Burmese phrasebook

Burmese (မျန္‌မားစကား 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? 

? (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. 

ေ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. 

. (saw-re-be )

Goodbye 

. သြာေတာ့မယ္။(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.  

. က်န္ပ္းမသိဘူ။(Kya-nau ma thi bu)

I don't understand. 

. က်န္ပ္းနာမလဲဘူ။(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 (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 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