Burmese phrasebook

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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".

Grammar

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 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 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 :
; 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 name of language . : . ( )
; 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)

Problems

Numbers

Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals.
; 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.

Time

; now : a gu (အခု)
; later : nao ma
; before : a shei
; morning : ma ne
; afternoon : nei le
; 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 (မိနစ္‌)
; _____ hour(s) : nai yi (နာရီ)
; _____ day(s) : ye' or nei (နေ့)
; _____ week(s) : ba
; _____ month(s) : la (လ)
; _____ year(s) : hni (န္ဟစ္‌)

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 (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.

Months

Writing time and date

Colors

; 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?

Transportation

Bus and train, ship and plane

Train
yeh-ta
Train Station
bu ta yone
Bus
ba(sa) ka
Bus Stop
ka hma tine
Bus Station
ka gey
Ship
thin bau
Port
thin bau sey
Airplane
leyin pyan
Airport
ley yein gun
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