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

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 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
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

Basics

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 ______ .
ကျွန်တော့်နာမည် _____ ပါ။ (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.)
Nice to meet you.
တွေ့ရတာ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ် (Twe ya da wanta ba de)
Please.
ကျေးဇူးပြု၍ (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)
ခွင့်လွှတ်ပါ (Kwin lu pa )
I'm sorry.
တောင်းပန်ပါတယ်။ (Tau pa par de.)
Goodbye
. သွားတော့မယ်။(Thwa dau me)
Goodbye (informal)
သွားတော့မယ်။ (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.
မင်္ဂလာပါ (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

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