Burmese phrasebook

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Burmese (ဴမန္မာစကား bama zaga) 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

Template:Infobox 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 Sri Lankan 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

Template:Infobox

Basics

Hello.: မဂႆလာပၝ. (Min ga la ba.)
Hello. (informal): . (Nei kaon la?)
How are you?: ? (Nei kaon la?)
Fine, thank you.: . (Kya nau ga kaon de)
What is your name?: ? (Kamya ye nan be ga ba le?)
My name is ______ .: ______ . (Kya nau ye nan be ga _____.)
Nice to meet you.: . (Ka mya go dui da ai yi win tha de)
Please.: . ( )
Thank you.: . (Kyeizu thin 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.: . ( )
Goodbye: . (Thau dau me)
Goodbye (informal): . (Thau dau me)
I can't speak name of language [well].: [ ]. ( [Kya nau ga ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma tha bu.])
Do you speak English?: ? ( Ka mya ga in glei za ga go tha la?)
Is there someone here who speaks English?: ? (In glei za-ga thah de lu di ma shi la?)
Help!: ! (A ku nyi lo de!)
Look out!: ! (Ai ya! Kyi!)
Good morning.: . ( )
Good evening.: . ( )
Good night.: . ( )
Good night (to sleep): . ( )
I don't understand.: . (Kya-nau ma thi 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 (she)
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-shih)
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 (shih-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: (tha-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 kue.

Duration

_____ minute(s): min-ni (Burmanization of "minute")
_____ hour(s): nai yi
_____ day(s): ye
_____ week(s): ba
_____ month(s): la
_____ year(s): hni

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
Monday: tha-nin-la
Tuesday: in-ga
Wednesday: bo-ta-hu
Thursday: kya-ba-dei
Friday: tao-kya
Saturday: sa-nei

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: အမည္ေရာင္ 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

Directions

Taxi

Lodging

Money

Eating

Bars

Shopping

Driving

Authority

Learning more

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Retrieved from "http://www.world-travel-guide.net/Travel/Burmese_phrasebook"

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