Burmese phrasebook

Burmese (မြန်မာစကား myen mar sa gar) 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 Brahmi script. 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 consonant 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 consonants are aspirated (contains an 'h' sound) and unaspirated (does not contain an 'h' sound).

Aspirated and unaspirated consonants 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. If it is pronounced, it is like an English approximant "r."

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

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 "Don't touch it."

Basics

Common signs OPEN CLOSED ENTRANCE EXIT PUSH PULL TOILET MEN WOMEN FORBIDDEN

‖ start of IPA ‖

Hello.

မင်္ဂလာပါ။ (mɪn gə lɑː bɑː)

Hello. (informal)

နေကောင်းလား။ (neɪ kaʊn lɑː ?)

How are you?

နေကောင်းလား။ (neɪ kaʊn lɑː ?)

Fine, thank you.

နေကောင်းပါတယ်။ (neɪ kaʊn bɑː deə)

What is your name?

(næmeə beə ləʊ kɒ leə?)

My name is ______ .

______ . Male: (dʒə nɒ næmeə _____ bɑː)

My name is ______ .

______ . Female: (dʒə mɑ næmeə _____ bɑː)

Nice to meet you.

(ðweɪ jɑ dɑː wʌn θɑ bɑː deə)

Please.

. (dʒeɪ zuː pjuː biː)

Thank you.

ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (dʒeɪ zuː tɪn bɑː deə)

You're welcome.

ရပါတယ်။ (jɑ bɑː deə)

Yes.

ဟုတ်တယ်။ (həʊt deə)

No.

မဟုတ်ဘူး။(mə həʊt buː)

Excuse me. (getting attention)

(tə seɪt laʊt)

Excuse me. (begging pardon)

(" ")

I'm sorry.

(θaʊ bæn bɑ deə)

I am going now

---- (θwɑː dɒ meə nɒ)

Goodbye (informal)

. (θwɑː dɒ meə)

I can't speak name of language [well].

[ ]. ( "bə mɑː zə gɑː" gəʊ [kaʊn kaʊn] mə pjɒ tʌt buː )

Do you speak English?

(ɪŋ gə leɪ zə gɑː pjɒ tʌt lɑː?)

Is there someone here who speaks English?

? (ɪŋ gə leɪ zə gɑː pjɒ tʌt deə luː diː mɑ ʃiː lɑː?)

Help!

! (kuː njiː bɑ əʊn!)

Look out!

! (ðə diː tɑː!)

Good morning.

(mɪn gə lɑː bɑː)

Good night (to sleep)

(eɪt θɒ meə)

I don't know.

မသိဘူး။(mə θiː buː)

I don't understand.

နားမလည်ဘူး။(nɑː mə leə buː)

Where is the toilet?

? (eəiːn ðɑ beə mɑː leə ?)

‖ end of IPA ‖

Numbers

Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals.

0

၀ (thoun-nya)သုည

1

၁ (tit)တစ်

2

၂ (hni)နှစ်

3

၃ (thoun)သုံး

4

၄ (lei)လေး

5

၅ (nga)ငါး

6

၆ (chao)ခြောက်

7

၇ (kun hni)ခုနှစ်

8

၈ (shit)ရှစ်

9

၉ (koe)ကိုး

10

၁၀ (se)ဆယ်

11

၁၁ (seh-tit)ဆယ့်တစ်

12

၁၂ (seh-hnih)ဆယ့်နှစ်

13

၁၃ (seh-thoun)ဆယ့်သုံး

14

၁၄ (seh-lei)ဆယ့်လေး

15

၁၅ (seh-nga)ဆယ့်ငါး

16

၁၆ (seh-chauk)ဆယ့်ခြောက်

17

၁၇ (seh-kuun)ဆယ့်ခုနှစ်

18

၁၈ (seh-shit)ဆယ့်ရှစ်

19

၁၉ (seh-kou)ဆယ့်ကိုး

20

၂၀ (hna-seh)နှစ်ဆယ်

21

၂၁ (hna-seh-tit)နှစ်ဆယ့်တစ်

22

၂၂ (hna-seh-hnih)နှစ်ဆယ့်နှစ်

23

၂၃ (hna-seh-thoun)နှစ်ဆယ့်သုံး

30

၃၀ (thoun-zeh)သုံးဆယ်

40

၄၀ (lei-zeh)လေးဆယ်

50

၅၀ (nga-zeh)ငါးဆယ်

60

၆၀ (chau-seh)ခြောက်ဆယ်

70

၇၀ (kueh-na-seh)ခုနှစ်ဆယ်

80

၈၀ (shit-seh)ရှစ်ဆယ်

90

၉၀ (ko-zeh)ကိုးဆယ်

100

၁၀၀ (tit-ya)တစ်ရာ

200

၂၀၀ (hni-ya)နှစ်ရာ

300

၃၀၀ (thoun-ya)သုံးရာ

500

၅၀၀ (nga-ya)ငါးရာ

1000

၁၀၀၀ (tit-taon)တစ်ထောင်

2000

၂၀၀၀ (hna-taon)နှစ်ထောင်

10,000

(tit-thaon)တစ်သောင်း

20,000 ; (hna-thaon)နှစ်သောင်း

90,000 ; (koe-thaon)ကိုးသောင်း

100,000 ; (tit-thain)တစ်သိန်း

200,000 ; (hna-thain)နှစ်သိန်း

300,000 ; (thon-thain)သုံးသိန်း

1,000,000 ; (seal-thain)(tit-thal)ဆယ်သိန်း/တစ်သန်း

1,100,000 ; (seal tit-thain)(tit-thal-tit-thain)ဆယ့်တစ်သိန်း/တစ်သန်းတစ်သိန်း

1,900,000; (seal koe-thain)ဆယ့်ကိုးသိန်း/တစ်သန်းကိုးသိန်း

10,000,000; (seal thal)(thain tit yar)(tit kutay)ဆယ်သန်း/သိန်းတစ်ရာ/တစ်ကုဋေ)

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 (နောက်မှ)

before

a shei (အရှေ့) ma tai mi မတိုင္မီ

morning

ma ne (မနက်)

afternoon

nei le (နေ့လယ်)

night

nya (ည)

Clock time

What time is it?

Be ne na yee toe bi le?

It is nine in the morning.

Ko nar yee toe bi.

Three-thirty PM.

Thoun na yee kwe.

Duration

_____ minute(s)

min-ni (မိနစ်‌)

_____ hour(s)

nar yee (နာရီ)

_____ day(s)

ye' or nei (နေ့)

_____ week(s)

ba (ပတ်)

_____ month(s)

la (လ)

_____ year(s)

nit (နှစ်‌)

Days

today

di nei / ya nei

yesterday

ma nei

tomorrow

ma ne pyan

this week

di a ba

last week

a yin ba / ya kin ba

next week

nao ba

Sunday

t'nin ga nei (တနင်္ဂနွေ)

Monday

t'nin la (တနင်္လာ)

Tuesday

in ga (အင်္ဂါ)

Wednesday

bou ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး)

Thursday

kya tha ba dei (ကြာသာပတေး)

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

အမဲရောင်(အနက်ရောင်)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?

Transportation

Bus and train, ship and plane

Train ရထား
yeh-ta

Train Station ဘူတာရုံ
bu ta yone

Bus
ba(sa) ka

Bus Stop မှတ်တိုင်
ka hma tine

Bus Station
ka gey

Ship
thin bau

Port
thin bau sey

Airplane လေယာဉ်ပျံ
leyin pyan

Airport လေဆိပ်
ley yein gun

Ticket လက်မှတ်
leh hma

Fare
ka

Depart/Leave ထွက်ခွာ
tweh

Arrive ဆိုက်ရောက်
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
ein tha

Bathroom
yay cho khan

Food

asaa-asaa

Money

How much is it?
Zey beh lout le?
Money
kyat

one dollar
dtih kyat

two dollars
hnih kyat

three dollars
thone kyat

four dollars
ley kyat

five dollars
nga kyat

six dollars
chowt kyat

seven dollars
kun-hih kyat

eight dollars
shih kyat

nine dollars
gou 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 အသီး
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!