Describing yourself in Burmese

When I was around ten or eleven under the Burmese education system, I learned to write my first essay in English about me. I still remember the title: "Myself". Let me think of such a simple approach and words to help you to learn Burmese. After all, you must learn to crawl first before you learn to walk.

My name is xxxx

ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 — my (male term)

နာမည် | nun2-meare2 — name

xxxx — (your name)

ပါ | ba2 — soft polite tone

ကျွန်တော့် နာမည် xxxx ပါ | kja1-nau1 nun2-meare2 xxxx ba2 — My name is xxxx.

The female term for "my" is ကျွန်မ | kja1-ma1, so you just substitute it in place of ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 if you are a lady.

But, nowadays, the use of the male term ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 meaning "I", and ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 meaning "my" by female speakers become more and more common and acceptable, so I will just use the male term ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 for the rest of the phrases.

I am xxxx years old.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

အသက် | a-thet — age

သုံးဆယ့် တစ် | thone3-zeare1 tit — 31

နှစ် | hnit — year

ရှိ | shi1— to exist; to be

ပြီ | byi2 — has reached certain stage or condition.

ကျွန်တော် အသက် (၃၁)နှစ် ရှိပြီ

kja1-nau2 a-thet thone3-zeare1 ta1-hnit shi1 byi2 — I am 31 years old.

If your age is in multiple of 10 starting from 20, you need to drop hnit (year) from the sentence. If your age is exactly 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, or 80, use the following format.

ကျွန်တော် အသက် xxxx ရှိပြီ

kja1-nau2 a-thet xxxx shi1 byi2 — I am xxxx years old.

Please refer to lesson 12 for numbers.

I am a xxxx.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I (male term)

xxxx— nationality, religion, occupation, or groups that you belong to

ပါ | ba2— soft polite tone

ကျွန်တော် xxxx ပါ

kja1-nau2 xxxx ba2 — I am a xxxx.

This is a general phrase that can be used to describe your nationality, religion, occupation, or other social and political groups that you belong to. Examples are given below.

ကျွန်တော် ဂျာမန် ပါ

kja1-nau2 ja2-mun2 ba2 — I am a German. (I + German + soften tone)

ကျွန်တော် ဂျာမန်လူမျိုး ပါ

kja1-nau2 ja2-mun2 lu2-myo3 ba2 — I am a German. (I + German + ethnic background + soften tone)

ကျွန်တော် ခရိယာန် ပါ

kja1-nau2 kha1-rit-yan2 ba2— I am a Christian. (I + Christian + soften tone)

ကျွန်တော် ဆရာဝန် ပါ

kja1-nau2 hsa1-ya2-woon2 ba2 — I am a doctor. (I + doctor + soften tone)

Longer sentences

So far so good, but it's too easy. Can we learn to say a little longer sentence? Can we combine "I am a German" and "I am a doctor" into one sentence? How would you say, "I am a German doctor.."?

ကျွန်တော် ဂျာမန် ဆရာဝန် ပါ

kja1-nau2 ja2-mun2 hsa1-ya2-woon2 ba2 — I am a German doctor. (I + German + doctor + soften tone)

Hmmm, it is grammatically correct. Normally, you can combine sentences like this, but it sounds a bit confusing this time. Are you a doctor who specialize in illness caused by some kind of "germs"? Let me give you an example to show what I mean.

ကျွန်တော် သွားဆရာဝန် ပါ

kja1-nau2 thwa3 hsa1-ya2-woon2 ba2

I am a dentist. (I + teeth + doctor + soften tone)

Here's an another alternative.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ဂျာမနီ | ja2-ma1-ni2 — Germany

က | ga1 — from

ဆရာဝန် | hsa1-ya2-woon2 — doctor

ပါ | ba2 — soft polite tone.

ကျွန်တော် ဂျာမနီ က ဆရာဝန်ပါ

kja1-nau2 ja2-ma1-ni2 ga1 hsa1-ya2-woon2 ba2

I am a doctor from Germany.

Let me sidetrack a little and explain more about the word "from". က | ga1 is a postpositional marker in Myanmar grammar meaning "from". For example,

ဒါ | da2 — this

တရုတ်ပြည် | ta1-yoat pyi2 — China

က | ga1 — from

လာ | la2 — come

တာ | da2 — "in reference to this object"

ဒါ တရုတ်ပြည်က လာတာ

da2 ta1-yoat pyi2 ga1 la2 da2

This comes from China = This is made in China.

The question to this phrase could be

ဒါ တရုတ်ပြည်က လာတာ လား

da2 ta1-yoat pyi2 ga1 la2 da2 la3

Does this come from China? (or)

ဒါ တရုတ်လုပ်လား

da2 ta1-yoat loat la3

Is this china made?

The word လုပ် | loat can have some other meanings, but in general, there are either tangible or intangible goods and services as an end result of loat. In different contexts, it can mean, to work, to do, and to make.

I work in xxxx.

Myanmar is still a developing country, and there are no Burmese equivalent words for many occupational titles that you have in the developed world. I don't have Burmese words for titles such as website developer at this moment. So, the best I can come up with is the list of occupations that have Burmese words plus the names of businesses, shops, industries, institutions, and work places that are common in Myanmar. The lists are in two table on the left side of this page. That way, you can at least say things like "I work in the hospital" without mentioning some fancy "technologist" job title.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I (pronoun)

ဆေးရုံ | hsay3-yone2 — hospital (noun)

မှာ | hma2 — at (postpositional marker)

အလုပ် | a-loat — work; job (noun)

လုပ် | loat — to work; to make; to do (verb)

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation. (postpositional marker)

ကျွန်တော် ဆေးရုံမှာ အလုပ်လုပ်တယ်

kja1-nau2 hsay3 yone2 hma2 a-loat loat deare2

I work in the hospital.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ကုမ္ပဏီ | kone2-pa1-ni2 — company

တစ်ခု | ta1-khu1 — one; an item

မှာ | hma2 — at

အလုပ် | a-loat— work; job

လုပ် | loat — to work

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် ကုမ္ပဏီ တစ်ခုမှာ အလုပ် လုပ်တယ်

kja1-nau2 kone2-pa1-ni2 ta1-khu1 hma2 a-loat loat deare2

I work in a company.

Are you the boss running your own business? Then, you can say...

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

စီးပွားရေး | si3-bwa3-yay3 — market economy

လုပ်ငန်း | loat-ngan3 — business

တစ်ခု | ta1-khu1 — one; an item

ပိုင် | pine2 — to own

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် စီးပွားရေး လုပ်ငန်း တစ်ခု ပိုင်တယ်

kja1-nau2 si3-bwa3-yay3 loat-ngan3 ta1-khu1 pine2 deare2

I own a business.

The word စီးပွားရေး | si3-bwa3-yay3 means supply and demand of the economy. The root word စီးပွား | si3-bwa3 means to grow (verb), and it can also mean benefits, money and properties (noun).

လုပ်ငန်း | Loat-ngan3 refers to business or industry.

စီးပွားရေး လုပ်ငန်း | si3-bwa3-yay3 loat-ngan3 is a long word for business, which includes all aspects of the word စီးပွားရေး | si3-bwa3-yay3 mentioned above.

You can add the type of business to the word လုပ်ငန်း | loat-ngan3. For example,

ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး | hsout-loat-yay3

is the word that has something to do with building and construction.

ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး လုပ်ငန်း | hsout-loat-yay3 loat-ngan3 refers to construction business or industry.

So, you can say....

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး | hsout-loat-yay3 — construction

လုပ်ငန်း | loat-ngan3 — business; industry

မှာ | hma2 — at, in

အလုပ် | a-loat — work, job

လုပ် | loat — to work

တယ် |deare2 — polite ending word

ကျွန်တော် ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး လုပ်ငန်းမှာ အလုပ် လုပ်တယ်

kja1-nau2 hsout-loat-yay3 loat-ngan3 hma2 a-loat loat deare2

I work in construction industry.

Or, simply say I do building and construction like this...

ကျွန်တော် |kja1-nau2 — I

ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး | hsout-loat-yay3 — construction

လုပ်ငန်း | loat-ngan3 — business; industry

လုပ် | loat — to work

တယ် | deare2 — polite ending word

ကျွန်တော် ဆောက်လုပ်ရေး လုပ်ငန်း လုပ်တယ်

kja1-nau2 hsout-loat-yay3 loat-ngan3 loat deare2

I do construction.

I am interested in xxxx.

There can be slight variations to the phrases depending on whether you are talking about your hobby that involves some kind of activity, or if the interest is about an intellectual subject such as history of something.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ဓါတ်ပုံရိုက် | dut-pone2 yite — taking photography (photograph + to strike)

တာ | da2 — that; that which is

ဝါသနာပါ | wa2-dtha1-na2 pa2 — have interest (interest as in hobby + to accompany)

တယ် | deare2— affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် ဓါတ်ပုံရိုက်တာ ဝါသနာပါတယ်

kja1-nau2 dut-pone2 yite da2 wa2-dtha1-na2 pa2 deare2

My hobby is photography. I love photography.

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ပုဂံ | ba1-gun2 — Bagan

အကြောင်း | a-kjoun3 — subject; about something

စိတ်ဝင်စား | sate-win2-za3 — have interest

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် ပုဂံအကြောင်း စိတ်ဝင်စားတယ်

kja1-nau2 ba1-gun2 a-kjoun3 sate-win2-za3 deare2

I find Bagan interesting; I am interested in (anything about) Bagan.

Hey, what was that? That was a commercial break... sort of :-)

OK, here's something for guys out there learning Burmese just because they are interested in a Burmese girl. Here's how to say, "I am interested in you."

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

xxxx — name of the person

ကို | go2 — to whom

စိတ်ဝင်စား | sate-win2-za3 — have interest

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် xxxx ကို စိတ်ဝင်စား တယ်

kja1-nau2 xxxx go2 sate-win2-za3 deare2

I am interested in you, xxxx !

I would recommend that you practice the phrase several times first (by saying out loud) with the name of the girl in place of xxxx. Practice makes perfect!

Oh yes, there is one small detail. If the name of the girl ends in 2nd tone, you must change it to the 1st tone. For example, if the name of the girl is စန္ဒာ | Sun2-da2, say like this...

ကျွန်တော် စန္ဒာ့ ကို စိတ်ဝင်စားတယ်

kja1-nau2 sun2-da1 go2 sate-win2-za3 deare2

I am interested in you, Sundar!

It's just like the tone change from "he" သူ | (thu2) to "his" သူ့ | (thu1), and "him" သူ့ကို | (thu1 go2) that I have explained in lesson 4.

I have xxxx

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ကလေး | kha1-lay3 — baby, child

နှစ် | hnit — two

ယောက် | yout — measure word for persons

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် ကလေး နှစ်ယောက် ရှိတယ်

kja1-nau2 kha1-lay3 hna1-yout shi1 deare2

I have 2 children.

Hey, wait a minute... Didn't I say back in lesson 12 that "1" is pronounced "tit" and "2" is "hnit" ? How come "2" is "hna1" now? Well, just like in "10" and "20", the pronunciation of "1" and "2" are changed a bit when followed by some other words such as a measure word "yout" above.

Please also review lesson 12 for similar pronunciation changes in numbers like 100, 1000, 200, 2000.

ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 — My

အိမ် | ain2 — house

မှာ | hma2 — at

ခွေး | khway3 — dog

တစ် | tit — one

ကောင် | goun2 — measure word for animals

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော့် အိမ်မှာ ခွေးတစ်ကောင် ရှိတယ်

kja1-nau1 ain2 hma2 khway3 da1-goun2 shi1 deare2

I have a dog at home.

Also learn some basic sentence conjunctions

Let's learn something more challenging by adding the conjunction "also" to mean "I have a child as well as a dog at home."

ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 — my

အိမ် | ain2 — house

မှာ | hma2 — at

ကလေး | kha1-lay3 — child

လည်း | leare3 — also

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ခွေး | khway3 — dog

လည်း | leare3 — also

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော့် အိမ်မှာ ကလေးလည်း ရှိတယ် ၊ ခွေးလည်း ရှိတယ်

kja1-nau1 ain2 hma2 kha1-lay3 leare3 shi1 deare2...

khway3 leare3 shi1 deare2

I have a child as well as a dog at home.

Here's something very similar, but this time say, "I have both a dog and a child at home." What's the difference? Let me scratch my head and think. I think the word "both" meets the requirements, whereas "not only ... but also" is having something extra to brag about. As far as I am concerned, they are the same that you can use interchangeably.

ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 — my

အိမ် | ain2 — house

မှာ | hma2 — at

ကလေး | kha1-lay3 — child

ကော | gau3 — both; also

ခွေး | khway3 — dog

ကော | gau3 — both; also

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော့် အိမ်မှာ ကလေးကော ခွေးကော ရှိတယ်

kja1-nau1 ain2 hma2 kha1-lay3 gau3 khway3 gau3 shi1 deare2

I have both a child and a dog at home.

OK, now we will learn to say, " I live in Germany with a wife and a child. I also have a dog."

ကျွန်တော် | kja1-nau2 — I

ဂျာမနီ | ja2-ma1-ni2 — Germany

မှာ | hma2 — at, in

မိန်းမ | main3-ma1 — wife; woman

နဲ့ | neare1 — and

ကလေး | kha1-lay3 — child

နဲ့ | neare1 — and

နေ | nay2 — to live

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ခွေး | khway3 — dog

လည်း | leare3 — also

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmation.

ကျွန်တော် ဂျာမနီမှာ မိန်းမနဲ့ ကလေးနဲ့ နေတယ် ၊ ခွေးလည်း ရှိတယ်

kja1-nau2 ja2-ma1-ni2 hma2 main3-ma1 neare1 kha1-lay3 neare1 nay2 deare2...

khway3 leare3 shi1 deare2

I live in Germany with a wife and a child.

I also have a dog.

ကလေး | kha1-lay3 — child

က | ga1 — is

၆ | chout — six

နှစ် | hnit — year

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

ပြီ | byi2 — has reached certain stage or condition.

ကလေးက ၆ နှစ် ရှိပြီ

kha1-lay3 ga1 chout hnit shi1 byi2

The child is 6 years old.

ခွေး | khway3 — dog

က တော့ | ga1 dau1 — as for

၃ | thone3 — three

နှစ် | hnit — year

ပဲ | beare3 — only

ရှိ | shi1 — to exist; to be

သေး | thay3 — still; yet to be

တယ် | deare2 — affirmative.

ခွေးကတော့ ၃ နှစ်ပဲ ရှိသေးတယ်

khway3 ga1 dau1 thone3 hnit beare3 shi1 thay3 deare2

As for the dog, it's only 3 years old.

Everything is OK. We are comfortable.

For the last part of describing yourself, we will learn to say that everything is going well. There is one common Burmese phrase in the form of a question that you should know.

အဆင်ပြေရဲ့လား

a-hsin2-pyay2 yeare1 la3

Is everything going well? Are you comfortable? How was it? How did it go?

အဆင်ပြေ | a-hsin2-pyay2 means everything is smooth-sailing without having problems.

If you recall back in lesson 2, ရဲ့ | "yeare1" is the tone of concern and လား | "la3" is a question mark.

အဆင်မပြေဘူး

a-hsin2 ma1-pyay2 bu3

I had a bad day. Things are not working out for me.

ဟုတ်ကဲ့ အဆင်ပြေပါတယ်

hote-keare1, a-hsin2-pyay2 ba2 deare2

Yes, I am comfortable. Everything went well.

ကျွန်တော်တို့ | kja1-nau2 doh1 — We

ဂျာမနီ | ja2-ma1-ni2 — Germany

မှာ | hma2 — at; in

အကုန်လုံး | a-kone2-lone3 — everything

အဆင်ပြေ | a-hsin2-pyay2 — comfortable; going well

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

ပါတယ် | ba2 deare2 — polite affirmation.

ကျွန်တော်တို့ ဂျာမနီမှာ အကုန်လုံး အဆင်ပြေကြပါတယ်

kja1-nau2 doh1 ja2-ma1-ni2 hma2 a-kone2-lone3 a-hsin2-pyay2 ja1 ba2 deare2

Life is comfortable for all of us in Germany.

So, how about you? Is everything going well in your life? Life is a mystery to me. Are there divine supernatural powers influencing our fates? Is it by chance alone that you are where you are now? Or, is it due to reasons and causes beyond our understanding? Random chances vs. consequences of past karma. Interesting! Whatever it is at work, I hope your story is a good one, and I hope that after reading this page, you will be able to describe a thing or two about yourself in Burmese.