Burmese phrasebook

Burmese (ျမန္‌မားစကား mien ma za ga) is the official and primary language of Myanmar. It is closely related to Tibetan, and distantly related to Chinese. The government uses the term "Myanmar" to describe the language, although most continue to refer to the language as "Burmese". Grammar Burmese word order is subject-object-verb, unlike English word order, which is subject-verb-object. Subjects and objects are omitted when such is implied in context. As a rule, all objects must be attached to a -go particle. Burmese has an array of honorifics. Its grammar also contains many prefixes and suffixes indicating tense and mood. The Burmese often use family names such as "brother", "sister", "auntie" in place of "you" and "I". Pronunciation guide Read Romanized signs properly Burmese, similar to French, rarely has consonant endings, because most become glottal stops (like the break in uh-oh!) or nasalised. Burmese names written using Latin letters include these endings to denote the fact that the endings are written. These endings include: -'k' such as in Kyaiktiyo (a Buddhist pilgrimage site), which is pronounced chaih-TEE-ou. -'ne' such as Mawlamyine (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced mau-la-myain. -'ng' such as in Sagaing (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced za-gainh. -'m' such as in dhamma (a Buddhist term), which is pronounced dha-MA. (A special case accompanies -m. For example, lam, which means "street", is pronounced lan, with an -n.) -'r' such as in Myanmar, which is pronounced myan-MA. -'t' such as in Thatbyinnyu (a temple in Bagan), which is pronounced thah-BYIN-nyu. Burmese is a tonal language, consisting of four tones (low, high, creaky, checked). All dialects of Burmese in Myanmar adhere to this rule, although vocabulary usage varies from region to region. Burmese is written using the Burmese script, which is based on an ancient Indian script called Pali. Its alphabet contains 34 letters, which look like circles or semi-circles. The Burmese script also contains many tone marks and sound modifying marks. Burmese uses an English-based romanisation system. Vowels Burmese has a complicated set of vowels, containing 12 vowels. Diphthongs ai  like the 'i' in site au  like the 'ou' in out; always used with a consanant ending ei  like the 'a' in ache ou  like the 'oa' in moat Monophthongs a  like the 'a' in mama e  like the 'e' in she i  like the 'ea' in meat o  like the 'o' in tote u  like the 'ew' in lewd ih  like the 'i' in trip Consonants Burmese consanants are aspirated (contains an 'h' sound) and unaspirated (does not contain an 'h' sound). Aspirated and unaspirated consanants are romanised irregularly, because a uniform system does not yet exist. b  like the 'b' in bat d  like the 'd' in dagger g  like the 'g' in gap h  like the 'h' in house k  like the 'k' in tanker kh like the 'c' in cat ky like the 'j' in jeep l  like the 'l' in love m  like the 'm' in mad n  like the 'n' in nut ng  like the 'ng' in dancing ny  like the 'ni' in onion p  like the 'p' in spin ph  like the 'p' in pig r  becomes a 'y', or is silent. In other words, the letter "r" is a lot like a trilled "r" sound ("rrrr") in Burmese (just like the "r" in Latin/Spanish). s  like a 's' in sing, or becomes a 'th' sound shw like the 'sh' in shack hs  like a 's' in sound t  like a 't' in that th  like a 't' in tongue w  like a 'w' in win. Although there is no consonant "v" in Burmese, "w" sounds much like "v" in "victory" (just like German "w"). y  like a 'y' in young z  like a 'z' in zoo Phrase list Negations Burmese, when negating verbs, uses two of the following structures: ma + ____ + bu used to mean that the verb was not accomplished. Example: Nei ma kaing bu, which means "You did not touch it". ma + ____ + neh used to mean that the verb must not be accomplished. Example: Nei ma kaing neh, which means "You do not touch it." Basics Common signs OPEN  CLOSED  ENTRANCE  EXIT  PUSH  PULL  TOILET  MEN  WOMEN  FORBIDDEN  Hello.  မဂၤလာပါ။ (Min ga la ba.) Hello. (informal)  (Nei kaung la?) How are you?  ေနေကာင္းလာ။ (Nei kaon la?) Fine, thank you.  ေနေကာင္းပါတယ္။ (Ne kaon ba de) What is your name?   ? (na mal bal loe kall lal?) My name is ______ .  ______ . (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.) Nice to meet you.  . (Twe ya da wanta ba de) Please.  . (Kyeizu pyu yue ) Thank you.  ေက်းဇူးတန္ပါတယ္။ (Kyeizu tin ba de.) You're welcome.  ရပါတယ်။ (Ya ba de.) Yes.  ဟုတ္တယ္။ (Ho de.) No.  . မဟုတ္ဘူ။(Ma ho bu.) Excuse me. (getting attention)  ခင္ဗဵာ? (Ka mya?) Excuse me. (begging pardon)  . ( ) I'm sorry.  . (taung pan par tal) Goodbye  . သြာေတာ့မယ္။(Thwa dau mal) Goodbye (informal)  . (Thwa dau mal) I can't speak name of language [well].  [ ]. ( [ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma pyaw thet bu.]) Do you speak English?   ? ( in glei za ga go pyaw thet de la?) Is there someone here who speaks English?   ? (In glei za-ga pyaw thet de lu di ma shi la?) Help!   ! (kuu nyi par ohn!) Look out!   ! (Ai ya! Kyi!) Good morning.  . (Mingalabar ) Good night (to sleep)  . (Eigh douh meh ) I don't know.   . က်န္ပ္းမသိဘူ။(Kya-nau ma thi bu) I don't understand.  . က်န္ပ္းနာမလဲဘူ။(Kya-nau na ma ley bu) Where is the toilet?   ? (ein thar ka bal mhar lal) Problems Numbers Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals. 0  ၀ (thoun-nya) 1  ၁ (tit) 2  ၂ (hni) 3  ၃ (thoun) 4  ၄ (lei) 5  ၅ (nga) 6  ၆ (chao) 7  ၇ (kun hni) 8  ၈ (shit) 9  ၉ (ko) 10  ၁၀ (se) 11  ၁၁ (seh-tit) 12  ၁၂ (seh-hnih) 13  ၁၃ (seh-thoun) 14  ၁၄ (seh-lei) 15  ၁၅ (seh-nga) 16  ၁၆ (seh-chauk) 17  ၁၇ (seh-kuun) 18  ၁၈ (seh-shit) 19  ၁၉ (seh-kou) 20  ၂၀ (hna-seh) 21  ၂၁ (hna-seh-tit) 22  ၂၂ (hna-seh-hnih) 23  ၂၃ (hna-seh-thoun) 30  ၃၀ (thoun-zeh) 40  ၄၀ (lei-zeh) 50  ၅၀ (nga-zeh) 60  ၆၀ (chau-seh) 70  ၇၀ (kueh-na-seh) 80  ၈၀ (shit-seh) 90  ၉၀ (ko-zeh) 100  ၁၀၀ (tit-ya) 200  ၂၀၀ (hni-ya) 300  ၃၀၀ (thoun-ya) 500  ၅၀၀ (nga-ya) 1000  ၁၀၀၀ (tit-taon) 2000  ၂၀၀၀ (hna-taon) 10,000  (se-thaon) number _____ (train, bus, etc.)  Burmese uses several measure words. As a general rule, use ku for items, and yau for persons. Time now  a gu (အခု) later  nao ma before  a shei morning  ma ne afternoon  nei le night  nya (ည) Clock time What time is it?  Be ne na yee toe bi le? It is nine in the morning.  Ko nai toe bi. Three-thirty PM.  Thoun na yee kwe. Duration _____ minute(s)  min-ni (မိနစ္‌) _____ hour(s)  nai yi (နာရီ) _____ day(s)  ye' or nei (နေ့) _____ week(s)  ba _____ month(s)  la (လ) _____ year(s)  hni (န္ဟစ္‌) Days today  di nei yesterday  ma nei tomorrow  ma ne pyan this week  di ba last week  a yin ba next week  nao ba Sunday  tha nin ga nei (တနင္ဂန္ဝေ) Monday  tha nin la (တနင္‌းလာ) Tuesday  in ga (အင္ဂာ) Wednesday  bo ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး) Thursday  kya tha ba dei (က္ရားသပတေး) Friday  tao kya (သောက္ရာ) Saturday  sa nei (စနေ) Note: The Burmese calendar consists of 8 days, with one day between Wednesday and Thursday, called ya-hu, although this is purely ceremonial. Months Writing time and date Colors black  အမည် ရောင် a me yaon white  အဖ္ရူရောင် a pyu yaon gray  မီးခု္းရောင် mi go yaon red  အနီရောင် a ni yaon blue  အပ္ရာရောင် a pya yaon yellow  အဝာရောင် a wa yaon green  အစိမ္ရောင် a sein yaon orange  လိမ္မော္ရောင် lein mau yaon purple  ခရမ္းရောင် ka-yan yaon brown  အညိုရောင် a nyo yaon Do you have it in another color?   Di ha go nao a yaon de she la? Transportation Bus and train, ship and plane Train yeh-ta Train Station bu ta yone Bus ba(sa) ka Bus Stop ka hma tine Bus Station ka gey Ship thin bau Port thin bau sey Airplane leyin pyan Airport ley yein gun Ticket leh hma Fare ka Depart/Leave tweh Arrive yow Luggage pyit see Directions Over there ho beht Left Side beh beht Right Side nya beht Taxi Is this taxi free? Te ka se ahh tha la Lodging To Stay theh Bed ga din Restroom ehn tha Shower yay cho khan Food asar Money How much is it? Zey beh lout le? Money kyat one dollar deh kyat two dollars neh kyat three dollars thone kyat four dollars ley kyat five dollars nga kyat six dollars chowt kyat seven dollars cuni kyat eight dollars sheh kyat nine dollars coh kyat ten dollars se kyat twenty dollars neh se kyat twenty-five dollars neh se nga kyat or more commonly a sait fifty dollars nga se kyat one hundred dollars tayar kyat When refering to US currency, it is important to remember to say "dollar" before the specified amount For example US $50 would be "dollar nga se". Eating I am hungry. Nga bite sa de. Where do you want to go eat? Beh sau thot sine thwa meh le? I can only drink bottled water Kha naw ye bu ye be thouk lo ya de Are there any napkins (Can I have one?) napkin she tha la Fried foods uh chaw sa Noodles cow sweh Rice (white) htamin Fried rice htamin chaw Ice yey ghe Ice cream bar yey ghe mou Sugar de ja Salt sa MSG a cho mout Potato ah lou Vegetable a yweh Fruit a thee Banana nguh pyaw thee Apple pun thee Apple Juice pun thee yay Grapes duh beh thee Durian doo hinh thee Orange lei maw thee Chicken chet tha Beef ameh tha Goat seit tha Lamb tho tha Fish nga Bars Beer/Alcohol ayet Round (As in "A round of beers") pweh Ciggaretts sei lait Glass kwut Shopping Store sine Clothes ain gee Pants boun bee Shoes punuht Bra bou le Ring lut sout Socks chey sout House ehn Purse/Wallet puh sun eight Backpack saw ough eight Movies youh shin Driving Car ka Stop yet/ho Go/Drive thwa/moun Traffic Light Mee point Authority Administration oh cho yey Prime Minister wan-jee cho President thanmada Vice President duteya thanmada Military tatmadaw Chairman oh ga taw Parliament hluttaw Politics nine-nga yey This is a usable phrasebook. It explains pronunciation and the bare essentials of travel communication. An adventurous person could use it to get by, but please plunge forward and help it grow!