# Burmese pronouns

Burmese pronouns (Burmese: နာမ်စား) are words in the Burmese language used to address or refer to people or things.

## Grammatical markers

Burmese has an elaborate case marking system, especially compared to other languages in the region. Subject pronouns begin sentences, though the subject is generally omitted in the imperative forms and in spoken Burmese. Grammatically speaking, subject marker particles (က ( in colloquial, သည် in formal) must be attached to the subject pronoun, although they are also generally omitted in spoken Burmese. Object pronouns must have an object marker particle (ကို in colloquial, အား in formal) attached immediately after the pronoun.

## Politeness

Burmese exhibits pronoun avoidance, where pronouns are avoided for politeness. This is an areal feature also common in major regional Asian languages like Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese. In Burmese, speakers account for social distinctions linguistically, reflecting gender, relative age, kinship, social status, and intimacy. Burmese uses "negative politeness," whereby speakers avoid directly addressing people. Instead, Burmese relies on status and kinship terms, titles, and other terms of address, rather than regular pronouns. Burmese kinship terms are commonly substituted as pronouns. For instance, an older person may refer to themselves as ဒေါ်လေး (dau le:; "aunt") or ဦးလေး (u: lei:; "uncle"), while a younger person may refer to themselves as သား (sa:; "son") or သမီး (sa.mi:; "daughter") in spoken conversation.
Burmese has a hierarchical system of pronouns, consisting of an open class of pronouns that are grammatically underspecified, but highly marked for the complex relation between speaker and addressee according to their relative position in the society. This feature is also seen in other lowland mainland Southeast Asian languages like Thai and Vietnamese. The prevalence of wet-rice farming in Burmese-speaking areas influenced the development of hierarchical pronouns in Burmese, as society was structured more along hierarchical lines. By contrast, other Tibeto-Burman languages in Myanmar, including Jingpo and Karenic languages, have maintained a grammatical system of pronouns, reflective of their more egalitarian dry-rice farming societies.

## Personal pronouns

As a hierarchical system, the set of Burmese pronouns has substantially expanded to include lexical items like nouns and nominal phrases. These pronouns encode pragmatic, social relationships, reflecting the speaker-addressee relationship. In Burmese, the polite forms of first-person pronouns ကျွန်တော် (kya. nau, lit. 'royal slave') for males, and ကျွန်မ (kya. ma., lit. 'female slave') for females humble the speaker, while the polite forms of second-person pronouns မင်း (min; lit. 'lordship'), ခင်ဗျား (khang bya:; lit. 'master lord') or ရှင် (hrang; lit. 'ruler, master') elevate the addressee.
Burmese possesses several "true" pronouns inherited from Old Burmese; however these forms have been relegated to use in intimate situations only and are considered rude when used with people of higher status.These include the first-person pronoun ငါ (nga; "I/me") and second-person pronoun နင် (nang; "you"), which are now used only in intimate settings and only with speakers of equal or lower status or age.

### Basic personal pronouns

The personal pronouns are pluralized by suffixing the following particles to the pronoun: တို့ (tui.) or colloquial ဒို့ (dui.).
| Person | Usage | Term | IPA | Origin | Usage notes |
| First | Polite | ကျွန်တော် | /tɕənɔ̀/ | lit. 'royal slave' | used by males |
| First | Polite | ကျွန်မ | /tɕəma̰/ | lit. 'female slave' | used by females |
| First | Polite | ကျွန်ုပ် | /tɕənouʔ/ | lit. 'tiny slave' | |
| First | Polite | မိမိ | /mḭmḭ/ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | |
| First | Informal | ငါ | /ŋà/ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors |
| First | Informal | ကျုပ် | /tɕouʔ/ | Contraction of ကျွန်ုပ်. lit. 'tiny slave' | |
| First | Informal | တို့ | /do̰/ | | |
| First | Informal | ကိုယ် | /kò/ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language, lit. 'body' | |
| Second | Polite | ခင်ဗျား | /kʰəmjá/ | Contraction of သခင်ဘုရား, lit. 'master lord' | used by males |
| Second | Polite | ရှင် | /ʃɪ̀ɴ/ | lit. 'ruler, master' | used by females |
| Second | Polite | (အ)သင် | /(ə)θìɴ/ | lit. 'monk, august person' | |
| Second | | လူကြီးမင်း | /lùd͡ʑímɪ́ɴ/ | lit. 'elder lord' | |
| Second | Informal | နင် | /nɪ̀ɴ/ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors |
| Second | Informal | မင်း | /mɪ́ɴ/ | lit. 'lord' | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors, typically by male speakers |
| Second | Informal | ညည်း | /ɲí/ | Informal | used by females when addressing another female of same age or one younger |
| Second | Informal | တော် | /tɔ̀/ | lit. 'royal' | used by females |
| Third | | သူ | /θù/ | | |
| Third | | သင်း | /θí̃/ | | literary usage only |
| Third | | ချင်း | /ʧʰíɴ/ | | |

### Kinship terms

Spoken Burmese commonly uses kinship terms in place of first, second or third person pronouns. Use of these terms indicates proximity and familiarity between the speaker and addressee, as well as relative age. Female speakers commonly reduplicate the terms for 'older brother' (အစ်ကို > ကိုကို) and 'younger brother' (မောင် > မောင်မောင်) as romantic terms of endearment, while male speakers do not.
| Term | Reciprocal term | Usage notes |
| အဖွား lit. 'grandma' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for elderly women |
| အဖိုး lit. 'grandpa' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for elderly men |
| အဒေါ် lit. 'aunt'အန်တီ lit. 'auntie' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for women similar in age to one's parents |
| ဦးလေး lit. 'uncle'အန်ကယ် lit. 'uncle' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for men similar in age to one's parents |
| အမေ lit. 'mom' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for women similar in age to one's parents, familiar/intimate |
| အဖေ lit. 'dad' | သား lit. 'son'သမီး lit. 'daughter' | Used for men similar in age to one's parents, familiar/intimate |
| အစ်မ lit. 'older sister' | ညီ lit. 'younger brother'ညီမ lit. 'younger sister' | Used for females younger than one's parents but older than oneself |
| အစ်ကို lit. 'older brother' | ညီ lit. 'younger brother'ညီမ lit. 'younger sister' | Used for males younger than one's parents but older than oneself; also used as a romantic term of endearment (by females) |
| ညီမ lit. 'younger sister' | အစ်ကို lit. 'older brother'အစ်မ lit. 'older sister' | Used for females younger than oneself |
| ညီ lit. 'younger brother (male ego)' | အစ်ကို lit. 'older brother'အစ်မ lit. 'older sister' | Used for males younger than oneself (by males) |
| မောင် lit. 'younger brother (female ego)' | အစ်ကို lit. 'older brother'အစ်မ lit. 'older sister' | Used for males younger than oneself (by females); also used as a romantic term of endearment (by females) |

### Religious personal pronouns

Other pronouns are reserved for speaking with Buddhist monks. When speaking to a monk, pronouns like ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun: (from ဘုန်းကြီး phun: kri:, "monk"), ဆရာတော် (chara dau; "royal teacher"), and အရှင်ဘုရား (a.hrang bhu.ra:;; "your lordship") are used depending on their status (ဝါ); when referring to oneself, terms like တပည့်တော် (ta. pany. tau ; "royal disciple") or ဒကာ (da. ka, "donor") are used. When speaking to a monk, the following pronouns are used:
| | Singular | Singular |
| | Informal | Formal |
| First-person | တပည့်တော် ta.pany. do | ဒကာ da. ka |
| Second-person | ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun: (ဦး)ပဉ္စင်း (u:) pasang: | အရှင်ဘုရား a.hrang bhu.ra: ဆရာတော် chara dau |
* 1 2 The particle ma. (မ) is suffixed for females.
* ↑ Typically reserved for the chief monk of a monastery.

### Tone sandhi

Spoken Burmese exhibits tone sandhi in the form of a shift from a low to an induced creaky tone, to indicate possession. This does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses ၏ as postpositional marker for possessive case instead of ရဲ့. Examples include the following:
ငါ
ŋà
I
ရဲ့
jɛ̰
POSS
ငါ့
ŋa̰
my
ငါ + ရဲ့ = ငါ့
ŋà jɛ̰ ŋa̰
I POSS my
နင်
nɪ̀ɴ
you
ရဲ့
jɛ̰
POSS
နင့်
nɪ̰ɴ
your
နင် + ရဲ့ = နင့်
nɪ̀ɴ jɛ̰ nɪ̰ɴ
you POSS your
သူ
θù
he/she
ရဲ့
jɛ̰
POSS
သူ့
θṵ
his/her
သူ + ရဲ့ = သူ့
θù jɛ̰ θṵ
he/she POSS his/her
The contraction also occurs in some low toned nouns, making them possessive nouns (e.g. အမေ့ or မြန်မာ့, "mother's" and "Burma's" respectively).

## Demonstrative pronouns

Burmese demonstrative pronouns are identical to the demonstrative adjectives, but demonstrative pronouns stand alone, while demonstrative adjectives qualify a noun. The most common demonstrative pronouns are listed below. They are usually used for referring inanimate objects, mostly to reference noun or noun phrases. Demonstrative pronouns have the form (pronoun + noun phrase) to demonstrate the previous object.
| Gloss | Literary HIGH | Spoken LOW |
| "this" (pronoun) | ဤ i | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "this" (pronoun) | သည် sany | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "this" (pronoun) | အနှီ a hni | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "that" (pronoun) | ထို htui | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" (pronoun) | ယင်း yang: | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" (pronoun) | ၎င်း le kaung: | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" (pronoun) | အနှာ a hna | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
For example, မောင်သစ်လွင်သည် ဖားကန့်မြို့တွင်မွေးဖွားခဲ့သည်။ "Mg Thit Lwin was born in [the town of] Phakant." ထိုမြို့ကို ကျောက်စိမ်းမြို့တော်ဟုလည်းခေါ်သည်။ "That town is also called 'Jade Land'". In the above example sentence, the demonstrative pronoun ထို "that" is used with the noun မြို့ "town" to refer the ဖားကန့်မြို့ "Phakant".

## Reflexive pronouns

Burmese has two alternative forms of the reflexive:
* literary form: မိမိ, often used in conjunction with ကိုယ် (i.e., မိမိကိုယ် 'oneself')
* spoken form: ကိုယ်, used with direct objects and with pronouns (i.e., သူ့ကိုယ်သူ 'himself' or ကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကို 'oneself')