Burmese(Burmese: မြန်မာဘာသာ, mien ma za ga) is the official language in Myanmar. It is closely related to Tibetan and distantly related to Chinese. The language also has its own script, which is based on the ancient Indian Pali. The alphabet consists of 34 letters, most of which are made up of circles and segments. In addition, there are a number of stress marks.
Myanmar ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် | |
grammar
The sentence structure follows the subject-object-verb order. As in many languages of South East Asia, there is a whole series of addresses and honorary designations as well as a whole series of prefixes and suffixes to clarify moods. Relationships such as “brother” or “aunt” are often used in place of “you” and “me”.
pronunciation
Burmese is one tonal Speech with four tones that differ in pitch, but also in articulation (low, high, creaky, inhibited). There is an English-based transcription available.
Vowels
Burmese has a complicated system of 12 vowels in total.
Diphthongs
- ai
- like 'i' in leg
- ouch
- like 'au' in tree
- egg
- like 'a' in English ache
- ou
- like 'oa' in English moat
Monophthongs
- a
- like 'a' in mummy
- e
- like 'ie' in 'bee'
- i
- like 'ea' in English meat
- O
- like 'o' in boat
- u
- like 'u' in Well
- ih
- short 'i' as in Tip
Consonants
Endings and consonates often appear in the transcriptions that are a little difficult to pronounce. Here are a few pointers:
- -'k '
like in Kyaiktiyo (a place of pilgrimage), becomes tscai-TI-ou pronounced.
- -'ne '
like in Mawlamyino (a city in Myanmar), will mau-la-myain pronounced.
- -'ng '
like in Sagaing (a city in Myanmar), will sa-gainh pronounced.
- -'m '
as in dhamma (a Buddhist term), becomes dha-MA pronounced. (There are exceptions here -m. For example, lam, What road means will lan, with a n pronounced.)
- -'r '
like in Myanmar, becomes myan-MA pronounced.
- -'t '
- b
- how am boat
- d
- like 'd' in shower
- G
- like 'g' in Gustav
- H
- like 'h' in Hello
- k
- like 'k' in Tanker
- kh
- like 'k' in cake
- ky
- like 'dsch' in jungle
- l
- like 'l' in love
- m
- like 'm' in brave
- n
- like 'n' in nail
- ng
- like 'ng' in sound
- ny
- like 'ni' in English onion
- p, ph
- like 'p' in pill
- r
- is spoken to a 'y', or not. In other words we like the to a rolling "r" ("rrrr") - like the "r" in Spanish.
- s
- like 's' in to sing
- shw
- like 'sch' in school
- hs
- like a voiceless 'ß' in road
- t
- like 'tt' in bed
- th
- like 't' in title
- w
- like 'w' in wish
- y
- like 'j' in youth
- z
- voiced 's' as in to sing
Idioms
The following sentence construction is used to negate verbs:
- ma ____ bu
Is used to indicate that an activity has not been carried out, for example: No ma kaing bu means "you haven't touched that".
- ma ____ neh
Is used to express that an activity must not be carried out.
Example: No ma kaing neh, which means "Don't touch that!"Basics
- Open
- Closed
- Entrance
- Exit
- To press
- Pull
- Toilet
- Men
- Women
- Forbidden
- Hello.
- မင်္ဂလာပါ။ (Min ga la ba.)
- Hello. (not formal)
- (Nei kaung la?)
- How are you?
- န ကောင်း လာ။ (Nei kaon la?)
- Good thank you.
- န ကောင်းပါတယ်။ (Ne kaon ba de)
- What's 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)
- You're welcome.
- . (Kyeizu pyu yue )
- Thanks.
- ကျေးဇူး တန်ပါတယ်။ (Kyeizu tin ba de.)
- You're welcome.
- ရပါတယ်။ (Ya ba de.)
- Yes.
- ဟုတ်တယ်။ (Ho de.)
- No.
- မဟုတ် ဘူ။(Ma ho bu.)
- Sorry. (attract attention)
- ခင် ဗဵာ? (Ka mya?)
- Sorry. (Please try again!)
- ()
- Sorry. (I'm sorry.)
- (saw-re-be )
- Goodbye.
- သွာ တော့မယ်။ (Thwa dah me)
- Bye
- (Thwa dah me)
- I'm not really good at name of language speak.
- (ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma pyaw thet bu.)
- Do you speak English?
- (in glei za ga go pyaw thet de la?)
- Does anyone here speak English?
- (In glei za-ga pyaw thet de lu di ma shi la?)
- Help!
- ! (A ku nyi lo de!)
- Watch out!
- ! (Ai ya! Kyi!)
- Good Morning!
- (Mingalaba )
- Good night!
- (Eigh douh meh )
- I do not know.
- ကျန် ပ် း မသိ ဘူ။(Kya-nau ma thi bu)
- I do not understand.
- ကျန် ပ် း နာ မလဲ ဘူ။(Kya-nau na ma ley bu)
- Where is the toilet?
- ? (Ka mya yei, a da ga be ma leh)
numbers
Burmese numbers follow the Arabic number system.
- 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 (see-tit)
- 12
- ၁၂ (see-hnih)
- 13
- ၁၃ (see thoun)
- 14
- ၁၄ (see-lei)
- 15
- ၁၅ (see-nga)
- 16
- ၁၆ (see-chauk)
- 17
- ၁၇ (see-kuun)
- 18
- ၁၈ (see-shit)
- 19
- ၁၉ (seh-kou)
- 20
- ၂၀ (hna-see)
- 21
- ၂၁ (hna-seh-tit)
- 22
- ၂၂ (hna-see-hnih)
- 23
- ၂၃ (hna-see-thoun)
- 30
- ၃၀ (thoun-toe)
- 40
- ၄၀ (lei-toe)
- 50
- ၅၀ (nga-zeh)
- 60
- ၆၀ (chau-see)
- 70
- ၇၀ (kueh-na-see)
- 80
- ၈၀ (shit-see)
- 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 _____ (Trains, buses, etc.)
- Burmese knows several classifiers. Small rule of thumb: use ku for objects and yau for people.
Times
- now
- အခု (a gu)
- later
- (nao ma)
- in front
- (a shei)
- morning
- (ma ne)
- in the afternoon
- (no le)
- at night
- ည (nya)
Time
- What time is it?
- (Be ne na yee toe bi le?)
- It's nine in the morning.
- (Ko nai toe bi.)
- 03
- 30 p.m. : (Thoun na yee kwe.)
Duration
- _____ minute (s)
- မိနစ် (min-ni)
- _____ hour (s)
- နာရီ (nai yi)
- _____ day (s)
- နေ့ (ye or nei)
- _____ week (s)
- (ba)
- _____ month (s)
- လ (la)
- _____ year (s)
- န ် ဟစ် (hni)
Days
- today
- (di nei)
- yesterday
- (ma no)
- tomorrow
- (ma ne pyan)
- this week
- (di ba)
- last week
- (a yin ba)
- next week
- (nao ba)
- Monday
- တ နင်း လာ: (tha nin la)
- Tuesday
- အင် ဂာ: (in ga)
- Wednesday
- ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး: (bo ta hu)
- Thursday
- က ္ ရား သ ပ တေး: (kya tha ba dei)
- Friday
- သောက္ ရာ: (tao kya)
- Saturday
- စ နေ: (sa nei)
- Sunday
- တ နင္ ဂန္ ဝေ: (tha nin ga nei)
Note: The Burmese calendar counts 8 days. There is a day ya-hu called, between Wednesday and Thursday, is only of ceremonial importance.
Months
Notation of time and date
Colours
- black
- အမည် ရောင် (a me yaon)
- White
- အဖ္ ရူ ရောင် (a pyu yaon)
- Gray
- မီး ခု ္ း ရောင် (mi go yaon)
- red
- အနီရောင် (a ni yaon)
- blue
- အပ္ ရာ ရောင် (a pya yaon)
- yellow
- အ ဝာ ရောင် (a wa yaon)
- green
- အ စိမ္ ရောင် (a its yaon)
- orange
- လိမ္ မော ္ ရောင် (lein mau yaon)
- violet
- ခ ရမ္း ရောင် (ka-yan yaon)
- brown
- အညိုရောင် (a nyo yaon)
- Do you have that in a different color?
- (Di ha go nao a yaon de she la?)
traffic
Train, bus and plane
- train
- (yeh-ta)
- railway station
- (bu ta yone)
- bus
- (ba (sa) ka)
- Bus stop
- (ka hma tine)
- Bus station
- (ka gey)
- ship
- (thin construction)
- port
- (thin build sey)
- plane
- (leyin pyan)
- Airport
- (ley yein gun)
- ticket
- (leh hma)
- price
- (ka)
- Departure
- (tweh)
- Arrivals
- (yow)
- Luggage
- (pyit lake)
Directions
- Over there
- (ho beht)
- Left side
- (beh beht)
- right side
- (nya beht)
taxi
- Is the taxi free?
- (Te ka se ahh tha la)
accommodation
- Stay / sleep
- (theh)
- bed
- (ga din)
- Toilet
- (ehn tha)
- shower
- (yay cho khan)
- eat
- (asar)
money
- What does this cost?
- (Zey beh lout le?)
- money
- (kyat)
- One kyat
- (deh kyat)
- Two kyat
- (neh kyat)
- Three kyat
- (thone kyat)
- Four kyat
- (ley kyat)
- Five kyat
- (nga kyat)
- Six kyat
- (chowt kyat)
- Seven kyat
- (cuni kyat)
- Eight kyat
- (sheh kyat)
- Nine kyat
- (coh kyat)
- Ten kyat
- (se kyat)
- Twenty kyat
- (neh se kyat)
- Twenty-five kyat
- (take se nga kyat)
- Fifty kyat
- (nga se kyat)
- One hundred kyat
- (tayar kyat)
- When referring to the US dollar, it is important to put the word "dollar" BEFORE the number
- (e.g. US $ 50 means "dollar nga se").
eat
- I'm hungry.
- (Nga bite sa de.)
- Where do you want to eat
- (Beh sau thot sine thwa meh le?)
- I can only drink bottled water
- (Kha naw ye bu ye be thouk lo ya de)
- Do you have napkins? (Can i have one?)
- (napkin she tha la)
- Fried food
- (uh chaw sa)
- Pasta
- (cow sweh)
- Rice (white)
- (htamin)
- Fried rice
- (htamin chaw)
- Ice cubes
- (yey ghe)
- Ice cream
- (yey ghe mou)
- sugar
- (de yes)
- salt
- (sa)
- Glutamate
- (a cho mout)
- potato
- (ah lou)
- vegetables
- (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
- (since tha)
- lamb
- (tho tha)
- fish
- (nga)
Bars
- Beer / alcohol
- (ayet)
- Round (in the sense of "a round of beer")
- (pweh)
- Cigarettes
- (be lait)
- Glass
- (kwut)
shop
- business
- (sine)
- dress
- (ain gee)
- Pants
- (boun bee)
- Shoes
- (punuht)
- bra
- (le)
- ring
- (lut sout)
- Socks
- (chey sout)
- House
- (ehn)
- Wallet
- (phew sun eight)
- backpack
- (saw ough eight)
- Movies
- (youh shin)
Drive
- automobile
- (ka)
- stop
- (yet / ho)
- Go / drive
- (thwa / moun)
- traffic light
- (Mee point)
administration
- 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)