It was a draw.

Present participle "~ing" in Burmese

How would you say someone is in the midst of doing something? Burmese word

နေတယ် | nay2 deare2

is equivalent to the present participle "~ing" in English. Example:

လုပ်နေတယ် | loat nay2 deare2 — I am doing it. (do + present participle "~ing")

စားနေတယ် | sa3 nay2 deare2 — I am having my meal. (eat + present participle "~ing")

ကစားနေတယ် | ga1-za3 nay2 deare2 — I am playing. (play + present participle "~ing")

နားနေတယ် | na3 nay2 deare2 — I am resting. (to rest + present participle "~ing")

Take note of the omission of the first person "I" in the above phrases. If someone asks what you are doing at this moment, it's more natural and shorter to answer without the use of "I".

What if the person who is doing something is not you but someone else? In that case, include the name of the person, or the pronoun thu2 meaning "he/she" as follow:

သူ လုပ်နေတယ်

thu2 loat nay2 deare2 — He or she is doing it. (he/she + do + present participle "~ing")

သူ စားနေတယ်

thu2 sa3 nay2 deare2 — He or she is having meal. (he/she + eat + present participle "~ing")

သူ ကစားနေတယ်

thu2 ga1-za3 nay2 deare2 — He or she is playing. (he/she + play + present participle "~ing")

သူ နားနေတယ်

thu2 na3 nay2 deare2 — He or she is resting. (he/she + to rest + present participle "~ing")

If more than one person is involved in the activity of doing something, just insert the plural word ကြ | "ja1" between the present participle word နေတယ် | nay2 deare2 as follow:

လုပ်နေကြတယ်

loat nay2 ja1 deare2 — We/they are doing it. (do + present participle + plural)

စါးနေကြတယ်

sa3 nay2 ja1 deare2 — We/they are having meal. (eat + present participle + plural)

ကစားနေကြတယ်

ga1-za3 nay2 ja1 deare2 — We/they are playing. (play + present participle + plural)

နားနေကြတယ်

na3 nay2 ja1 deare2 — We/they are resting. (rest + present participle + plural)

Let's play and say in style

If you know the above general pattern, when someone calls you over the ဟန်းဖုန်း | hun3 pfone3, you should be able to answer in Burmese that you are playing golf:

ဂေါက်သီးရိုက်နေတယ်

gout-thi3 yite nay2 deare2 — I am playing golf. (golf ⛳ + strike + present participle "..ing")

By the way, ဟန်းဖုန်း | hun3 pfone3 is saying the word "hand phone" with a Burmese accent. What's a "hand phone"? It is the translation of 手机 "Shou ji" in Mandarin Chinese into English where 手 "shou" refers to the hand and 机 "ji" is the machine. That's what a cellphone or mobile phone is called in places like Singapore.

hun3 pfone3 in Myanmar used to be unbelievably expensive costing over US500, and it was a status symbol to own one. When the price has come down to around 100,000 kyats (over 100 USD) for the SIM Card alone without the cost of the phone (hand set), it has become a dream comes true for many Myanmar people.

In early 2013, government has started to distribute limited amount of SIM cards in lucky draws with the low, low price of 5,000 Kyat [less than US$5]. As of 2014, it is possible to own a Chinese-made cellphone with SIM card for less than 40,000 kyat. The top-up card comes in the amount of 5,000 kyat or 10,000 kyat. You will be surprised to see some trishaw drivers showing off their hun3 pfone3 that was unimaginable just a year earlier.

As of 2015, there are three major service providers: MPT, Ooredoo, and Telenor providing mobile services. It is now possible for ordinary people to access Internet over the mobile devices. Oh, yeah, for many of Myanmar People, their first phone is a smartphone with SIM card that costs 1,500 Kyat in it. And the fourth operator myTel was launched in February 2018. You also have more top up options like 1000 kyat and 3000 kyat and Internet Cafés are all out of business now.

Let's stop here for today

ဒီနေ့ | de2 nay1 — today ( this + day )

ဒီမှာ | de2 hma2 — here

ရပ် | yut — stop

ကြရအောင် | ja1 ya1-oun2 — Let's

ဒီနေ့ ဒီမှာ ရပ်ကြရအောင်

de2 nay1 de2 hma2 yut ja1 ya1 oun2 — Let's stop here for today!