Burmese phrasebook
Burmese (မြန်မာစကား 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".
Like Thai, Lao and Khmer, the Burmese language has been strongly influenced by Sanskrit and Pali. There are also loan words from some southern dialects of Chinese, particularly for culinary terms, due to influences from Chinese immigrants during the colonial period.
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 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:
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. |
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 an Indic script like Thai, Lao and Khmer, based on an ancient Indian script called Pali. Its alphabet contains 34 letters, which look like circles or semicircles. Like other Indic scripts, the Burmese script is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, and vowels are indicated by modifications to the consonant letter (e.g. with a diacritic mark). 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
bo
- d
- like the 'd' in dagger
du
- g
- like the 'g' in gap
gi
- h
- like the 'h' in house
ha
- k
- like the 'k' in tanker
ke
- kh
- like the 'c' in cat
- ky
- like the 'j' in jeep
ju
- l
- like the 'l' in love
la
- 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
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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." |
Basics
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Common signs
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- Hello.
- မင်္ဂလာပါ။ (Min ga la ba.)
- Hello. (informal)
- နေကောင်းလား (Nei kaung la?)
- How are you?
- နေကောင်းလား။ (Nei kaon la?)
- Fine, thank you.
- နေကောင်းပါတယ်။ (Ne kaon ba de)
- What is your name?
- ? ခင်ဗျားနာမည်ဘာလဲ။ (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.
- ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (Kyeizu tin ba de.)
- You're welcome.
- ရပါတယ်။ (Ya ba de.)
- Yes.
- ဟုတ်တယ်။ (Ho de.)
- No.
- . မဟုတ်ဘူး။(Ma ho bu.)
- Excuse me. (getting attention)
- ခင်ဗျာ? (Ka mya?)
- Excuse me. (begging pardon)
- . ( )
- I'm sorry.
- . (saw-re-be )
- Goodbye
- . သွားတော့မယ်။(Thwa dau me)
- Goodbye (informal)
- . (Thwa dau me)
- I can't speak Burmese [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.
- . ကျွန်တော်မသိဘူး။(Kya-nau ma thi bu)
- I don't understand.
- . ကျွန်တော်နားမလည်ဘူး။(Kya-nau na ma ley bu)
- Where is the toilet?
- ? (Ka mya yei, ein da ga be ma leh)
Numbers
Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals. Burmese also uses its own numerals, and most signs around the country are written in Burmese numerals. The Arabic numerals used by Westerners are also understood by most Burmese, but not commonly written outside tourist establishments.
- 0
- ၀ (thoun-nya)
- 1
- ၁ (tit)
- 2
- ၂ (hni)
- 3
- ၃ (thoun)
- 4
- ၄ (lei)
- 5
- ၅ (nga)
- 6
- ၆ (kyout)
- 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 (mgazeh)
- 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
- evening
- nya nay
- 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 (မိနစ္်)
- _____ hour(s)
- nai yi (နာရီ)
- _____ day(s)
- ye' or nei (နေ့)
- _____ week(s)
- ba
- _____ month(s)
- la (လ)
- _____ year(s)
- hni (နှစ်)
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 (တနင်္ဂနွေ)
- Monday
- tha nin la (တနင်္လာ)
- Tuesday
- in ga (အင်္ဂါ)
- Wednesday
- bo ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး)
- Thursday
- kya tha ba dei (ကြာသပတေး)
- Friday
- tao kya (သောကြာ)
- 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.
Colors
- black
- အမည်းရောင် a me yaon
- white
- အဖြူရောင် a pyu yaon
- gray
- မီးခိုးရောင် mi go yaon
- red
- အနီရောင် a ni yaon
- blue
- အပြာရောင် a pya yaon
- yellow
- အဝါရောင် a wa yaon
- green
- အစိမ်းရောင် a sein yaon
- orange
- လိမ္မော်ရောင် lein mau yaon
- purple
- ခရမ်းရောင် ka-yan yaon
- brown
- အညိုရောင် a nyo yaon
- Do you have it in another color?
- Di ha go nao a yaon de she la?
Bus and train, ship and plane
Train
yeh-ta
Train Station
bu ta yone
Bus
ba(sa) ka
2
Bus Stop
ka hma tine
Bus Station
ka gey
Ship
thin bau
3
Port
thin bau sey
5
Airplane
leyin pyan
6
Airport
ley yein gun
5
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 referring 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