# Grammar of the Burmese Language

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GRAMMAR
OF THE
BURMESE LANGUAGE,
BY A. JUDSON.
RANGOON;
AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION PRESS,
F. D. Phinney, Supt.
1883.
PREFATORY NOTE.
This is the same as Appendix B in the new edition of Dr. Judson's Burmese and English Dictionary. It consists of that Grammar of the Burmese language, which was published in the quarto edition, with the addition of critical notes. Everything added in this way is carefully indicated by the letters st., which form an abbreviation for the name of the present editor,
E. O. STEVENS.
Prome, June 5th, 1883.
A GRAMMAR OF THE BURMESE LANGUAGE.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
§1. The Burmese language is written from left to right, and without any division of words.
§2. The pure Burmese is monosyllabic, every word consisting of one syllable only; but the introduction of the Pali language, with the Boodhistic religion, has occasioned the incorporation of many polysyllabic words of Pali origin into the pure Burmese.
§3. The form of the letters, the order of the vowels and consonants and the classification of the latter, prove that the Burmese alphabet is but one modification of the ancient Nagari; as the Pali language itself as used by the Burmese, is but a modification of the Sanscrit.
THE ALPHABET.
§4. The Burmese alphabet consists of ten vowels (သရ), and thirty-two consonants (ဗျည်း).
§5. The ten vowels are:—အ, a, အာ, a, ဣ, ee, ဤ, ee, ဥ, ဥိ, oo, ဦ, oo, ဧ, aa, [or ey in they, St.] အဲ, ai, ဩ, ဩော, au, ဪ, au,—to which may be added the diphthong, အို, o.
§6. The thirty-two consonants are:—
| က, ka, | ခ, ʻka, | ဂ, ga, | ဃ, ga, | င, nga, |
| စ, tsa, | ဆ, ʻtsa, | ဇ, dza, | ဈ, dza, | ည, nya, |
| ဋ, ta, | ဌ, ʻta, | ဍ, da, | ဎ, da, | ဏ, na, |
| တ, ta, | ထ, ʻta, | ဒ, da, | ဓ, da, | န, na, |
| ပ, pa, | ဖ, ʻpa, | ဗ, ba, | ဘ, ba, | မ, ma, |
| ယ, ya, | ရ, ra, | လ, la, | ဝ, wa, | သ, tha, |
| ဟ, ha, | ဠ, la;– | to which may be added the character | to which may be added the character | to which may be added the character |
| (◌ံ) an. | | | | |
§8. The first letter of each class is a simple articulation, smooth and soft; the third is the same, rough and hard; the second is the aspirate of the first; the fourth, according to the Nagari system, is the aspirate of the third, but according to the Burmese pronunciation, is the same; and the fifth is the corresponding nasal.
§9. The pronunciation of the cerebrals and the dentals, though different in the Nagari, is the same in the Burmese.
§10. Of the seven remaining consonants, five, viz; ယ, ရ, လ, ဝ, and ဠ are liquids; သ is properly a sibilant, but pronounced th, and ဟ is an aspirate.
§11. The cerebrals and the letter ဠ are found in words only of Pali origin.
vowels.
§12. The names and powers of the vowels are as follows:—
| အ, | a or ah | a or ah | as a in America. |
| အာ, | a or ah | a or ah | as a in father. |
| ဣ, | ee | ee | as i in pin, [or ee in been. St.] |
| ဤ, | ee | ee | as ee in feet. |
| ဥ, ဥိ, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | oo | as oo in good, or u in full. |
| ဦ, | oo | oo | as oo in food, or u in rule. |
| ဧ, | aa or ay | aa or ay | as a in fate. ​ |
| အဲ | ai | ai | as ai in hair. |
| ဩ ဩော | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | au | as o in on. |
| ဪ | au | au | as au in audience. |
| အို | o | o | as o in note. |
consonants.
§13. The names and powers of the consonants are as follows:—
| ကကြီး, | great ka, | k, as in king. |
| ခခွေ, | curved ʻka, | ʻk, k aspirated, [pron. as if written ခခွေး. St.] |
| ဂငယ် | small ga, | g, as in good. |
| ဃကြီး, | great ga, | the same. |
| င, | nga, | ng, as in rang, when final; when initial, not to be exemplified in English. |
| စလုံး, | round tsa, | ts. |
| ဆလိမ်, | twisted ʻtsa, | ʻts, ts aspirated. |
| ဇခွဲ, | divided dza, | dz. |
| ဈ or , ဈမြင်းဆွဲ, | bridle dza, | the same, [pron. as if written ဈမြင်ဆွဲ. St.] |
| ဉ or ည, | nya, [ngya, St.] | ny, [ngy, St.] |
| ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်, | bier-hook ta, | t, as in time. |
| ဌဝမ်းဘဲ, | duck ʻta, | ʻt, t aspirated. |
| ဍရင်ကောက်, | crooked-breast da, | d, as in done. |
| ဎရေမှုတ်, | water-dipper da, | the same. |
| ဏကြီး, | great na, | n, as in not. |
| တဝမ်းပူ, | abdominous ta, | t, as in time. |
| ထဆင်ထူး, | elephant-fetter ʻta, | ʻt, t aspirated |
| ဒထွေး, | confused da, | d, as in done. |
| ဓအောက်ချိုက်, | bottom-indented da, | bottom-indented da, |
| (formerly written ,) | (formerly written ,) | the same. |
| နငယ်, | small na, | n, as in not. ​ |
| ပစောက်, | steep or deep pa, | p, as in part. |
| ဖဦးထုပ်, | capped ʻpa, | ʻp, p aspirated. |
| ဗထက်ချိုက်‌, | top-indented ba, | b, as in book. |
| ဘကုန်း, | hump-backed ba, | the same. |
| မ, | ma, | m, as in make. |
| ယပက်လက် | supine ya, | y, as in young. |
| ရကောက်‌, | crooked ra, | r, as in run, or y, as above. |
| လ, | la, | l, as in love. |
| ဝ, | wa, | w, as in word. |
| သ, | tha, | th, soft, as in thin, or th, hard, as in this. |
| ဟ | ha, | h, as in home. |
| ဠကြီး, | great la, | l, as in love. |
§14. The character (ံ) called သေးသေးတင်, small thing placed above, is placed over the letter with which it is combined, and has the power of a final န, or a final မ, divested of its inherent heavy accent (see Accents); thus အံ, an, သံ, than.
compound consonants.
§15. Compound Consonants are formed by combining one or more of the letters ယ, ရ, ဝ, and ဟ, under symbolic forms with simple consonants, according to the following table, in which မ is selected as the principal, because that is the only letter which admits all the adjuncts:—
§16.
| Letter. | Symbol. | Name of Symbol. | Junction with မ. | Power. |
| ယ | ျ | ယပင်း, ya combined, | မျ | mya. |
| ရ | ြ | ရရစ်, ra curved round, | မြ | mra or mya. |
| ဝ | ွ | ဝဆွဲ, wa suspended, | မွ | mwa. |
| ယ and ဝ | ျွ | ယပင်း, and ဝဆွဲ, | မျွ | mywa. |
| ရ and ဝ | ြွ | ရရစ် and ဝဆွဲ, | မြွ | mrwa. |
| ဟ | ှ | ဟထိုး, ha thrust out, | မှ | ʻma. |
| ယ and ဟ | ျှ | ယပင်း and ဟထိုး, | မျှ | ʻmya. |
| ရ and ဟ | ြှ | ရရစ် and ဟထိုး, | မြှ | ʻmra or ʻmya. |
| ဝ and ဟ | ွှ | ဝဆွဲ and ဟထိုး, | မွှ | ʻmwa. |
| ရ, ဝ and ဟ | ြွှ | ရရစ်, ဝဆွဲ and ဟထိုး, | မြွှ | ʻmrwa or ʻmywa. |
​§17. The letter ဟ, in the capacity of an aspirate, may be combined with the nasals, as ငှ, ညှ, ဏှ, နှ, မှ, and with the liquids လ and ဝ, as လှ, ဝှ. But when combined with ယ or ရ, the compound has the power of sh, as ရှန်, shan. လျှ, ʻlya also is frequently pronounced sha, and သျှ has the same power. ငြ is equivalent to ည, nya, and ယျ to ယ, ya.
combinations of vowels with consonants.
§18. The vowel အ is supposed to be inherent in every consonant that is not furnished with the symbol of another vowel, or marked as final.
§19. The other vowels are combined with consonants, simple or compound, under symbolic forms, according to the following table:—
§20.
| Letter. | Symbol. | Name of Symbol. | Junction with က. | Power. |
| အာ | ာ or ါ | ချ, placed down, | ကာ | ka. |
| ဣ | ိ | လုံးကြီးတင်, large round placed on, | ကိ | kee. |
| ဤ | ီ | လုံးကြီးတင်ဆန်ခတ်, large round placed on and kernel inserted, | ကီ | kee. |
| ဥ | ု | တချောင်းငင်, one line drawn, | ကု | koo. |
| ဦ | ူ | နှစ်ချောင်းငင်, two lines drawn, | ကူ | koo. |
| ဧ | ေ | သဝေထိုး, tha-waa thrust out, | ကေ | kaa. |
| အဲ | ဲ | နောက်သို့ပြစ်, thrown back, | ကဲ | kai. |
| ဩော | ော | သဝေထိုးချ, as above, | ကော | kau. |
| ဪ | ော် | သဝေထိုးချရှေ့ထိုး, as above and thrust forward, | ကော် | kau. |
| အို | ို | လုံးကြီးတင်တချောင်းငင်, as above, | ကို | ko. |
§21. The second symbol of the vowel အာ (ါ) is used whenever the use of the first would convert the consonant into another letter,—also with ခ and င, as ခါ, not ခာ. The latter part of the symbols of ဩော and ဪ, is similarly modified in the same circumstances, as ခေါ်, not ခော်.
§22. The symbol of any vowel may be combined with the vowel အ, in which case the compound has the power of the vowel which the symbol represents; thus အိ is equivalent to ဣ, အု to ဥ, &c.
final consonants.
§23. When a consonant is deprived of its inherent vowel အ, and not furnished with the symbol of another, it becomes final in the syllable. The absence of the inherent vowel အ, is denoted by the mark (်) called that, [th as in thin, St.] signifying killed, placed above the consonant thus, က်, or by another consonant subjoined, thus က္ခ; in which case the subjoined consonant becomes the initial of the next syllable, thus ကတ္တ, kat-ta.
§24. One consonant however is sometimes placed under another as a mere abbreviation, and does not therefore deprive the preceding consonant of its inherent vowel; thus သ္မား is equivalent to သမား, and is to be read, not thma, but tha-ma.
§25. ည has two forms, ဉ (single), and ည (double). In elementary works, therefore, the double form may be well distinguished by subjoining a double tail, thus .
§26. ဋ with ဌ subjoined is sometimes written ဌ, but frequently and more properly ဋ္ဌ. A double သ is written ဿ.
§27. Final consonants generally assume a new and peculiar power, and also modify the preceding vowel. These permutations, as they occur in words of pure Burmese origin, are exhibited in the following table:—
| §28. အ | ဣ | ဥ | ဩော | အို |
| အက်, et. | | | ဩောက်, ouk. | အိုက်, aik. |
| အင်, en, een, | | | ဩောင်, oung. | အိုင်, aing. |
| အစ်, eet, | | | | |
| အည်, een, ee. | | | | |
| အတ်, at. | အိမ်, eing. | အုတ်, ōk. | | |
| အန်, an. | အိတ်, eik. | အုန်, ōng. | | |
| အပ်, at. | အိန်, eing. | အုပ်, ōk. | | |
| အမ်, an. | အိပ်, eik. | အုမ်, ōng. | | |
| အယ်, ai. | | | | |
| အံ, an. | | အုံ, ōng. | | |
§30. There are also many words of Pali origin, in which consonants, final in a syllable, are subject to permutations somewhat similar to the above, and others of a peculiar character. A key to the whole is furnished in the following table:—
| §31. အ | §31. အ | §31. အ | ဣ | ဣ | ဥ | ဥ | ဧ | ဧ | ဩော | ဩော |
| အက် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣက်, | eik. | ဥက်, | ōk. | ဧက်, | eet, [or it. St.] | ဩောက်, | ouk. |
| အင် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣင်, | eing. | ဥင်, | ōng. | | | ဩောင်, | oung. |
| အစ် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣစ်, | eik. | ဥစ်, | ōk. | ဧစ်, | eet. | ဩောစ်, | oot. |
| အည် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣည်, | eing. | ဥည်, | ōng. | ဧည်, | een, ee. | ဩောည် | oon. |
| အတ် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣတ်, | eik. | ဥတ်, | ōk. | ဧတ်, | eet. | ဩောတ်, | oot. |
| အန် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣန်, | eing. | ဥန်, | ōng. | ဧန်, | een. | ဩောန်, | oon. |
| အပ် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣပ်, | eik. | ဥပ်, | ōk. | ဧပ်, | eet. | ဩောပ်, | oot. |
| အမ် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | ဣမ်, | eing. | ဥမ်, | ōng. | ဧမ်, | een. ee as in been. St. | ဩောမ်, | oon. |
| အယ် | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as above. | | | | | | | | |
| အရ်, | an. | an. | | | | | ဧရ်, | ee. | | |
| အလ်, | an. | an. | ဣလ်, | eing. | ဥလ်, | ōng. | ဧလ်, | een. | ဩောလ်, | oon. |
| အသ်, | at. | at. | ဣသ်, | eik. | ဥသ်, | ōk. | ဧသ်, | eet. | ဩောသ်, | oot. |
| အံ, | an. | an. | အိံ, | eing. | အုံ, | ōng. | | | | |
§32. In the preceding table, final consonants are marked (်), for the sake of simplifying the tabular view; but though there are some instances of that kind, as ဥပုသ်, oo-pōk, မထေရ်, ma-ʻtee, in almost all cases derived from the Pali, final consonants are made so by having other consonants subjoined, as ဣန္ဒြေ eing-dray, or by modification (see §23), ein-dray, ဥစ္စာ, ōk-tsa, or by modification ōt-tsa, မေတ္တာ, meet-ta, ဩောတ္တပ္ပ, oot-tap-pa.
​§33. As an appendix to both the preceding tables, note:—
1st. Cerebrals, when final, are the same as dentals; thus အဋ္ဌမ is pronounced at-ta-ma, as if written အတ္ထမ.
2d. The third letter of each class is the same as the first; thus ပြဿဒ်, pronounced pyat-that, as if written ပြဿတ်.
3d. The second and fourth letters of each class never occur as finals, except in some words derived from the Pali,—when they are mute; as မိုဃ်း, from မေဃ, the sky, pronounced mo.
4th. ယ်, ရ်, ဝ်, ဟ်, and ဠ်, after အို, are mute, e.g. ကိုယ်, ko, မြင်းမိုရ်, Myeen-mo, ဗိုလ်, bo, ထိုဝ်, ʻto, ဂြိုဟ်, gyo, သီဟိုဠ်, Thee-ho.
5th. အာ before a final gives the syllable the same power as အ, thus အာရ် is pronounced, an, as if written အရ်, e.g. မာရ်နတ် man-nat.
§34. The sound of a final consonant is frequently modified by the initial consonant of the following syllable or word, as အက္ခရာ, ek-ka-ra, [ek-kha-ra, St.] not et-ka-ra, သင်္ဘော, them-bau, not then-bau. But these permutations, being dictates of nature, will be naturally acquired without rule.
§35. There is another permutation of perpetual occurrence, which may be thus stated:—when two syllables are in juxtaposition, so as to form one word, the first syllable ending in a vowel (except အ), [expressed, St.] or a nasal, and the initial letter of the second syllable being the first or second letter of either of the five classes of consonants, it frequently takes the sound of the third letter of the same class; that is, က and ခ are pronounced as ဂ; စ and ဆ, as ဇ; ဋ and ဌ, as ဎ; တ and ထ, as ဒ; ပ and ဖ, as ဗ; thus စကား, a word, is pronounced, not tsa-kah, but tsa-gah, as if written စဂါး, and အင်တန်, considerably, is pronounced, not en-tan, but en-dan, as if written အင်ဒန်.
§36. But there are so many exceptions to this general rule, that regard to the coalescence of sounds as exhibited in common practice is recommended as the only true guide.
accents.
§37. There are two accents, the short, light accent (့), and the short, heavy accent (း).
§38. The short, light accent (့), called အမြစ်, the အ stop, (formerly a small subscriptive အ,) or အောက်​မြစ်, the under stop, is placed under the letter, thus ကန့်. It is used with the vowels ဧ, အဲ, ဩော, အို, and the nasal consonants.
§39. The short heavy accent (း), called ဝတ်​စ​နှစ်​လုံး, the two round woot-tsahs, or ရှေ့​ပေါက်, the dots before (after), is placed after the latter, thus ကန်း. It is used with the vowels အာ, ဤ, ဦ, ဧ, အို, and the nasal consonants. This accent is considered as inherent in the vowel အဲ (unless superseded by the light accent), and in the final consonant မ်, when combined with the vowel အ. In the latter case it is frequently omitted as superfluous; and in the former case, almost uniformly, in modern usage.
abbreviations.
| §40. ၏ for | . . . . | ဧည့် | မှ် for | . . . . | မည် |
| (ံ) " | . . . . | က် | ၍ " | . . . . | ရွေ့ |
| (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | လှ် " | . . . . | လည် |
| (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | (when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.) | ၎င် or ၎င်္ for | . . . . | လည်းကောင်း |
| ငေ်း for | . . . . | ကောင်း | လုင် for | . . . . | လုလင် |
| ငေ့် " | . . . . | ကြောင့် | သှ် " | . . . . | သည် |
| ကျွန်ုပ် " | . . . . | ကျွန်နုပ် | ၆ or ၆ေ for | . . . . | သော |
| ၌ " | . . . . | နှိုက် | သွောံ " | . . . . | သွေးသောက် |
§41. ယ is sometimes represented by its symbol, after က်, as ယောက်ျား for ယောက်​ယား, လက်ျာ for လက်​ယာ, &c.
§42. င် or င်း is frequently removed from its natural situation in the line, and placed over the following letter, as သင်္ကန်း for သင်ကန်း. [In this position it is called ကင်းစီး. St.] In the case of င်း, the accent is omitted, without affecting the pronunciation; as သင်္ဘော for သင်း​ဘော.
NUMERICAL FIGURES.
§43.
| ၁, | ၂, | ၃, | ၄, | ၅, | ၆, | ၇, | ၈, | ၉, | ၁၀. |
| 1, | 2, | 3, | 4, | 5, | 6, | 7, | 8, | 9, | 10. |
PUNCTUATION.
§44. The mark ။ called ပိုက် or အပုဒ်, a stop, is used to separate sentences, and the clauses of a sentence. The double mark ။ ။, ပုဒ်​ကြီး, a great stop, is used to divide paragraphs.
§45. The mark ပုဒ်​က​လေး, a little stop, begins to be used in printed books, as an equivalent to the English comma, (a great desideratum in Burmese writing) leaving the ။ to supply the place of the semicolon and period.
PARTS OF SPEECH.
§46. The Etymology of Burmese Grammar may be exhibited under the six classes of Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, and Interjections.
nouns.
§47. The usual division of nouns into common and proper obtains in the Burmese, as in all other languages.
§48. Under common nouns are included three kinds of derivatives; the simple, the reduplicative, and the compound.
§49. Simple derivatives are mostly formed from verbal roots, by prefixing အ, as အ​လင်း, light, from လင်း to be light; but in composition the အ, is commonly dropped; thus အ​စာ, food, from စား, to eat, when combined with ည, evening, becomes ညစာ evening food, or supper.
§50. The same is true of all nouns, whose initial is a syllable အ; thus အရည်, liquor, when combined with ပျား, a bee, becomes ပျား​ရည်, honey; and sometimes even when a syllable or word is added; thus အရောင်, brightness, when followed by ခြည်, a ray, becomes ရောင်​ခြည်, a ray of brightness.
​§51. Reduplicative derivatives are formed from nouns of one syllable, by prefixing အ to the noun reduplicated, or from nouns of two syllables, the first being a syllabic အ, by dropping the အ in the second number of the reduplication; and such derivations imply generality or universality; thus from ပြည် a country, is formed အပြည်​ပြည်​တို့ (with the plural affix), many or all countries; and for အမျိုး, a race, အမျိုး​မျိုး​တို့ many or all races.
§52. Compound derivatives will be considered under the head of verbal nouns.
number.
§53. Nouns have two numbers, the singular and plural. The simple noun may be regarded as being in the singular number, as လူ, a man; though the noun in its simple state, without any definite adjunct, has frequently a generic meaning, as လူ​သေ​တတ်​သည်, man is mortal.
§54. The plural is formed by affixing တို့ (pronounced ဒို့), do, to the singular, as လူ, a man, လူတို့ men. The adjective များ is sometimes used instead of တို့, and sometimes both are combined, as လူများ, or လူ​များ​တို့, men.
gender.
§55. The Burmese language recognizes no grammatical or artificial gender, but that only which consists in the distinction of the sexes, viz, the masculine and the feminine.
§56. The two genders are distinguished, sometimes by different words, as ယောက်ျား, a man, မိမ္မ, a woman; sometimes by regarding the simple noun as masculine, and affixing မ for feminine, as ရဟန်း, a priest (of Boodh), ရဟန်းမ, a priestess; and sometimes by affixing ထီး, or ဖ, or ဖို, for the masculine, and မ for the feminine; as ခွေးထီး, a dog, ခွေးမ, a bitch; ကြက်ဖ, a cock, ကြက်မ, a hen; ငန်းဖို, a gander, ငန်းမ, a goose.
case.
§57. The relations of nouns expressed in most languages by prepositions or inflections, are in the Burmese language expressed ​by particles affixed to the noun, without any inflection of the noun itself.
§58. The noun affixes may be distributed into nine classes, viz, the Nominative, the Objective, the Possessive, the Dative, the Causative, the Instrumentive, the Connective, the Locative, and the Ablative.
nominative.
§59. သည် is the most common nominative affix, denoting the agent or subject of the verb; as ထို​လူ​သည်​ကောင်း​၏, that man is good; but in simple sentences, it is most commonly omitted; as သူ​ကောင်း​သည်, he is good; also in participial clauses, ဆ​ရာ​ပြော​သော​စ​ကား the words which the teacher speaks.
§60. ကား, သည်​ကား, and မူကား (by abbreviation မူ), are also nominative affixes, denoting the agent or subject, but rather more definitive or distinctive than သည်, and from the latter quality, are much used in adversative clauses, as ငအ​ကျင့်​ကား​ကောင်း​၏၊ သု​အ​ကျင့်​ကား​မ​ကောင်း, my conduct is good; his conduct is not good. These affixes are frequently equivalent to as to, concerning, in regard to, a substantive verb being understood, as အ​ကြောင်း​မူ​ကား, as to the reason, (it is as follows).
§61. ကား is sometimes used emphatically after another noun affix, as အ​ရိုက်​ကား​ခံ​နှိုင်​ပါ​သ​လော, can you indeed bear the beating? Also repeated after successive clauses intended to be set adversatively, as မြေ​အ​ပြင်​၌​ကား​မြင်​သာ​သည်၊ ရေ​ထဲ​၌​ကား​မ​မြင်​နှိုင်, on the land it is easy to see; in the water (we) cannot see. In such cases ကား is used adverbially.
objective.
§62. ကို is the true objective affix, denoting the object on which an action terminates; as ရေ​ကို​သောက်​သည်, to drink water; sometimes, with some latitude of application, it denotes the object to which a thing is given; as ငကို​ပေး​ပါ, give to me; or the object ​to which motion is directed; as အိမ်​ကို​သွား​တော့ go to the house! or the material out of which a thing is made; as ရွှေ​ကို​လုပ်​သော​တန်​ဆာ, an implement made of gold. In the first and most proper application, it is frequently understood; as ရေ​ပေး​ပါ for ရေ​ကို​ပေး​ပါ, give water.
§63. သို့ is an objective affix, denoting the object towards which or unto which motion is directed, as အိမ်​သို့​သွား​တော့, go to the house! though frequently, in colloquial style, it is superceded by ကို, as above. Various applications may seem to require the aid of various prepositions in English, as လက်​သို့​အပ်​သည် to deliver into (his) hand, အ​လို​သို့​လိုက်​သည်, to follow (his) will, or according to (his) will, မြို့​သို့​ရောက်​သည်, to arrive at the town; but in all such cases, it will be evident, on a little reflection, that the legitimate import of the affix is preserved.
POSSESSIVE.
§64. ၏ is the possessive affix denoting possession, as သူ​၏​အ​သက်, the life of man. This affix is very frequently understood; in which case the preceding syllable, if capable of taking the short, light accent, is pronounced accordingly; thus အ​ဖေ​၏​အ​ဖေ, a father's father, if written အ​ဖေ​အ​ဖေ, is pronounced as if written, အ​ဖေ့​အ​ဖေ.
DATIVE.
§65. အား is the proper dative affix, equivalent in various applications to to or per in English, as င​အား​ပေး​ပါ, give to me. It is sometimes used for the objective affix ကို.
ငှါ, for, in order to, is used only with အလို, desire, as အ​စာ​အ​လို​ငှါ, for food, or for the sake of food; or with verbals in ခြင်း, as စား​ခြင်း​ငှါ, or စား​ခြင်း​အ​လို​ငှါ, in order to eating; or with verbs used substantively, as စား​အံ့​သော​ငှါ, or စား​လို​သော​ငှါ, in order to eat. (See under verbal nouns, §124, and verbs used substantively, §122.)
causative.
§66. ကြောင့်, because, on account of, from အကြောင်း a cause or reason, is used with simple nouns, as အပြစ်​ကြောင့်, because of the fault; but its great use is in connection with verbs used substantively, as အပြစ်​ရှိ​သော့​ကြောင့်, because of the fault. (See verbs used substantively, §122.) မို့ is equivalent to ကြောင့် but seldom used in writing.
instrumentive.
§67. ဖြင့်, by, with, by means of, as လက်​ဖြင့်​ကိုင်​သည်, to hold with the hand, is the proper instrumentive affix; but it is more frequently superceded by the connective affix နှင့်, as လက်​နှင့်​ကိုင်​သည်, of the same import; or used in connection with the secondary noun အား, in the sense of means, literally strength. (See secondary nouns, §74.)
connective.
§68, The connective affix နှင့် signifies 1st, with, together with, as လူ​နှင့်​လိုက်​သည်, to follow with the man. In this sense it is much used with the secondary nouns အတူ, အညီ, &c. (See secondary nouns, §74.)
2d. It supplies the place of the copulative conjunction and between nouns, as ရွှေ​နှင့်​ငွေ​ကို​ရှာ​သည် to seek gold and silver.
3d. It is frequently used for the instrumentive affix ဖြင့်, as stated above.
locative.
§69. တွင်, ၌, and မှာ, are locative affixes, signifying in, at, among, as အိမ်​တွင်, အိမ်၌, အိမ်​မှာ, in the house. They sometimes have a possessive import, as ငါ၌​ဥစ္စာ​များ​သည်, the goods with me (or my goods) are many.
မှာ, like the nominative affixes ကား, မူကား, &c., frequently signifies as to, concerning, in regard to.
ဝယ် signifies in, but is commonly restricted to nouns of place and time.
ablative.
§70. The ablative affix မှ signifies from, out of, separate from, besides, as တော​မှ​လာ​သည်, to come from the wood; ထို​မှ​တပါး, besides that, one thing more); ထို​နေ့​မှ​စ​၍, beginning from that day, that is, from that day forth, င​အိမ်​မှ​စ​၍​င​ဥစ္စာ​ရှိ​သ​မျှ, all my property, beginning with my house.
§71. က is an ablative affix of the same import with မှ, but has frequently the additional power of a nominative affix, particularly to verbs of speaking or communicating in any way, when the speech or matter communicated comes between the nominative and the verb; as ဘု​ရား​သ​ခင်​က​အ​လင်း​ဖြစ်​စေ​ဟု​မိန့်​တော်​မူ​၏။ God said, let there be light.
§72. Certain verbal affixes, as တုံ, လေ, ပေ, ပါ, and ပေါ့, when affixed to nouns, are merely expletive.
§73. The vocative is expressed by the noun in a simple state divested of all affixes. Sometimes in grave discourse, it is indicated by အို prefixed, as အို​ဆ​ရာ, O teacher.
SECONDARY NOUNS.
§74. Some relations of nouns are expressed by means of secondary nouns which take some of the preceding affixes, and are connected with the principal nouns by ၏ (dropping the formative အ) the sign of the possessive, expressed or understood, as in the following examples:—
| အပေါ်, အထက်, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | an upper part; | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | အိမ်၏အပေါ်မှာ, or အိမ်ပေါ်မှာ, အိမ်ထက်မှာ, above, over, or upon the house. |
    အောက်, an under part; အိမ်အောက်မှာ, under the house.
    ရှေ့, a fore part; အိမ်ရှေ့မှာ, before the house.
    နောက်, a hind part; အိမ်နောက်မှာ, behind the house.
| အပ, အပြင်, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | an outside; အိမ်ပမှါ, အိမ်ပြင်မှာ, without the house. |
| အထဲ, အတွင်း, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | an inside; အိမ်ထဲမှာ, အိမ်တွင်းမှာ, within the house. |
    အနား, a side; အိမ်​နား​မှာ, by the house.
    အနီး, a near part, nearness; အိမ်​နီး​မှာ, near the house.
    အထံ, presence; မင်း​ထံ​မှာ, in presence of the governor.
    ဆီ, ditto; မင်း​ဆီ​မှာ, ditto.
    အညာ, an upper part; မြစ်​ညာ​သို့, up the river.
    အကြေ, a lower part; မြစ်​ကြေ​သို့, down the river.
    အတွက်, account, sake; လူမျိုး​အ​တွက်​ကြောင့်, on account, or for the sake of mankind.
§75. The following secondary nouns are commonly used without an affix; and in some instances, are connected with the principal nouns by နှင့် instead of ၏.
    အဖို့, a part, portion; အိမ်ဖို့ or သို့, for the house.
    အထက်ဆုံး, summit, extremity; အသက်​ထက်ဆုံး, through, or to the end of life.
    ပတ်လည်, a circuit; အိမ်​ပတ်​လည်, round the house.
    ဝန်းကျင်, ditto; အိမ်​ဝန်း​ကျင်, ditto.
    ထက်ဝန်းကျင်, ditto; အိမ်​ထက်​ဝန်း​ကျင်, ditto.
    ပတ်လုံး, a whole circuit; ကာ​လ​ပတ်လုံး, during or throughout the time.
    အတူ, likeness; ထိုနည်းတူ, in like manner.
    အလောက်, about so much, (obsolete); လူလောက်​ကြီး​သည်, to be about as large as a man.
    အခန့်, about so much; တနှစ်​ခန့်, about a year.
    အညီ, evenness, accordance; အလို​နှင့်​အ​ညီ, or အလို​၏​အညီ according to (his) will.
    အတိုင်း,measurement; အလို​နှင့်​အတိုင်း, or အလို​၏​​အတိုင်း, do.
    အလျောက်, an agreeing with; အလို​နှင့်​အ​လျောက်, or အလို​၏​အ​လျောက်, ditto.
    အမျှ, as much as; ဆရာ​နှင့်​အမျှ​တတ်​သည်, to know as much as the teacher.
    အစား, stead; ကိုယ်​စား, instead of self.
    အတူ, a being with; ဆရာ​နှင့်​အတူ, with the teacher.
    အကွ, ditto; ဆရာ​နှင့်​အကွ, ditto.
N. B. In some instances, စ or တ, is optionally substituted for the formative အ, as ကာ​လ​စ​လိုက်, for ကာ​လ​အ​လိုက်, ဆရာ​နှင့်​တမျှ, ဆရာ​နှင့်တကွ, &c.
​§76. Some relations of nouns are expressed by means of verbs also, as from တိုင်​သည် to arrive at, reach, may be formed,—
    အိမ်တိုင်အောင် (with a continuative affix), unto, or as far as the house;
    ကာလတိုင်အောင်, until the time;
    ပြည်တိုင်တိုင် (the root doubled), through the country;
    ကာလတိုင်တိုင်, during the time; in which cases ကို or သို့ is understood after the noun, and sometimes expressed.
PRONOUNS.
§77. ငါ, I, masculine or feminine, is used by a person in speaking to himself of himself, and in addressing inferiors.
ကျွန်နုပ်, ကျွန်ုပ်, or ကျုပ်, I, masculine or feminine, is used in addressing equals, and in addressing inferiors politely.
ကျွန်တော် a servant, ကျွန်​တော်မ, ကျွန်မ, or ကျမ, a female servant, တပည့်​တော်, a disciple, and တပည့်​တော်မ, a female disciple, are used as first personals in addressing superiors.
အကျွန်, I, feminine, is of similar import with ကျွန်မ, but not in common use.
N. B. The plural affix တို့ is sometimes used for the plural of the first personal.
ကိုယ်တော်, thou, masculine or feminine, is used to a superior; မင်း, you, masculine, to an equal or an inferior; မောင်​မင့်, you, masculine, to an inferior; မောင်​မင်း you, rather imperious and disrespectful; မင်း​မာ, you, masculine, to an inferior, expressive of disapprobation; ညည်း or ညဲ, you, feminine, to an equal or inferior; မယ်​မင်း, you, feminine, to any woman, expressive of disrespect or anger; and နင် you, masculine or feminine, to children, or persons very inferior.
သင် thou, or you, masculine or feminine, is used chiefly in writing, and is irrespective of the relative rank of the parties. ချင်း, you, masculine or feminine, is used in judicial language.
​ကွယ်, you, masculine or feminine, familiar, and ဟယ်, you, masculine or feminine, disrespectful, are used vocatively only. ကွယ် makes ကွရို့, and ဟယ်, ဟရို့, in the plural.
သူ, a person, masculine or feminine, supplies the place of the third personals, he and she.
သင်း, that (thing), neuter, may also be regarded as a third personal.
ကိုယ် and ကိုယ်​ကိုယ်, one's self (i. e. myself, yourself, or himself), masculine or feminine, are of either person as the connection requires.
မိမိ, one's self, masculine or feminine, is confined to the second and third persons.
§78. The pronouns ငါ, သင်, and သူ, in the singular number, not preceded or followed by any adjective or participial adjunct, become င, သင့်, and သု, before the oblique, unaspirated affixes (except သို့), viz. ကို, အား, ကြောင့်, တွင်, and ၏ understood; but when used nominatively, or followed by သို့, or by ၏ expressed, or by an aspirated affix, ဖြင့်, နှင့်, ၌, မှာ, or မှ, they retain their proper form. Other pronouns, ending in a nasal, are similarly inflected.
ADJECTIVES.
§79. Adjectives are of three kinds, pronominal, verbal, and numeral.
§80. Adjectives of either kind are prefixed to their nouns, by means of the connective သည် or သော, if singular, and the same, or ကုန်​သည်, or ကုန်​သော, if plural, or directly affixed. But to this general rule there are several exceptions, particularly in the pronominals.
§81. An adjective and noun united in either way form a compound word, which admits the plural affix and the affixes of cases, the same as a simple noun.
pronominal adjectives.
§82. The following pronominals are prefixed to their nouns, in some cases with, and in some without a connective,—ရော, နင့်, or နံ့, being occasionally substituted for သော, before words of time:—
    ဤ, this, as ဤလူ, this man; ဤသည်​နေ့, this day.
    သည်, this.
    ထို, that, as ထိုသူ, that person; ထိုသော​အခါ, or ထိုရော​အခါ, that time.
    ယင်း, that,—infrequent.
    အနည်, this or that,—infrequent.
    ဟို and ဟုပ်, that,—colloquial.
    အဘယ်, or ဘယ်, what?—occasionally contracted to အ, before သူ, as အသူ, for အသယ်သူ, who?—and to ဘ before ဟာ, as ဘဟာ, what thing? In negative sentences, it combines with the negative particle သင်း, to signify none, as ဘယ်​သူ​မရှိ there is no one. When combined with သင်း, that (thing), it means which; as အဘယ်​သင်း, which (thing)?
    အတီ, what?—infrequent.
    အကြင်, whatever.
    မည်, what? whatever. N. B. မည်​သည်, ditto, is directly prefixed or affixed.
    ဤမည်, such, referring to what has been specified. [Its most common use appears to be indefinite, such and such, such or such. St.]
§83. The following pronominals are prefixed to their nouns, with the usual connectives:—
    သို့, such.
    ဤသို့, သည်သို့, such, of this sort.
    ထိုသို့, ယင်းသို့, such, of that sort.
    အဘယ်သို့, အသို့, ဘယ်သို့, မည်သို့, of what sort.
    အကြင်သို့, of whatever sort.
    ကဲသို့, and its compounds, such as. ​§84. The following, viz. အချို့ and တချို့, some, အခြား, တခြား, and တပါး, other, ခပ်​သိမ်း and အလုံးစုံ, all, are joined to their nouns according to the general rule, except that when prefixed, the connective is in some instances omitted. ခပ်​သိမ်းစုံ, all is prefixed with a connective.
§85. တထူး, other, တကာ, many, အားလုံး all, and အလုံး, all, the whole, are uniformly affixed.
§86. အလုံး, when affixed to a noun or a numeral auxiliary, frequently drops the အ, or changes it to စ, as အိမ်လုံး, or အိမ်​စလုံး, the whole house; အိမ်​သုံး​ခုလုံး, or အိမ်​သုံး​ခု​စလုံး, all the three houses. When affixed to a singular noun, the compound occasionally takes the numeral တ, one, before it, without a change of meaning, as တအိမ်လုံး, or တအိမ်​စလုံး, the whole house; သင်္ဘော​တ​စင်းလုံး, the whole ship.
§87. ဘယ်​နှစ်, how many? is directly prefixed to numeral auxiliaries, or words denoting a part or quantity of a thing, as သရက်​သီး​ဘယ်​နှစ်လုံး, how many mangoes? သရက်​သီး​ဘယ်​နှစ်​တင်း, How many baskets of mangoes?
§88. So much, How much? &c., are expressed by combining pronominals with such nouns as အမျှ, အလောက်, &c., denoting quantity, as ဤမျှ, so much, ဘယ်​လောက်, ဘယ်​မျှ​လောက်, how much?
§89. Some pronominals are doubled to form a kind of plural, as ထိုထို​ဥစ္စာ, those goods.
§90. Pronominals are frequently used substantively, and in that character admit the noun affixes.
verbal adjectives.
§91. Verbal adjectives are made by joining verbal roots to nouns, according to the general rule, as မြတ်​သောလူ, or လူမြတ်, an excellent man; but as the verbal root, when prefixed, is susceptible of the accidents of verbs, it is more correct to regard that construction as participial. See under participial affixes, §114.
§92. Verbal adjectives are also formed from verbal roots by prefixing အ, as အသစ်, new, and by reduplicating the root, as ကောင်း​ကောင်း, good. Such adjectives are commonly affixed to ​their nouns ; but အများ, from များ to be many, follows the general rule, as အများသောဆရာ, or ဆရာအများ, many teachers.
§93. The imperfect degree of comparison is sometimes made by shortening and reduplicating the verbal root, as ချို့ချို့, sweetish, from ချို, to be sweet, ခခ, bitterish, from ခါး, to be bitter; sometimes, by affixing ခပ်, to the root reduplicated, or reduplicated and shortened, as ခပ်ဆိုးဆိုး, rather bad; and sometimes by affixing reduplicated chiming increments, having တ for an initial to the root in its natural state or shortened, to express a slight degree of the quality, as ချိုတိုတို, or ချို့တို့တို့, slightly sweetish.
§94. The comparative degree is made, by means of the secondary noun အထက်, or အောက်, and verb, as အိမ်​ထက်​ကြီး​သည်, to be greater than the house, or by a circumlocution of verbs, as သာ​၍​ကြီး​သည်, to exceed in greatness, or be greater.
§95. The superlative degree is made, by prefixing အ, and affixing ဆုံး to the verbal root, as အမြတ်ဆုံး, most excellent; and is joined to nouns according to the general rule, as အမြတ်​ဆုံး​သာ​လူ, or လူ​အမြတ်​ဆုံး, the most excellent man.
numeral adjectives.
§96. Numerals are generally combined with a word descriptive of some quality in the noun to which they belong, and in that state are joined to nouns according to the general rule.
§97. If the numeral is less than ten, the auxiliary word is affixed to it (the formative အ, whenever it occurs, being dropped), as ခွက်​နှစ်လုံး, or နှစ်​လုံး​သော​ခွက်, two cups, from ခွက်, a cup, နှစ်, two, and အလုံး, round; if it is a capital number, as ten, twenty, thirty, two hundred, three hundred, &c., the auxiliary is prefixed to it, as ခွက်​အ​လုံး​နှစ်​ဆယ်, or အလုံး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​သော​ခွက်, twenty cups; and if it is a numeral, intervening between the capitals, the auxiliary is both prefixed and affixed, as ခွက်​အ​လုံး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​နှစ်​လုံး, or အလုံး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​နှစ်​လုံး​သော​ခွက်, twenty-two cups. But in any case in which the auxiliary is prefixed, it may be omitted, as ဆရာ​အ​ပါး​နှစ်​ဆယ်, or အပါး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​သော​ဆ​ရာ, twenty teachers, may be written ဆရာ​နှစ်​ဆယ်, or နှစ်​ဆယ်​သော​ဆ​ရာ, and ဆရာ​အ​ပါး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​နှစ်​ပါး, or အပါး​နှစ်​ဆယ်​နှင့်​ပါး​သော​ဆ​ရာ, twenty-two ​teachers, may be written ဆရာ​​နှစ်​​ဆယ်​​နှစ်​​ပါး, or ​နှစ်​​ဆယ်​​နှစ်​ပါး​​သော​​ဆ​​ရာ.
§98. The following is a list of the most common numeral auxiliaries, arranged alphabetically, with the classes of things to which they are applied:—
| Numeral Auxiliaries. | Classes of Things. |
| အဦး, a chief. | Rational beings, considered as chief or having subordinates, as ကုန်​သည်​တဦး, one merchant. |
| အကောင်, a brute animal. | Brute animals, as မျောက်​နှစ်​ကောင်, two monkeys. |
| အကြောင်း, a line. | Things extended in a line, as ခရီး​သုံး​ကြောင်း, three roads. |
| အကွင်း, a circle, or ring. | Rings, nooses, and such like, as လက်​စွပ်​လေး​ကွင်း, four rings. |
| အခု, an individual thing. | Things which admit no other word more descriptive, as ခုတင်​ငါးခု, five bedsteads, ကုလား​ထိုင်​ငါးခု, five chairs,—frequently used also instead of a more appropriate numeral auxiliary. |
| အချပ်, what is flat. | Things flat and thin, as ဖျာ​ခြောက်​ချပ်, six mats. |
| အချောင်း, a bar, or long piece. | Things long and straight, or nearly so, as အပ်​ခု​နှစ်​ချောင်း, seven needles. |
| အခွန်း, voice. | Words, speech, as စကား​ရှစ်​ခွန်း, eight words. |
| အစင်း, an extended line. | Things long and straight, or nearly so, as လှံကိုး​စင်း, nine spears, သင်္ဘော​ဆယ်​စင်း, ten ships. |
| အစီး, what is ridden upon. | Beasts of burden, vehicles of conveyance, as မြင်း​တစီး, one horse; လှည်း​နှစ်​စီး, two carts. ​ |
| အစောင် (uncertain). | Writings, as စာ​သုံး​စောင်, three books, or writings. |
| အဆူ (uncertain). | Deities, as ဘုရား​လေး​ဆူ four gods; also [gardens, St.] pagodas, and some other articles. |
| အဆောင်, a building. | Buildings, as အိမ်​ငါး​ဆောင်, five houses. |
| အတန်, intervening space. | Whatever occurs at intervals of time or place, as အကျိုး​ခြောက်​တန်, six rewards. |
| အထည်, a piece of cloth. | Wearing apparel, as အင်္ကျီ​ခု​နှစ်​ထည်, seven coats. |
| အပင်, a tree or plant. | Trees, plants, as သရက်​ပင်​ရှစ်​ပင်, eight mango trees; also thread, hair, &c. |
| အပါး (uncertain). | Deities, ecclesiatics, persons in power, any respectable characters, things immaterial, as ဆရာကိုးပါး, nine teachers, သီလ​ဆယ်​ပါး, ten duties. |
| အပြား, what is flat. | Things which are flat, as ပျည်​တ​ပြား, one board. |
| အဖက်, one of a pair. | Things which are naturally joined in pairs, as လက်​နှစ်​ဖက်, two hands. |
| အလက်, an arm, or hand. | Weapons, tools, whatever is used by the hand, as သေ​နတ်​သုံး​လက်, three guns. |
| အလုံး, what is round. | Things round or cubical, or approaching those forms, as အိုး​လေး​လုံး, four pots, သစ်​တာ​ငါး​လုံး, five boxes. ​ |
| အသွယ်, what is slender. | Things small in bulk, compared to the length, as မြစ်​ခြောက်​သွယ် six rivers, လမ်း​ခု​နှစ်​သွယ်, seven paths. |
| ယောက်, (uncertain.) | Rational beings,—generally mankind, or superior beings, as လူ​ရှစ်​ယောက်, eight men. |
§99. Sometimes the noun itself becomes the numeral auxiliary, or is substituted for a descriptive word, as ရွာ​ကိုး​ရွာ, nine villages, မင်း​ဆယ်​မင်း, ten governors.
§100. Words denoting some part or quantity of a thing are combined with numerals in the same manner as words descriptive of a quality, there being no other difference in the cases, excepting that in the latter the number of individual things merely is expressed; in the former, the number of the parts or quantities of the thing, as ရေ​နှစ်​ခွက်, or နှစ်​ခွက်​သော​ရေ, two cups of water; စက္ကူ​အထုပ်​နှစ်​ဆယ်, or အထုပ်​နှစ်​ဆယ်​သော​စက္ကူ, twenty bundles of paper; နှစ်​ရက်, two days (ကာလ, time, being understood), literally, two days of time.
§101. The numeral တ, one, combined with a numeral auxiliary reduplicated, as တခုခု, တယောက်​ယောက်, denotes any one, some one (out of several); when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and the combination reduplicated, as တခု​တခု, တယောက်​တ​ယောက်, it denotes one after another (whether every one or several); when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and followed by the same numeral combined with လေ, as တခု​တ​လေ, တယောက်​တ​လေ (sometimes reversed), it denotes a few, now and then one, here and there one; when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and preceded by the same numeral, combined with စုံ, as တစုံ​တခု, တစုံ​တ​ယောက်, it denotes some one, indefinite. Such combinations may be regarded as pronominal adjectives. They are joined to their nouns, according to the general rule.
§102. Ordinal numerals are of Pali origin, and are prefixed to their nouns, as ဒုတိ​ယ​ခဏ်း, the second section. Ordinals are also made by affixing မြောက်, to raise, to cardinal numerals, ​modified as above, as နှစ်​ယောက်​မြောက်​သော​သား, the second son; နှစ်​ရက်​မြောက်​သော​နေ့, the second day.
§103. There are a few adjectives which, on account of some peculiarity, cannot be placed in either of the foregoing classes. Some of them are prefixed to their nouns, as မဟာ, great, အာ​ကာ,extraordinary; some are either prefixed or affixed, as အနန္တ, infinite, သာ​မည, ordinary; and some are affixed, as ကလေး, small; တော်, honorific, မ, principal, chief among many; ချင်း, single one, only, as တနေ့​ချင်း​တွင်, in a single day; တည်း only, no more, used with numerals, as တခု​တည်း, one only.
§104. Nouns used adjectively may be distributed into three classes, viz:—
1st. Names of races of men, of countries, towns, &c. when used to qualify a following noun, as အင်္ဂ​လိတ်, an Englishman, အင်္ဂ​လိတ်​လူ, ditto, အင်္ဂ​လိတ်​ပြည်, England, the country of the English; မြမ္မာ, a Burmese, မြမ္မာ​စ​ကား, the Burmese language; ရန်​ကုန်, Rangoon, the town of Rangoon, ရန်​ကုန်​မြို့, ditto ရန်​ကုန်​သား, or ရန်​ကုန်​မြို့​သား, a son, or native of Rangoon.
2nd. Common nouns used to qualify a following noun, as ရွှေ,gold, ရွှေ​ဖ​လား, a golden cup; မြောက်, the north, မြောက်​လမ်း, the northern path; အညာ, the upper part (of a country), အညာသား, an up-conntry person.
3rd. Names of trees, plants, and their parts, which are only used in combination with a following noun; thus from သံလွင်, the olive, are formed သံလွင်​ပင်, an olive tree, သံလွင်​ပွင့်, an olive blossom, သံလွင်​သီး, an olive (fruit), သံလွင်​ရွက်, an olive leaf.
VERBS.
§105. Verbs are of two kinds, transitive, which express actions that pass from the agent to the object, as ရိုက်​သည်, to strike, ချစ်​သည်, to love; and intransitive, which express being, or some state of being, or an action which is confined to the agent, as ​ဖြစ်​သည်, to be, နေ​သည်, to remain, ကောင်း​သည်, to be good, ပျက်​သည်, to be ruined, or in a state of ruin.
§106. Many transitive verbs are formed from intransitive ones, by aspirating the initial letter. If the initial is the first letter of the first or fifth class of consonants, it is changed for its corresponding aspirate, the second letter of the class, as ကျသည်, to fall, ချသည် to throw down, or cause to fall; ပျက်​သည်, to be ruined, ဖျက်​သည်, to ruin. If the initial is a nasal, or an unclassed letter, it is combined with the letter ဟ, as ညွတ်​သည်, to be bent down, ညွှတ်​သည်, to bend down; လွတ်​သည်, to be free, လွှတ်​သည်, to make free.
accidents of verbs.
§107. The accidents of verbs, expressed in most languages by inflections or auxiliary verbs, are here expressed by particles affixed to the verb, without any inflection of the verb itself. The verbal affixes are as follows:—
§108. assertive affixes.
သည်, simply assertive, as သွား​သည်, he goes; in certain combinations, written သော။
၏, same as သည်။
ဘူး, simply assertive, in negative sentences, as မသွား​ဘူး, he goes not,—chiefly colloquial.
ဆဲ, present, but scarcely used except substantively, as သွား​ဆဲ​ဖြင်​သည်, he is going (see Verbs used substantively, §122), or in a participial clause, according to the note below, as ယခု​ဖြစ်​ဆဲ​သော​အမှု, the business that now is, or the present business. In the substantive construction, it may be combined with a preceding future affix, as သွား​လုဆဲ, or reduplicated, as သွား​မည်​ဆဲ​ဆဲ​တွင်, when he was just about going.
ပြီ, past, as သွားပြီ, he went, or has gone; sometimes future.
​အံ့, future, as သွားအံ့, he will go; sometimes equivalent to the continuative affix လျှင်, which see.
မည်, future.
လတံ့, or လတ္တန့် future.
N. B. The assertive affixes of tense, ဆဲ, ပြီ, အံ့, မည်, and လတံ့ occasionally lose their assertive power, and become auxiliary to a continuative, participial, or simply asertive affix, in which case ပြီ becomes ပြီး.
§109. continuative affixes.
လျက်, denoting the continuance of an action, or state of being during another, as သွား​လျက်​စား​သည်, he eats as he goes; sometimes equivalent to လျှင်.
ကာ, equivalent to လျက်, but commonly repeated after the same or another verb, as ဆက်​ကာ​ဆက်​ကာ, joining one with another; စုန်​ကာ​ဆန်​ကာ, going up and down,—used also as a verbal formative.
လျက်နှင့်, denoting the continuance of an action, or state of being during another, but somewhat inconsistent with it, as သွား​လျက်​နှင့်​စား​သည်, though going he eats.
လျှင်, denoting first, the completion of an action or state of being prior to another, as သွား​လျှင်​သေ​သည်, having gone, he died; second, supposition or conditionality, as သွား​လျှင်​သေ​မည်, if he go, he will die.
သော်, same as လျှင်.
မူ, မူကား, ရကား, တမူ​ကား, and တပြီး​ကား, in some combinations equivalent to လျှင်.
မှ, denoting the completion of an action prior to another.
ကတည်းက, from the first of, as သွား​က​တည်းက, from the first of his going.
​သော်လည်း, though, notwithstanding, as သွား​သော်​လည်း​မသေ, though he go, he will not die.
ကစား, or လင့်ကစား, လှည့်ကာ, ditto,—infrequent.
မချည်း, ကတည်း ditto,—colloquial.
အောင်, first, that, noting a consequence, so that, so as to, as သေ​အောင်​သွား​သည်, he went, so that he died; second, that, noting a final end, in order to, as သေ​အောင်​သွား​သည်, he went, that he might die.
၍ and, as သွား၍သေသည်, he went and died; (sometimes pronounced လို့;) sometimes equivalent to လျှင်.
§110. interrogative affixes.
(Connected with the verbal root by the assertive affix သည်, being commonly abbreviated to သ.)
| လော,—formal, လား,—familiar, | လော,—formal, လား,—familiar, | လော,—formal, လား,—familiar, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | as သွားသည်လော, does he go? |
| နည်း,—formal, | နည်း,—formal, | နည်း,—formal, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | Used in connection with an interrogative pronominal, as ဘယ်ကိုသွားသနည်း, whither does he go? |
| လည်း, လဲ, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | —familiar, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | Used in connection with an interrogative pronominal, as ဘယ်ကိုသွားသနည်း, whither does he go? |
| Used in connection with an interrogative pronominal, as ဘယ်ကိုသွားသနည်း, whither does he go? |||
စင့်, or စံ့, affixed to the root without an intervening affix, as သွား​စင့်, does he go?—rather infrequent.
§111. imperative affixes.
စို့, or စို့၏, first person plural, as သွားစို့, let us go.
ကြကုန်အံ့, [—formal, St.] ditto, preceded by the first personal, as ငါ​တို့​သည်​သွား​ကြ​ကုန်​အံ့, let us go, or we will go.
လော့ [formal, St.] imperative proper, as သွား​လော့, go.
လည့်, ditto,—infrequent.
နှင့်, prohibitory, မ being prefixed to the verb, as မသွား​နှင့် go not.
လင့်, ditto.
§112. The simple root also is imperative, as well as when combined with certain of the euphonic or qualifying affixes, as ပါ, တော့, ပေ, လေ, ချေ, ခဲ့, ဘိ, လိုက်, စေ, ရော့, ဦး, ရစ်, စမ်း, ​&c. Some of these affixes are also variously combined with one another, and with the imperative affixes, to convey the ideas of entreaty, authority, &c.
§113. precative affixes.
စေသော, may, as သွား​စေ​သော, may he go. [It is commonly combined with ပါ, as သွား​ပါ​စေ​သော။ St.]
စေသတည်း, ditto, authoritatively, as ဖြစ်​စေ​သ​တည်း, be it so.
စေခလို, ditto,—infrequent.
§114. participial affixes.
သော, connecting the verb with a subsequent noun, being equivalent to the relative pronoun in most languages, as မြတ်​သော​လူ, the excelling man or the man who excels; ပြေး​သော​မြင်း, the running horse, or the horse which runs; ရောက်​သော​သင်္ဘော, the arriving ship, or the ship which arrives; sometimes contracted to သ, as ရှိသမျှ, as much as there is; sometimes dispensing with the verb altogether, as တတ်​အား​သ​မျှ, for တတ်​အား​ရှိ​သ​မျှ, (do) as much as possible commonly omitted after the assertive future affix မည်.
သည်, ditto.
§115. auxiliary affixes of tense.
သေး, denoting present continuance, as သွား​သေး​သည်, he is still going; မသွား​သေး, he is still not gone, or he is not yet gone; sometimes denoting beside, more than, in addition, as ငစ​ကား​သာ​မ​ဟုတ်၊ စာ​ရှိ​သေး​သည်, there is not only my word, but there is scripture also.
ခဲ့, just past, as သွား​ခဲ့​သည်, he has just gone; frequently written ကဲ့; very frequently euphonic.
ဘူး, past indefinite, as သွား​ဘူး​သည်, he went. In negative sentences, prefixed by စ, it becomes ဖူး, and signifies (not) ever, as မသွား​စ​ဖူး, he never went. စသီး and စတောင်း are of similar import, but infrequent.
​နှင့်, prior-past, or prior-future, according to the connection, as သွား​​နှင့်​ပြီ, he had gone, သွား​နှင့်​မည်, he will go (before another goes).
လင့်, prior-past or prior-future,—infrequent.
ခင်, ditto,—rather infrequent.
လု, near future, about to, on the point of, retaining its meaning, whatever affixes of tense are superadded, as သွား​လု​သည်, သွား​လု​ပြီ, or သွား​လု​မည်, he is about to go, or is near going; sometimes used substantively, though not an assertive affix, as သွား​လု​နီး​ပြီ, ditto.
§116. affixes of number.
ကြ, ကုန်, ကြ​ကုန်, denoting the plural, as သွား​ကြ​သည်, they go;—frequently omitted, and the idea of plurality left to be conveyed by the noun affix of number, or gathered from the connection.
§117. qualifying affixes. (arranged alphabetically.)
ဦး (pron. အုံး,) more or again, commonly used with an assertive future affix, as သောက်​ဦး​မည်, he will drink more, or again; in prohibitive sentences, (not) yet, as မသောက်​နှင့်​ဦး, do not drink yet.
ကုန်, entirely, wholly, (from ကုန်, to come to an end), as သေ​ကုန်​ပြီ, they are all dead.
ကောင်း, with the verb repeated, probably, as သေ​ကောင်း​သေ​မည်, he will probably die.
ခင်, see မှီ.
ခဲ့ (see Dictionary).
ချင်, optative, to wish, desire, as ပြု​ချင်​သည်, to wish to do; also, to have a tendency to, as ဖျား​ချင်​ထည်, to be disposed to fever.
ချင်း, with မ prefixed to the root and to itself, and a continuative affix or clause, commonly တိုင်​အောင်, expressed or understood, until, as မသွား​မ​ချင်း​တိုင်​အောင်​လုပ်​လျက်​နေ​သည်, he continued working until he went.
​စေ causal (from စေ to send, order), as ပြု​စေ​သည် he makes (him) do, ဖြစ်​စေ let it be; when affixed to intransitive verbs, equivalent to the aspirated initial; as လွတ်​စေ​သည်, equivalent to လွှတ်​သည်, to make free, from လွတ်​သည်, to be free.
When used as an imperative or precative, the shade of meaning is frequently determinded by an intervening euphonic affix, as ဖြစ်​ပါ​လေ​စေ, may it be, ပြေး​ပါ​လေ​စေ, let it run. Combined with အုံ it makes စိမ့်.
စောက် with မ prefixed to the root, and followed by တော့ or သကဲ့​သို့, not proper, or desirable, as မသွား​စောက်​တော့, or မသွား​စောက်​သ​ကဲ့​သို့​ဖြစ်​သည်, it was not well to go, (on account of some evil that has just befallen).
စွ slightly intensive or emphatic, – commonly connected with the verb by a euphonic affix, and sometimes superseding the assertive affix, as ကြီး​လေစွ, it is great, indeed.
စွာ intensive, – mostly used before the participial affix သော, as ဖြတ်​စွာ​သော​သူ, a very excellent person.
ဆန်း, with the verb repeated, just that and no more, merely, nothing more, as ကြီး​ဆန်း​ကြီး​သည်, to be large merely.
ဆိတ် (from ဆိတ်, to be quiet), to be quiet, unmoved (though the occasion calls for exertion); as နေ​ဆိတ်​အည်, to remain unmoved.
ဆဲ, though put down by Pali grammarians as denoting the present tense, denotes in common usage the immediate future, as ရောက်​ဆဲရှိ​သည်, to be about to arrive, or on the point of arriving, equivalent to ရောက်​လု​ပြီ; and when repeated, and especially when prefixed by a future affix, is more directly future, as ရောက်​ဆဲဆဲ, or ရောက်​မည်​ဆဲဆဲ, to be about arriving before long.
တုံ, sometimes euphonic, but when repeated after a following verb, partaking of the nature of a continuative, and denoting alternation; as ငုတ်​တုံ​ပေါ်​တုံ​ရှိ​သည်, to be sinking and appearing by turns.
တော့, denoting a slight necessity.
​တည့်, directly, at once, as သွား​တည့်​သည်, to go directly, at once.
နှိုင်, sometimes in converation နိုင်, potential, to be able (from နိုင်, to prevail, overcome), as သွား​နှိုင်​သည်, to be able to go.
ပြန်, again (from ပြန်, to return), as ပြု​ပြန်​သည်, to do again:
ဘဲ, with မ prefixed to the root, and a continuative affix expressed or understood, without, as မစား​ဘဲ​သွား​သည်, he went without eating.
မိ, implying carelessness or fault, as ပြော​မိ​ပြီ he has said it (and therefore committed himself); sometimes euphonic.
မှီ, with မ prefixed to the root, and a continuative affix expressed or understood, before, as မသွား​မှီ​စား​သည်, he ate before going; combined with တိုင်​အောင်, until, as မသွား​မှီ​တိုင်​အောင် nutil he went;​—​sometimes taking a noun affix, as မသွား​မှီ၌, before going.
ရ, must, as သွား​ရ​မည် he must go; frequently euphonic.
ရက်, to be capable, (in regard to feeling), as သတ်​ရက်​သည်, to be unfeeling enough to kill; မကွာ​ရက်, he cannot bear to part.
ရစ်, remaining behind, as ပြုရစ်​သည်, to do (it), remaining behind, နေ​ရစ်​သည်, to stay behind.
ရော့, denoting disapprobation or regret; sometimes euphonic, particularly when used imperatively.
ရှာ, denoting affection or sympathy in the speaker, as သွား​ရှာ​သည်, he goes, alas!
လွန်း, denoting excess, (from လွန်, to exceed), as ကောင်း​လွန်း​သည်, to be too good.
လှ, very, as ကြီး​လှ​သည်, to be very great.
To these may be added a number of verbs, which are occasionally used to qualify a principal verb, as,—
အပ်, to be right, proper, as သွား​အပ်​သည်, it is right to go; sometimes passive, in translation from the Pali, particularly when used as an adversative to တတ်; frequently euphonic.
အား to be at leisure, as သွား​အား​သည်, to be at leisure to go.
ကောင်း, to be good, as သွား​ကောင်း​သည်, it is good to go.
​ခဲ, to be hard, difficult, as ရခဲ​သည်, it is difficult to obtain.
စမ်း, to try, make trial, as ပြုစမ်း​သည်, to do by way of trial; sometimes but little more than euphonic.
တတ်, to know how, be skilled in, as ပြုတတ်​သည်, to know how to do; sometimes denoting the way, custom, usual course, as လူသေ​တတ်​သည်, man is mortal.
တန်, to be suitable, as ပြုတန်​သည်, it is suitable to be done.
ထိုက်, to be worthy, deserving of, as သေ​ထိုက်​သည်, to deserve to die.
နေ, to remain, continue, as ပြုနေ​သည်, to continue doing.
ပျင်း, to be reluctant, averse to, as မြင်​ပျင်း​သည်, to hate to see.
ဖြစ်, to be practicable, as မသွား​ဖြစ်, it is not practicable to go.
ဖွယ်, to be most suitable, fit for, as အံ့ဖွယ်​သော​အမှု, a wonderful affair.
ရာ, similar to အပ်; frequently euphonic.
လောက်, to be enough, as စား​လောက်​အောင်​ရှိ​သည်, there is enough to eat.
လို, to desire, as ပြုလို​သည်, equivalent to ပြုချင်​သည်.
လွယ်, to be easy, as ပြုလွယ်​သည်, it is easy to do.
ဝံ့, to dare, as ပြုဝံ့​သည်, to dare to do.
သင့်, to be suitable, proper, becoming, as ပြော​သင့်​သည်, it is suitable to say.
သာ, to be easy, pleasant, as ပြော​သာ​သည်, it is pleasant to say; with the imperative affix ပါ, and the verb repeated, as စား​သာ​စား​ပါ, eat freely, or without hesitation.
N. B. The idea of progress is conveyed by လာ or သွား connected with the principal verb by ၍, expressed or understood, as မှည့်​၍​လာ​သည် it ripens, ဆိုး​၍​သွား​သည်, it grows worse.
§118. euphonic affixes.
ချေ, when combined with အံ့, ချိမ့်; when repeated after a following verb, similar to တုံ, which see under Qualifying Affixes.
​ငြား, mostly need before the continuative affix သော်ထည်း, and the assertive future affix အံ့, when used for လျှင်.
စ, in certain combinations, noticed in their places.
ခေ, mostly used before the participial affixes, when several successive participial clauses precede a noun, in commendatory discourse.
ပါ, conciliatory – polite – respectful.
ပေ, when combined with အံ့, ပိမ့်.
ဘိ‚ mostly used before the assertive affix သည်, abbreviated to သ, in connection with the noun affix ကဲ့သို့, as သွား​ဘိ​သ​ကဲ့​သို့, like as he went; also, before the closing affix ချင်း, in which case it is rather intensive, as များ​ဘိ​ချင်း, there are very many.
လင့်, mostly used in the invitation to listen, နာ​လင့်​ကုန်, listen ye!
လတ်, mostly used before the continuative affix သော်.
လေ‚ when combined with အံ့, လိမ့်, which combination is mostly used before the future affix မည်; when repeated after a following verb, it denotes correspondence or reciprocity, as လိုက်​လေ​ပြေး​လေ, as (one) pursues, (the other) runs.
လိုက်, mostly used with transitive verbs; sometimes giving a transitive meaning to an intransitive verb.
လှာ, mostly used with arriving, coming, &c.
§119. closing affixes.
ဟု, that, noting indication, viz, namely (from ဟူ, to say, declare, mean), – used at the close of a sentence, which is the subject of a subsequent assertion, as သိ​သည်​ဟု​ပြော​သည်, he says that he knows, – also, after a word which is explanatory of a subsequent word, as မင်း​ရှင်​စော​ဟု​ဘွဲ့​ကို​ပေး​သည်, he gave (him) the title of Menshen zau; – sometimes it takes a verbal affix, but ought then to be written ဟူ, and parsed as a verb.
တည်း, used at the close of a simple sentence, equivalent to the substantive verb ရှိလည်, to be, the nominative being generally ​made by ကား, as အမည်​ကား​မောင်​လောက်​တည်း, his name is Moung Louk,—sometimes taking ပေ, or ပေ​လျှင်, immediately before it; also, at the close of a parenthetic sentence, or a distinct paragraph, closing in သည်, commonly abbreviated to သ, as သွား​သ​တည်း, he went,—sometimes taking လျှင်, or က, or လျှင်က, immediately before it.
တတ်, ditto, at the close of a parenthesis or paragraph.
တကား, emphatic, or indicative of some emotion, as သေား​က​လေး​သေ​ပြီ​တ​ကား, my little son is dead, alas! မသွား​ပါ​တ​ကား, he goes not, indeed.
ရကား, sometimes equivalent to တကား.
ချင်း, ditto, commonly expressive of regret, as ဖြစ်​ရ​လေ​ချင်း, it is so, alas!
စွ, see under Qualifying affixes.
တောင်း, intensive,—commonly connected with the verb by another affix, as ကြီး​ပေ​တောင်း, it is great, indeed!
တမုံ့, or တမူ, expletive, after an assertive or precative affix, သွား​သည်​တမုံ့, (obsolete).
The following are colloquial only:—
နော်, soliciting acquiescence, as သွား​တော့​မည်​နော်, I will go, shall I? သွား​တော့​နော်, go, will you?
လေ, or လား​လေ, slightly emphatic or persistive, is used after the assertive affixes, as ရှိ​သည်​လား​လေ, it is certainly, or I assure you.
ပ, or ပေါ့, familiar,—without or after the assertive affix.
ကော, or ကော​လေ, ditto, sometimes superseding the assertive affix.
တည့်, (pron. ဒဲ့), denoting that the words to which it is affixed, are repeated from the mouth of another person, as ရှိ​သည်​တည့်, it is, he says.
negation.
§120. The negative is made by prefixing မ to the verb, which, beside its negative power, has the privilege of occasionally dispensing with the assertive affixes, or of conveying an ​assertive power to the root, or to the qualifying and euphonic affixes of number, and the auxiliary affixes of tense, all of which, in affirmative sentences, require an assertive affix, thus သွား​သည်, he goes, မ​သွား, or မ​သွား​ဘူး, he goes not; သွား​သေး​သည်, he is still going, သွား​သေး, he is not yet gone; သွား​နှိုင်​သည်, he can go, မသွားနှိုင်, he cannot go.
§121. In colloquial discourse, a strong negative is sometimes made by affixing ရိုး​လား, to the root, or မို့​တုံး, a contraction of မတုတ်​တုံး, to an assertive affix, as သွား​ရိုး​လား, or သွား​သည်​မို့​တုံး, he goes not.
verbs used substantively.
§122. Verbs terminating in the assertive affix သည် (occasionally changed to သ, သော or သော့), are frequently used substantively, and in that character, admit the noun affixes. Verbs terminating in an assertive affix of tense, are capable of being used in the same manner, but the termination သည် or သော is, in some cases, superadded to qualify them for the substantive construction.
§123. examples.
သွား​သည်​မှန်​သည်, or သွား​သည်​ကား​မှန်​သည်, it is right, or true, that he goes.
သွား​သည်​နောက်မှ (နောက် being a verb,) or သွား​သည်​နောက်, after he goes.
သွား​သည်​ကို​သိသည်, he knows that he goes.
သွား​သည်​တိုင်​အောင် (ကို or သို့ understood,) until he goes.
သွား​သည်​၏​အ​တိုင်း or သွား​သည်​အ​တိုင်း, according as he goes.
N. B. When verbs are constructed with a following noun, the possessive affix ၏ is commonly omitted, as သွား​သည်​အ​ရပ်, the place of going, or where he goes; သွား​သည်​အ​ခါ, the time of going, or when he goes; သွား​သည်​အ​စည်, while he goes; သွား​သည်​အ​ကြောင်း, the reason of going; သွား​သည်​နည်း​တူ, in the same manner as he goes; သွား​သည်​အား​ဖြင့်, by means of going, &c.
​သွား​အံ့​သော​ငှါ (with the assertive future affix), in order to go.
သွား​သော့​ကြောင့်, because he goes.
သွား​သည်​မို့, ditto,—colloquial.
သွား​သ​ဖြင့်, by means of going, when he goes.
သွား​သည်​နှင့်, with going, when he goes.
သွား​သည်​နှင့်​အညီ, in accordance with the going.
သွား​သည်​တွန်, ၌, or မှာ, going, while he goes.
သွား​သည်က, or မှ, from going.
သွား​သ​ကဲ့​သို့, like as he goes.
သွား​သော​သ​ဖွယ်, ditto.
သွား​သည်လို, ditto.
သွား​သည်​လိုလို, a little like, &c.
§124. When a verb used substantively, and connected by the affix ၏ with a following noun, whose initial is a syllabic အ, drops both the noun affix and the verbal, and takes the noun into union with itself, by rejecting or modifying the initial letter, the abbreviated compound becomes a verbal noun of the same import as the original clause, thus သွား​သည်​၏​အ​ခါ becomes သွား​ခါ, the time of going; နေ​သည်​၏​အ​စည်, နေ​စည်, while remaining; ပြော​သည်​၏​အစ, ပြောစ, the beginning of speaking.
§125. Several cases of verbal nouns, on account of their frequent occurrence, deserve particular mention.
1st. The verbal in ခြင်း, from အခြင်း, an act, deed denotes action or being, in the abstract, as သွား​ခြင်း, a going, or the act of going, ကောင်း​ခြင်း, being good, or the state of being good.
2nd. The verbal in ရာ, from အရာ, a thing, subject, matter, denotes the object of an action, or the place where a thing is, or is done, as နှစ်​သက်​ရာ, an object of love; နေ​ရာ, a remaining place; စွန့်​ပြစ်​ရာ, a place of throwing away.
3rd. The verbal in ရာ, from အလျာ or အလျှာ, what is for, commonly written စရာ, the verbal in ဖို့, or ဘို့, from အဖို့, a portion, and the verbal in ရန် (from ရန်​သည်, to appropriate), denote what is for some purpose, as စား​စ​ရာ, what is for eating, ​or to be eaten; ကြည့်​ဘို့ what is to be looked at; ပြုရန်, what is to be done.
4th. The verbal in ဖွယ် or ဘွယ်, sometimes စချင်​ဘွယ်, from ဘဖွယ်, what is suitable, denotes what is fit for, adapted to, or worthy of some use or purpose, as စား​ဘွယ်, what is good to eat, an eatable; အံ့ဘွယ် what is wonderful; ချစ်​စ​ချင်​ဘွယ်, what is lovely. But this verbal seems frequently to partake of the nature of an adjective.
N. B. The terminations ခမန်း, or ဂမန်း (according to one acceptation), လိ and လိလိ, are of similar import with the termination ဖွယ် but used in a bad sense only. Several of these are sometimes combined, as ရွံစလိ (စ euphonic), ရွံစ​ဖွယ်လိ, ရွံဖွယ်​လိ​ခ​မန်း, what is disgusting.
The terminations ခမန်း (according to another acceptation), ဘိနန်း, or ဘနန်း and မတတ်, form verbals denoting nearness of accomplishment, occasionally taking လု before them, as လောင်​ခ​မန်း or လောင်​လု​ခ​မန်း, what is near burning; မြုပ်​လု​မ​တတ်, what is near sinking; ကုန်​မ​တတ်, nearly the whole.
The termination နိုး, နိုးနိုး, or စနိုး, followed by a verb expressive of opinion, denotes, what is likely to be or to take place, sometimes admitting an affix of tense between itself and the root, as သင်္ဘော​ရောက်​နိုး​နိုး​ထင်​သည်, or ရောက်​မည်​နိုး​နိုး​ထင်​သည်, he thinks that the ship will probably arrive.
5th. There are several other verbals, formed from nouns, which being obsolete, or never occurring in their full form, or in any other connection, connot be so satisfactorily analyzed, as most of the preceding; thus the verbal in တုန်း, perhaps from အထုန်း, time being, denotes the time of action or being, as သွား​တုန်း​တွင်, or သွား​တုန်း​ခါ, equivalent to သွား​စည်​တွင်, or သွား​စည်​အ​ခါ, the time of going, while going.
The verbal in ရုံ, perhaps from အရုံ, just so much and no more, confines the action or being to what is expressed by the root, as ပြော​ရုံ​ပြု​သည်, or ပြော​ရုံ​မျှ​ပြု​သည်, he just speaks, i. e. does no more than speaking.
​The particle ကာ is of somewhat similar import with ရို, as ရိပ်​လာ​ပြော​သည်, he speaks illusively merely; ပြော​ကာ​မျှ​အား​ဖြင့်, by means of speaking merely.
The particle ချင်း, single one only, limits the time to the continuance of the action expressed, as စား​စား​ချင်း​သေ​သည်, (fully) စား​လျှင်​စား​ချင်း​တွင်​သေ​သည်, he died as soon as he ate it, i. e. instantly, without an interval.
The verbal formative မှန်း, from မှန် to be right, true, is used chiefly in negative sentences, as ရောက်​မှန်း​ကို​မ​သိ, or ရောက်​မှန်း​မ​သိ, (he) knows not the fact of the arrival. It is sometimes used without a verbal root, as ဘူရား​မှန်း​မသိ။ တရား​မှန်း​မသိ, (he) knows nothing about God or religion.
မိ—ရာ, affixed to the root repeated, as in the phrase, နေ​မိ​နေ​ရာ​နေ​သည်, denotes inadvertence or inconsideration.
6th. Beside verbal nouns formed from verbs used substantively, there is another kind which may be termed the honorific verbal, formed by combining the verbal root with the adjective တော်. This verbal, followed by the verb မူသည်, to do, perform, is always used instead of the simple verb, in speaking becomingly of deities, kings, or any exalted personage, as မိန့်​တော်​မူ​သည်, (the deity or king) speaks, literally, does divine or royal speaking, မိန့်​တော်​မမူ, he speaks not; followed by a noun, it may be regarded as a noun in the possessive, as စား​တော်​ကွမ်း, betel eaten by the king, ပန်​တော်​ပန်း, flowers used in royal adornment.
Most verbal nouns retain the same power of government as their verbs, that is, cause the preceding noun to take the same affix as their verbs do, as ဇာတ်​ကို​ဟော​စ​ပြု​သည်, he makes a beginning of rehearsing the zat; ဇာတ်​ကို​ဟော​တော်​မူ​သည်, he rehearses the zat, or he does rehearsing the zat; but some, particularly the verbal in ခြင်း, govern the preceding noun in the possessive, as ဇာတ်​၏​ဟော​ခြင်း, the rehearsing of the zat.
ADVERBS.
§126. Adverbs are of nine kinds, viz:—
1. Adverbs proper, as ဧကန်, certainly, အလ​ကား, in vain, လား​လား, an intensive before a negative, as လား​လား​မ​ပြော, he says nothing at all, ခပ်, rather, prefixed to adjectives, formed from verbal roots by reduplication.
2. Pronominal adjectives used to modify a following verb, as အဘယ်​သို့​နေ​သ​နည်း, how does (he) remain? ထို​သို့​နေ​သည်, (he) remains thus; or combined with a secondary noun and similarly applied, as ဘယ်​လောက်​ကြီး​သ​နည်း, how large is (it)? သည်​က​လောက်, properly သည်​ခန့်​လောက်​ကြီး​သည်, (it) is so large. How? in what manner? and thus, in this manner, are also expressed by combining pronominals, lightly accented with နှယ်, manner, as ဘဲ့​နှယ်, how? သည့်​နှယ်, thus.
3. Adverbs formed from simple or compound verbs:—
(a.) from simple verbs—by prefixing အ or တ, as အလွှန်​ကြီး​သည်, to be very great, အလျှင်​သွား, go quick; တစောင်း​ကြည့်​သည်, to look sideways;—by affixing စွာ, as ကောင်း​စွာ, well;—by reduplication, as ကောင်း​ကောင်း, well;—by reduplication with အ prefixed, as အပြား​ပြား, variously;—by reduplication with တ prefixed, implying repetition or continuance, as တလဲ​လဲ, by turns, တမတ်​မတ် in a standing posture; by reduplication, with အ prefixed to each member, as အသီး​အသီး, separately;—
(b.) from compound verbs—by affixing စွာ, as ကောင်း​မြတ်​စွာ, excellently;—by prefixing အ to each member, as အကွပ်​အ​ညပ်, penally, by way of punishment;—by prefixing အ to the first member, and တ to the latter, as အဆော​တ​လျင်, quickly, အငြတ်​တ​နိုး, affectionately;—by prefixing အ or တ to the first, and reduplicating the latter, as အလျင်​မြန်​မြန်, fast, တစိုး​ရိမ်​ရိမ်, anxiously;—by prefixing အ to the first, and တ to the latter reduplicated, as အမွှေး​တ​ကြိုင်​ကြိုင် fragrantly;—by reduplicating ​the second member, in which case the adverb is a diminutive, as နက်​ကျုတ်​ကျုတ်, rather black;—by reduplicating both members, as ထူး​ထူး​ဆန်း​ဆန်း extraordinarily;—by prefixing အ or တ to each member reduplicated, as အထူး​ထူး​အ​ဆန်း​ဆန်း, ditto; တလည်​လည်​တ​ဝိုက်​ဝိုက်, circuitously;—by prefixing က or ပ (pronounced ဂ and ဗ) to each member, as ကရောက်​က​ရက်, disorderly, ပရုန်း​ပ​ရင်း, tumultuously.
Under this head may be classed a few of anomalous construction, made up in imitation of some of the above forms, as အမှတ်​တ​မဲ့, without notice, အစိုး​တရ, as having power, ကြောက်​လန့်​တ​ကြား, frightedly, အတျွေး​အ​ငမ်း, in expectance of payment; also a few formed from negatives, by affixing chiming increments, as မ​ကောင်း​တ​ရောင်း, not well, မ​လှ​တမ, not handsome, not agreeable.
4. Adverbs formed from verbal roots, by reduplication, prefixing the negative မ to the first member, and တ to the second, thus intending to convey both the ideas of affirming, and denying, as မ​လောက်​တ​လောက်, just enough, and hardly that, မ​မှီ​တ​မှီ, just reaching, and yet not quite reaching.
5. Adverbs formed from nouns by reduplication, dropping the syllabic အ, in the latter member, if it is the initial of the noun, and prefixing it to the former member, if the noun begins with a consonant, as အခါ​ခါ, repeatedly, from အခါ, a time; အလို​လို, of one's own accord, from အလို, will, pleasure; အသောင်း​သောင်း, thousands, from အသောင်း, ten thousand; အပြည်​ပြည် of various countries, or from country to country, from ပြည်, a country.
N. B. Adverbs formed from verbs or nouns are sometimes used adjectively, as အပြား​ပြား​သော​အ​ကြောင်း​တို့, various reasons, အပြည်​ပြည်​သော​မင်း​တို့, kings of sundry or all countries.
6. Adverbs formed from nouns, beginning with a syllabic အ, by dropping the အ, prefixing တ, one, and affixing တည်း, only, as တညီ​တ​ညီ, even, all together, from အညီ, evenness, uniformity.
​7. Incomplete clauses, as အကယ်၍, certainly, for အကယ်​ဖြစ်၍; အထူး​သ​ဖြင့်, exceedingly, for အထူး​ဖြစ်​သ​ဖြင့်.
8. Adverbial affixes, as follows:—
ကဲ့သို့, as, like as.
ချည်း, only, merely, nothing but, as လူတို့​ချည်း, men only, nothing but men, သွား​သည်​ချည်း; he only goes, does nothing but go.
စင်, even, slightly emphatic.
စီ, each, as တယောက်စီ, each one, ကိုယ်စီ, ditto; apiece, as တခုစီ one a piece.
တစေ, same as ချည်း.
တည်း, used to designate an object with some particularity, as မိမိ​သား​ငယ်​ကို​တည်း​ပေး​သည်, he gives to his youngest son,—particularly—or in distinction from the other;—in this sense, used frequently in connection with ဟူ​သော, or ဟု, after a word explanatory of a subsequent word, as ကောင်း​မှု​တည်း​ဟူ​သော​မျိုး​စေ့ seed-grain, which means merit; မောင်​လောက်​တည်း​ဟု​အ​မည်​ရှိ​သည်, he has the name of Monng Louk;—used also, in asking questions, to designate the point on which the question turns, and frequently repeated after those words or clauses, in successive questions, which are intended to be set adversatively, as အသီး​ဧ​ကို​တည်း​စား​လို​သ​လော၊ အသီး​ပူ​ကို​တည်း​စား​လို​သ​လော, do you wish to eat cold fruit or hot? ငါ၌​အ​ပြစ်​ရှိ​၍​တည်း​နှစ်​လုံး​မ​သာ​ရှိ​တော်​မူ​သ​လော၊ ကိုယ်​တော်​၌​တ​စုံ​တ​ခု​စိုး​ရိမ်​ဘွယ်​ရှိ​၍​တည်း​နှစ်​လုံး​မ​သာ​ရှိ​တော်​မူ​သ​လော, is thy mind distressed because there is some fault in me, or because there is some cause of concern in thee?
ပင်, even, slightly emphatic.
ဖြစ်စေ, see သော်၎င်.
ဘက်, ditto,—colloquial.
မျှ (from အမျှ, as much as), frequently pronounced မှ, used as an intensive in negative sentences, as ဘယ်​သူ​မျှ​မရှိ, there is not so much as one person, or there is not even one person; ဘဟာ​ကို​မျှ​မရ, ​ or briefly ဘာ​မှ​မရ, (he) obtains nothing at all; ရောက်​သည်​ကို​မျှ​မ​သိ, (he) knows not even of the arrival; sometimes expletive, as ရုန်း​ရင်း​ခတ်​မျှ​ပြု​သည်, to make a disturbance.
လည်း, also; sometimes used familiarly for the continuative affix လျှင်.
လည်း​ကောင်း, both—and, placed after other affixes, and repeated at the close of successive clauses, as ငကို​၎င်​သေား​ကို​၎င်​မြင်​သည်, he sees both me and my son; in modern style, equivalent to the pronominal adjective လို, that, as ၎င်​နေ့ that day, ၎င်​နည်း, in the same manner.
လျှင်, distributive, as တလ​လျှင်​တ​တင်း, a basket a month; sometimes definitive or emphatic.
သော်၎င်, either—or, placed after other affixes, and repeated at the close of successive clauses, as ရွှေ​နှင့်​သော်​၎င်​ငွေ​နှင့်​သော်​၎င်, either with gold or with silver.
သာ, only.
9. Verbal affixes are used adverbially, when placed after an adverbial or noun affix. The same is true of noun affixes, when placed after a verbal or adverbial affix (see under Nouns, §61).
INTERJECTIONS.
§127. A few of the most common are as follows:—
အစာ, အစာစာ, fie!
အည်း, eh! expressive of pain.
အမယ်, အမယ်​လေး, အမယ်​ကြီး​လေး, mother! denoting surprise or distress.
အလယ်, အလယ်​လေး oh! expressive of pain.
အလို, အလို​လေး, oh! expressive of pain.
အိမ်း, pronounced eh, yes! expressive of assent.
အေ, don't, disapprobatory—prohibitive.
အေ့ဟေ, aa haa! aha! contemptuous.
​အေး, အေးအေး, yes!
အဲ, အဲအဲ, that's right.
အော, O! of various applications.
အောအော, O! expressive of satisfaction.
အော်, ah! oh!
အို, O! vocative, or indicative of pain.
ဖြစ်လေချင်း, ဖြစ်ရလေချင်း alas! expressive of sorrow.
လော there now! expressive of disapprobation.
လော့, here! take it!
လားလား, threatening.
သယ်, wonderful! rather ironical or disapprobatory.
သာမု, well done!
ဟေ့, haa! a familiar vocative, rather disrespectful.
ဟဲ့, heh! censuring, threatening.
ဟော, there! pointing to an object.
APPENDIX.
§128. numerals.
| Cardinal. | Ordinal. |
| တစ်, or တ, ၁, one, | ပဌမ, first, |
| နှစ်, ၂, two, | ဒုတိယ, second, |
| သုံး, ၃, three, | တတိယ, third, |
| လေး, ၄, four, | စတုတ္ထ, fourth, |
| ငါး, ၅, five, | ပည္စမ, fifth, |
| ခြောက်, ၆, six, | ဆဌမ, sixth |
| ခုနစ်, ၇, seven, | သတ္တမ, seventh, |
| ရှစ်, ၈, eight, | အဌမ, eighth, |
| ကိုး, ၉, nine, | နဝမ, ninth, |
| တဆယ်, ၁၀, ten, | ဒသမ, tenth, |
| တဆယ်တစ်, ၁၁, eleven, | ဧကာဒသမ, eleventh, |
| တဆယ်နှစ်, ၁၂, twelve, &c. | ဒွါဒသမ twelfth, |
| နှစ်ဆယ်, ၂၀, twenty, | ဝီသတိမ, twentieth, |
| သုံးဆယ်, ၃၀, thirty, &c. | တိံသမ, thirtieth. |
    တရာ, ၁၀၀, one hundred,
    တထောင်, ၁၀၀၀, one thousand,
    တသောင်း, ၁၀၀၀၀, ten thousand,
    တသိန်း, ၁၀၀၀၀၀, one hundred thousand,
    တသန်း, ၁၀၀၀၀၀၀, one million,
    တကုဋေ, ၁၀၀၀၀၀၀၀, ten millions.
§129. One half is expressed by တ​ဝက်, or ဝက်, placed after the noun of dimension or quantity, as ယူ​ဇ​နာ​တ​ဝက်, or ယူ​ဇ​နာ​ဝက်, half a yoozana; one and a half, two and a half, &c. by တ, နှစ်, &c. placed before, and ခွဲ after, as တ​ယူ​ဇ​နာ​ခွဲ, one yoozana and a half, နှစ်​ယူ​ဇ​နာ​ခွဲ two yoozanas and a half, &c. One and a quarter, &c. is expressed by prefixing တ, &c. and affixing တ​စိတ်, connected to the noun by နှင့်, as တ​ယူ​ဇ​နာ​နှင့်​တ​စိတ် one yoozana and a quarter, &c. All fractions, except one half, are commonly expressed by the help of အစု, a collection; thus သုံး​စု​တွင်​တစု, one third, လေး​စု​တွင်​တစု, one quarter, ငါး​စု​တွင်​သုံးစု, three fifths.
time.
§130. The true epoch of Burman time is the annihilation of Gaudama, the last Boodh or deity, which is placed five hundred and fourty-four years before Christ; but the vulgar epoch is placed eleven hundred and eighty-two years later, or six hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ.
§131. Time is measured by lunar months, consisting of twenty-nine, and thirty days alternately.
Twelve lunar months make a common year, and seven years out of nineteen admit an intercalar month of thirty days each. The names of the months are as follows:—
| တံကူး, April (nearly), | သတင်းကျွတ်, October, |
| ကဆုန်, May, | တန်ဆောင်မုန်း, November, |
| နယုန်, June, | နတ်တော်, December, |
| ဝါဆို, July, | ပြာသို, January, |
| ဝါခေါင်, August, | တပို့တွဲ, February, |
| တော်သလင်း, September, | တပေါင်း, March. |
§133. A month is distinguished into two parts, the waxing, လဆန်း, and the wane, လပြည့်​ကျော် [or လဆုတ်, St.] The full moon, လပြည့်, falls on the fifteenth of the waxing, after which a new count of days begins, and the change or disappearing of the moon, လကွယ်, falls on the fourteenth or fifteenth of the wane.
§134. The days of worship are the eighth of the waxing, the full, the eighth of the wane, and the change.
§135. Time is also divided into weeks, or periods of seven days, which are, of course, independent of the lunar arrangement, and follow the same order that obtains in all other parts of the world, viz:—
| တနင်္ဂနွေ, Sunday, | ကြာသပတေး, Thursday, |
| တနင်္လာ, Monday, | သောက်ကြာ, Friday, |
| အင်္ဂါ, Tuesday, | စနေ, Saturday. |
| ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး, Wednesday, | |
§136. The day and the night are each divided into four periods, which as they terminate, are designated by their appropriate beat of drum. The single beat, တချက်​တီး, accords with 9 o'clock, morning or evening; the double beat, နှစ်​ချက်​တီး, accords with 12 o'clock; the triple beat, သုံး​ချက်​တီး, with 3 o'clock; and the quadruple beat, လေး​ချက်​တီး, with 6 o'clock.
§137. A natural day is also divided into sixty equal parts, called နာရီ, which are again subject to various subdivisions seldom used but in astrological works.
weights.
§138. ချင်​ရွေး, the seed of the abrus precatorius, marked (ွေ), as ၁ွေ, တရွေး.
ရွေး​ကြီး, the seed of the adenanthera pavonina, double the weight of the above, marked the same.
* ↑ The Sanscrit authorities, it is true, give the second letter of the class as the adjunct to the nasal ဏ; but the Pali authorities give the third, which is here adopted.
* ↑ Pronounced with the rising inflection of the voice, St.
* ↑ Ai, as in aisle. St.
* ↑ The latter sound especially obtains, when the initial letter is ည, ယ, ရ, or a consonant compounded with the symbol ယ or ရ [ee, as in been. St.]
* ↑ Or it. St.
* ↑ Ei, as in vein, skein, St.
* ↑ Ai, as in air. St.
* ↑ Ŏ, as oo in foot. St.
* ↑ Ooa, as oo in foot, or soon. St.
* ↑ Ei as in vein, skein, St.
* ↑ Pron. myit-ta. St.
* ↑ Pron. မျည် St.
* ↑ မင်း is also feminine. St.
* ↑ သ like th in the. St.

## Notes

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse