Burmese (မ္ရန္မာစကား ba ma za ga) is the official and primary language of Myanmar. It is closely related to Chinese and Tibetan. 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
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Read English signs properly
Burmese, similar to French, rarely has consonant endings, because most become glottal stops (like the 'h' in uh-oh!) or nasalised. Burmese names spelt in English include these endings to denote the fact that the endings are written. These endings include:
such as in Kyaiktiyo (a Buddhist pilgrimage site), which is pronounced chaih-TEE-ou.
such as Mawlamyine (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced mau-la-myain.
such as in Sagaing (a city in Myanmar), which is pronounced za-gainh.
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.)
such as in Myanmar, which is pronounced myan-MA.
such as in Thatbyinnyu (a temple in Bagan), which is pronounced thah-BYIN-nyu.
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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
- ph
- like the 'p' in pig
- r
- becomes a 'y', or is silent
- 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
- y
- like a 'y' in young
- z
- like a 'z' in zoo
Phrase list
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Negations
Burmese, when negating verbs, uses two of the following structures:
used to mean that the verb was not accomplished.
Example: Nei ma kaing bu, which means "You did not touch it".
used to mean that the verb must not be accomplished.
Example: Nei ma kaing neh, which means "You do not touch it."
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Basics
- Hello.
- မဂႆလာပၝ. (Min ga la ba.)
- Hello. (informal)
- . (Nei kaon ye la?)
- How are you?
- ? (Nei kaon la?)
- Fine, thank you.
- . (Ne kaon ba de)
- What is your name?
- ? (Kamya ye na mee ba le?)
- My name is ______ .
- ______ . (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.)
- Nice to meet you.
- . (Twe ya da wanta ba de)
- Please.
- . (Kyeizu pyu yue )
- Thank you.
- . (Kyeizu tin ba de.)
- You're welcome.
- . (Ya ba de.)
- Yes.
- . (Ho de.)
- No.
- . (Ma ho bu.)
- Excuse me. (getting attention)
- ခင္ဗဵာ? (Ka mya?)
- Excuse me. (begging pardon)
- . ( )
- I'm sorry.
- . (saw-re-be )
- Goodbye
- . (Thwa dau me)
- Goodbye (informal)
- . (Thwa dau me)
- 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!
- ! (A ku nyi lo de!)
- Look out!
- ! (Ai ya! Kyi!)
- Good morning.
- . (Mingalaba )
- Good night (to sleep)
- . (Eigh douh meh )
- I don't know.
- . ("Kya-nau ma thi bu")
- I don't understand.
- . (Kya-nau na ma ley bu)
- Where is the toilet?
- ? (Ka mya yei, ein da ga be ma leh)
Problems
Numbers
Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals.
- 0
- ၀ (thoun-nya)
- 1
- ၁ (thi, tha)
- 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-thi)
- 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-thih)
- 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 (thi-ya)
- 200
- ၂၀၀ (hni-ya)
- 300
- ၃၀၀ (thoun-ya)
- 500
- ၅၀၀ (nga-ya)
- 1000
- ၁၀၀၀ (tha-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
- later
- nao ma
- before
- a shei
- morning
- ma ne
- afternoon
- nei le
- night
- nya
Clock time
- What time is it?
- Be na nai to bi le?
- It is nine in the morning.
- Ko nai to bi.
- Three-thirty PM.
- Thoun nai 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
- အမည္ ရောင္ a me yaon
- white
- အဖ္ရူရောင္ a pyu yaon
- gray
- မီးခု္းရောင္ mi go yaon
- red
- အနီရောင္ a ni yaon
- blue
- အပ္ရာရောင္ a pya yaon
- yellow
- အဝာရောင္ a wa yaon
- green
- အစိမ္ရောင္ a sein yaon
- orange
- လိမ္မော္ရောင္ lein mau yaon
- purple
- ခရမ္းရောင္ ka-yan yaon
- brown
- အညိုရောင္ 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
thu 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
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 na
Shower
yay cho cun
Food
asa
Money
How much is it?
Zey beh lout le?
Money
chet
one dollar
deh chet
two dollars
neh chet
three dollars
thone chet
four dollars
ley chet
five dollars
nga chet
six dollars
chowt chet
seven dollars
cuni chet
eight dollars
sheh chet
nine dollars
coh chet
ten dollars
se chet
twenty dollars
neh se chet
twenty-five dollars
neh se nga chet
or more commonly
a sait
fifty dollars
nga se chet
one hundred dollars
theya chet
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
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
Adminitstration
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
Learning more
| This is a usable article. It has information for getting in as well as some complete entries for restaurants and hotels. An adventurous person could use this article, but please plunge forward and help it grow!
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