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".
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".
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:
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. The Burmese script also contains many tone marks and sound modifying marks.
Burmese uses an English-based romanisation system.
Burmese has a complicated set of vowels, containing 12 vowels.
; 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
; 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
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
Negations
Burmese, when negating verbs, uses two of the following structures:
Common signs
; OPEN ; CLOSED : ; ENTRANCE : ; EXIT : ; PUSH : ; PULL : ; TOILET :Aien thar ; 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 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. : . 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)
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 (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.
; now : a gu (အခု) ; later : nao ma ; before : a shei ; morning : ma ne ; afternoon : nei le ; evening : nya nay ; night : nya (ည)
; 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.
; _____ 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)
; 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.
; 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?
Train<br> yeh-ta
Train Station<br> bu ta yone
Bus<br> ba(sa) ka
Bus Stop<br> ka hma tine
Bus Station<br> ka gey
Ship<br> thin bau
Port<br> thin bau sey
Airplane<br> leyin pyan
Airport<br> ley yein gun
Ticket<br> leh hma
Fare<br> ka
Depart/Leave<br> tweh
Arrive<br> yow<br><br>
Luggage<br> pyit see
Over there<br> ho beht<br> Left Side<br> beh beht<br> Right Side nya beht
Is this taxi free? <br> Te ka se ahh tha la
To Stay<br> theh<br><br> Bed<br> ga din<br><br> Restroom<br> ehn tha<br><br> Shower<br> yay cho khan<br><br> Food<br><br> asar
How much is it? <br> Zey beh lout le?<br> Money<br> kyat<br><br> one dollar<br> deh kyat<br><br> two dollars<br> neh kyat<br><br> three dollars<br> thone kyat<br><br> four dollars<br> ley kyat<br><br> five dollars<br> nga kyat<br><br> six dollars<br> chowt kyat<br><br> seven dollars<br> cuni kyat<br><br> eight dollars<br> sheh kyat<br><br> nine dollars<br> coh kyat<br><br> ten dollars<br> se kyat<br><br> twenty dollars<br> neh se kyat<br><br> twenty-five dollars<br> neh se nga kyat<br> or more commonly<br> a sait <br><br> fifty dollars<br> nga se kyat<br><br> one hundred dollars<br> tayar kyat<br><br> When referring to US currency, it is important to remember to say "dollar" before the specified amount<br> For example US $50 would be "dollar nga se".
I am hungry.<br> Nga bite sa de.<br><br> Where do you want to go eat?<br> Beh sau thot sine thwa meh le?<br><br> I can only drink bottled water<br> Kha naw ye bu ye be thouk lo ya de<br><br> Are there any napkins (Can I have one?)<br> napkin she tha la<br><br> Fried foods<br> uh chaw sa<br><br> Noodles<br> cow sweh<br><br> Rice (white)<br> htamin<br><br> Fried rice<br> htamin chaw<br><br> Ice<br> yey ghe<br><br> Ice cream bar <br> yey ghe mou<br><br> Sugar<br> de ja<br><br> Salt<br> sa<br><br> MSG<br> a cho mout<br><br> Potato<br> ah lou<br><br> Vegetable<br> a yweh<br><br> Fruit<br> a thee<br><br> Banana<br> nguh pyaw thee<br><br> Apple<br> pun thee<br><br> Apple Juice<br> pun thee yay<br><br> Grapes<br> duh beh thee<br><br> Durian<br> doo hinh thee<br><br> Orange<br> lei maw thee<br><br> Chicken<br> chet tha<br><br> Beef<br> ameh tha<br><br> Goat<br> seit tha<br><br> Lamb<br> tho tha<br><br> Fish<br> nga<br><br>
Store<br> sine<br><br> Clothes<br> ain gee<br><br> Pants<br> boun bee<br><br> Shoes<br> punuht<br><br> Bra<br> bou le<br><br> Ring<br> lut sout<br><br> Socks<br> chey sout<br><br> House<br> ehn<br><br> Purse/Wallet<br> puh sun eight<br><br> Backpack<br> saw ough eight<br><br> Movies<br> youh shin<br><br>
Car<br> ka<br><br> Stop<br> yet/ho<br><br> Go/Drive<br> thwa/moun<br><br> Traffic Light<br> Mee point<br><br>
Administration<br> oh cho yey
Prime Minister<br> wan-jee cho
President<br> thanmada
Vice President<br> duteya thanmada
Military<br> tatmadaw
Chairman<br> oh ga taw
Parliament<br> hluttaw
Politics<br> nine-nga yey