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

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 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 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

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

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 Aien thar MEN WOMEN FORBIDDEN

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 ______ .

______ . (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.)

Nice to meet you.

. (Twe ya da wanta ba de)

Please.

. (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)

. ( )

I'm sorry.

. (saw-re-be )

Goodbye

. သွားတော့မယ်။(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.

. 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?

Transportation

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