Locations and Directions
So far, we have been building up on the basic Burmese sentence constructions and learning some Burmese culture along the way. You will not be speaking true Burmese if you attempt to make a direct translation from an another language using a dictionary.
Deep inside each of us, there are universal human feelings, emotions, wants, needs, likes and dislikes. Those primary direct experiences from the within seem to exist even if we don't use any words to describe them. We use language to code and decode those fundamentals so that we can communicate with the others. After coding those "inner feelings" into words, however, the direct translation of words into an another language using a dictionary doesn't always fully capture the original "inner experiences" that we would like to articulate. Why?
Maybe that's because our usage of the words depends on how we see the world, our attitudes, how we relate to each other, our way of life and daily activities, the weather and the environment, what we consider as appropriate or inappropriate, important or not important; and they are different from culture to culture.
When a neighbor greets me: ဘယ်လဲ | beare2 leare3 — Go where? (where + ?), I doubt that he is really interested in where I am going, just like when you say "How are you?", you say it without thinking too deeply about the state of well-being of the other person.
But, there is something more fundamental — that "inner feeling" and "intention" behind that greeting. Here, you want to express your friendliness, and also to some degree you feel awkward if you don't say something that the society expects you to say. Since this is the case, the two greetings are equivalent in terms of "inner feelings".
That is why I have been using two translations side by side: "inner feeling" as well as direct translation word by word so that you can grasp both the overall feeling tone and meaning of each word in the sentence.
So, now ဘယ်လဲ | beare2 leare3 — Where to? This interesting video clip suggests some exciting places to go — places so fun-filled and thrilling that had the late Michael Jackson, the king of pop known about those places, he would have brought his throne over to Myanmar and taken the front row.
The phrase starts with the name of the place and ends with သွားမယ် | thwa3 meare2 — will go. Another word you will recognize is the word ဟုတ် | "hote" meaning "yes", but in this case, it is used as a question: "Isn't it?"
Where to?So, now ဘယ်လဲ | beare2 leare3 — Where to? This interesting video clip suggests some exciting places to go — places so fun-filled and thrilling that had the late Michael Jackson, the king of pop known about those places, he would have brought his throne over to Myanmar and took the front row. The phrase starts with the name of the place and ends with သွားမယ် | thwa3 meare2 — will go. Another word you will recognize is the word ဟုတ် | "hote" meaning "yes", but in this case, it is used as a question: "Isn't it?" Helay | ဟဲလေး | heare3 lay3 [50 seconds]
Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Saturday, June 4, 2016
Straight in front
တည့်တည့် | teare1-deare1 — straight
တည့်တည့်မှာ | teare1-deare1 hma2 — (It's) located straight ahead. (straight + at)
တည့်တည့်သွား | teare1-teare1 thwa3 — Go straight ahead. (straight + go)
အရှေ့မှာ | a-shay1 hma2 — (It's) in front. (front + at)
အရှေ့တိုး | a-shay1 toe3 — Move forward. (front + inch forward)
At the back
အနောက်မှာ | a-nout hma2 — (It's) at the back (back + at)
အနောက်ဆုတ် | a-nout hsoat — Move back; reverse the car (back + retreat)
ဆုတ် ဆုတ် ဆုတ် | hsoat, hsoat, hsoat — Parking attendant telling the driver it's OK to reverse. (retreat + retreat + retreat)
တည့်တည့်ဆုတ် တည့်တည့်ဆုတ် | teare1-deare1 hsoat ... teare1-deare1 hsoat — Parking attendant telling the driver to back up straight.
ဟိုး | ho3! — Parking attendant telling the driver to stop. (Derived from either the English word: "halt" or Hindi word "Hoe".)
Go up
အပေါ်မှာ | a-pau2 hma2 — (It's) up there. (up + postpositional marker)
အပေါ်ဆုံးမှာ | a-pau2-zone3 hma2 — (It's) at the uppermost level. (up + extreme position + postpositional marker)
အပေါ်ထပ်မှာ | a-pau2 htut hma2 — (It's) upstairs. (up + floor or level used as a numerical classifier + at)
အပေါ်ဆုံးထပ်မှာ | a-pau2-zone3 htut hma2 — (It's) on the top floor. (up + extreme position + floor or level used as a numerical classifier + at)
အပေါ်ဆုံး အဆင့်မှာ | a-pau2-zone3 a-hsin1 hma2 — (It's) on the top shelf. (up + extreme position + "shelf" + at)
စားပွဲပေါ်မှာ | za1-bweare3 pau2 hma2 — (It's) on the table. (table + on top + at)
လမ်းပေါ်မှာ | lun3 pau2 hma2 — (It's) on the road. (road + on + at)
သစ်ပင်ပေါ်မှာ | thit-pin2 pau2 hma2 — (It's) in the tree. (tree + on + at)
အပေါ်တက် | a-pau2 tet — Go up! (up + climb)
တောင်ပေါ်တက် | toun2 pau2 tet — Climb the mountain. (mountain + up + climb)
သစ်ပင်တက် | thit-pin2 tet — Climb the tree. (tree + climb)
ကားပေါ်တက် | ka3 pau2 tet — Go inside the car! (car + on top + climb)
No, it doesn't mean go up the roof of the car! In the old days, people used to go up the cart pulled by two bullocks; there is no "inside" of the cart to speak of.
တက်ဦး တက်ဦး | tet ome3 .. tet ome3 — Go up! Go up! (climb + "do this action first")
Bus ticket conductor saying people are still going up (or) telling people to go up. It's hard to say whether he is talking to himself, to the passengers, or to the driver. Fortunately, the days of pushy bus ticket conductors are over with the new YBS system which runs without them like the rest of the world.
အပေါ်ထပ် တက်ရမယ် | a-pau2 htut tet ya1 meare2 — (You / We) need to go upstairs. (up + floor or level + climb + obtain + going to)
အပေါ်ထပ် တက်ကြစို့ | a-pau2 htut tet ja1 zo1 — Let's go upstairs. (up + floor or level + climb + let's)
Down there!
အောက်မှာ | out hma2 — (It's) down there. (down + at)
အောက်ဆုံးမှာ | out-hsone3 hma2 — (It's) at the lowest level. (down + extreme position + at)
အောက်ထပ်မှာ | out-htut hma2 — (It's) downstairs. (down + floor or level + at)
အောက်ဆင်းမယ် | out hsin3 meare2 — go down as in "I am going downstairs." (down + go down / alight from vehicle + going to)
အောက်ဆင်းရမယ် | out hsin3 ya1 meare2 — (You) need to go down. (down + go down + obtain + going to)
ဆင်းမယ် | hsin3 meare2 — go down as in "I am going down from the bus." (go down + going to)
ဆင်းတော့ ဆင်းတော့ | hsin3 dau1 .. hsin3 dau1 — Bus ticket conductor telling people to get down. (go down + about time)
ဆင်းတုန်း ဆင်းတုန်း | hsin3 dome3 .. hsin3 dome3 — Bus ticket conductor telling the driver people are still going down.(go down + still in the action)
Why doubling and repeating words? Probably because of the noise level in the busy city center, words need to be repeated to be heard. In comparison, in Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesia, words are repeated to make them plural. For example, "Orang, orang" for people, where "orang" stands for a single man in Malay/Indonesian language.
In Mandarin Chinese, words are sometimes doubled up for different reasons. 可以 ... 可以 | "Ke3 yi.. Ke3 yi" to stress from "can" to a more enthusiastic "Of course, you can.."
The middle way
အလယ်မှာ | a-leare2 hma2 — in the middle. (middle + at)
အလယ်ထပ်မှာ | a-leare2 htut hma2 — on the 2nd level of 3 storey building. (middle + floor or level + at)
အလယ်တန်း | a-leare2 dun3 — middle school; junior high. (middle + class/form/grade)
On your right
ညာဘက်မှာ | nya2 bet hma2 — On your right. (right + direction + at)
ညာဘက်ကွေ့ | nya2 bet kway1 — Turn right! (right + direction + turn)
ညာဘက် အစွန်ဆုံးမှာ | nya2 bet a-soon2-zone3 hma2 — At the extreme right position.(right + direction + extreme position + at)
The corner
ညာဘက်ထောင့် | nya2 bet doun1 — at the right corner, as in soccer corner kick. (right + direction + corner)
လမ်းထောင့်မှာ | lun3 doun1 hma2 — in the street corner. (road + corner + at)
Left side
ဘယ်ဘက်မှာ | beare2 bet hma2 — On your left (left + direction + at)
ဘယ်ဘက်ကွေ့ | beare2 bet kway1 — Turn left (left + direction + turn)
ဘယ်ဘက် အစွန်ဆုံးမှာ | beare2 bet a-soon2-zone3 hma2 — at the extreme left position. (left + direction + extreme position + at)
ဘယ်ဘက်ထောင့် | beare2 bet doun1 — at the left corner, as in soccer corner kick. (left + direction + corner)
Going out
အပြင်မှာ | a-pyin2 hma2 — outside. (outside + at)
အပြင်သွားမယ် | a-pyin2 thwa3 meare2 — go out as in "I am going out." (outside + go + going to)
အပြင်ထွက်သွားတယ် | a-pyin2 htwet thwa3 deare2 — go out as in "He went out." (outside + exit + go + affirmative)
Inside
အထဲမှာ | a-hteare3 hma2 — inside. (inside + at)
အခန်းထဲမှာ | a-khan3-hteare3 hma2 — inside the room. (room + inside + at)
အိမ်ထဲမှာ | ain2-hteare3 hma2 — inside the house. (house + inside + at)
အိတ်ထဲမှာ | ate-hteare3 hma2 — inside the bag. (bag + inside + at)
ကားထဲမှာ | ka3-hteare3 hma2 — inside the car. (car + inside + at)
ခြံထဲမှာ | chan2-hteare3 hma2 — in the backyard. ( backyard where you grow vegetables or raise livestocks + inside + at)
ထဲ | hteare3 from the word အထဲ | a-hteare3 meaning "inside" is used as suffix to nouns. It is a postpositional marker in Burmese grammar and must still be followed by မှာ | hma2,
North, East, South, West
အရှေ့ | a-shay1 — East. (same meaning as "the front")
အနောက် | a-nout — West. (same meaning as "the back")
တောင် | toun2 — South.
မြောက် | myout — North.
A Tourist Story
Taxi driver:
ဆရာ | hsa1-ya2 — Sir
ဘယ် | beare2 — where
သွား | thwa3 — go
မှာလဲ | ma1-leare3 — ? (will + ?)
ဆရာ ဘယ်သွားမှာလဲ | hsa1-ya2 beare2 thwa3 ma1-leare3 — Where are you going, Sir?
Tourist:
ဆူးလေ | hsu3-lay2 — Sule Pagoda
လိုက် | lite — come along
မလား | ma1-la3 — ? (will + ?)
ဆူးလေ လိုက်မလား | hsu3-lay2 lite ma1-la3 — Sule Pagoda, are you going?
Alternatively, you can say,
ဆူးလေ ဘယ်လောက်လဲ | hsu3-lay2 beare2-lout leare3 : "How much to Sule?"
Taxi driver after scratching his head:
၃၀၀၀ | thone3 htoun2 — 3,000
ပဲ | beare3 — only; just
ပေး | pay3 — to give
ပါ | ba2 — polite
၃၀၀၀ ပဲပေးပါ | thone3 htoun2 beare3 pay3 ba2 — Pay me only 3,000.
Tourist :
ဟာ | ha2... — C'mon
၃၀၀၀ | thone3 htoun2 — 3,000
များ | mya3 — too much
တယ် | deare2 — ending word.
ဟာ ၊ ၃၀၀၀ များတယ် | ha2... thone3 htoun2 mya3 deare2 — C'mon... 3,000 is too much.
Tourist continues:
၂၀၀၀ | hna1-htoun2 — 2,000
လုပ် | loat — to make or to do
ပါ | ba2 — polite suggestion.
၂၀၀၀ လုပ်ပါ | hna1-htoun2 loat ba2 — Please make it 2,000.
Taxi driver scratches his head again, thinks about it for a while, and gestures towards the back seat:
တက် တက် | Tet, Tet.. — Alright, have a seat.. (go up + go up)
The Toyota taxi (recently imported new model) is modified to run by Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). After about 15 minutes drive, the taxi stops in front of the parking lot near Sule Pagoda.
The tourist had studied the map of down-town Yangon the night before, but now he is a bit confused as to which road around the Sule Pagoda he should be heading. He decides to ask for direction with his recently-acquired knowledge of Burmese language he learned from some Internet website.
People in Yangon must be very friendly. Someone approaches to him first even before he asks for help. Let's see what this friendly Myanmar man has to say.
Friendly Myanmar Man :
ဆရာကြီး | hsa1-ya2-ji3 — Big Master (master + big)
ဒေါ်လာ | dau2-la2 — dollar
လဲ | leare3 — exchange
မလား | ma1-la3 — ? (will + ?)
ဆရာကြီး ဒေါ်လာ လဲမလား | hsa1-ya2-ji3, dau2-la2 leare3 ma1-la3 — Do you want to exchange dollar, big master?", the man in traditional lone2 ji2 (sarong) asks the tourist.
The tourist has never heard of this kind of greeting before. He decides that he will exchange a conversation with this friendly Burmese man.
Nearby street vendor quickly takes advantage of the fact that the tourist can speak a pretty good Burmese, with the right tone and all.
Street Vendor :
အခွေ | a-khway2 — tapes, VCD, DVD etc.
တွေ | dway2 — plural
ကြည့် | kji1 — to watch
ပါဦး | ba2 ome3 — polite suggestion
အခွေတွေ ကြည့်ပါဦး | a-khway2 dway2 kji1 ba2 ome3 — "Won't you watch movies?" The street vendor helds up a transparent plastic VCD cover with interesting color print inside.
တစ်ခွေ | ta1-khway2 — one tape (one + tape)
၅၀၀ | nga3 ya2 — 500
ပါ | ba2 — polite ending word.
တစ်ခွေ ၅၀၀ ပါ | ta1-khway2 nga3 ya2 ba2 — "500 kyat each", he says in a salesman pitch.
Tourist :
မ | ma1 — not
ဝယ် | weare2 — buy
သေး | thay3 — yet to be; not yet
ဘူး | bu3 — negative ending
မဝယ်သေးဘူး | ma1-weare2 thay3 bu3 — Not buying this time!
The Adventure of the tourist continues in lesson 6.