# Burmese phrasebook

Burmese (မြန်မာစကား mien ma za ga) is the official and primary language of Myanmar. It is closely related to Tibetan, and distantly related to Chinese. The government uses the term "Myanmar" to describe the language, although most continue to refer to the language as "Burmese".
Like Thai, Lao and Khmer, the Burmese language has been strongly influenced by Sanskrit and Pali. There are also loan words from some southern dialects of Chinese, particularly for culinary terms, due to influences from Chinese immigrants during the colonial period.

## Grammar

Burmese word order is subject-object-verb, unlike English word order, which is subject-verb-object. Subjects and objects are omitted when such is implied in context. As a rule, all objects must be attached to a -go particle.
Burmese has an array of honorifics. Its grammar also contains many prefixes and suffixes indicating tense and mood.
The Burmese often use family names such as "brother", "sister", "auntie" in place of "you" and "I".

## Pronunciation guide

Burmese is a tonal language, consisting of four tones (low, high, creaky, checked). All dialects of Burmese in Myanmar adhere to this rule, although vocabulary usage varies from region to region.
Burmese is written using the Burmese script, which is an Indic script like Thai, Lao and Khmer, based on an ancient Indian script called Pali. Its alphabet contains 34 letters, which look like circles or semicircles. Like other Indic scripts, the Burmese script is an abugida, meaning that each letter represents a consonant, and vowels are indicated by modifications to the consonant letter (e.g. with a diacritic mark). The Burmese script also contains many tone marks and sound modifying marks.
Burmese uses an English-based romanisation system.

### Vowels

Burmese has a complicated set of vowels, containing 12 vowels.

#### Diphthongs
##### ai

    like the 'i' in site

##### au

    like the 'ou' in out; always used with a consanant ending

##### ei

    like the 'a' in ache

##### ou

    like the 'oa' in moat

#### Monophthongs
##### a

    like the 'a' in mama

##### e

    like the 'e' in she

##### i

    like the 'ea' in meat

##### o

    like the 'o' in tote

##### u

    like the 'ew' in lewd

##### ih

    like the 'i' in trip

### Consonants

Burmese consanants are aspirated (contains an 'h' sound) and unaspirated (does not contain an 'h' sound).
Aspirated and unaspirated consanants are romanised irregularly, because a uniform system does not yet exist.

#### b

    like the 'b' in bat
bo

#### d

    like the 'd' in dagger
du

#### g

    like the 'g' in gap
gi

#### h

    like the 'h' in house
ha

#### k

    like the 'k' in tanker
ke

#### kh

    like the 'c' in cat

#### ky

    like the 'j' in jeep
ju

#### l

    like the 'l' in love
la

#### m

    like the 'm' in mad

#### n

    like the 'n' in nut

#### ng

    like the 'ng' in dancing

#### ny

    like the 'ni' in onion

#### p

    like the 'p' in spin

#### ph

    like the 'p' in pig

#### r

    becomes a 'y', or is silent. In other words, the letter "r" is a lot like a trilled "r" sound ("rrrr") in Burmese (just like the "r" in Latin/Spanish).

#### s

    like a 's' in sing, or becomes a 'th' sound

#### shw

    like the 'sh' in shack

#### hs

    like a 's' in sound

#### t

    like a 't' in that

#### th

    like a 't' in tongue

#### w

    like a 'w' in win. Although there is no consonant "v" in Burmese, "w" sounds much like "v" in "victory" (just like German "w").

#### y

    like a 'y' in young

#### z

    like a 'z' in zoo

## Phrase list
### Basics
#### Hello.

    မင်္ဂလာပါ။ (Min ga la ba.)

#### Hello. (informal)

    နေကောင်းလား (Nei kaung la?)

#### How are you?

    နေကောင်းလား။ (Nei kaon la?)

#### Fine, thank you.

    နေကောင်းပါတယ်။ (Ne kaon ba de)

#### What is your name?

    ? ခင်ဗျားနာမည်ဘာလဲ။ (Kamya ye na mee ba le?)

#### My name is ______ .

    ______ . (Kya nau na mee _____ ba.)

#### Nice to meet you.

    . (Twe ya da wanta ba de)

#### Please.

    . (Kyeizu pyu yue )

#### Thank you.

    ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (Kyeizu tin ba de.)

#### You're welcome.

    ရပါတယ်။ (Ya ba de.)

#### Yes.

    ဟုတ်တယ်။ (Ho de.)

#### No.

    . မဟုတ်ဘူး။(Ma ho bu.)

#### Excuse me. (getting attention)

    ခင်ဗျာ? (Ka mya?)

#### I'm sorry.

    . (saw-re-be )

#### Goodbye

    . သွားတော့မယ်။(Thwa dau me)

#### Goodbye (informal)

    . (Thwa dau me)

#### I can't speak Burmese [well].

    [ ]. ( [ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma pyaw thet bu.])

#### Do you speak English?

    ? ( in glei za ga go pyaw thet de la?)

#### Is there someone here who speaks English?

    ? (In glei za-ga pyaw thet de lu di ma shi la?)

#### Help!

    ! (A ku nyi lo de!)

#### Look out!

    ! (Ai ya! Kyi!)

#### Good morning.

    . (Mingalaba )

#### Good night (to sleep)

    . (Eigh douh meh )

#### I don't know.

    . ကျွန်တော်မသိဘူး။(Kya-nau ma thi bu)

#### I don't understand.

    . ကျွန်တော်နားမလည်ဘူး။(Kya-nau na ma ley bu)

#### Where is the toilet?

    ? (Ka mya yei, ein da ga be ma leh)

### Numbers

Burmese numbers follow the Arabic system of numerals. Burmese also uses its own numerals, and most signs around the country are written in Burmese numerals. The Arabic numerals used by Westerners are also understood by most Burmese, but not commonly written outside tourist establishments.

#### 0

    ၀ (thoun-nya)

#### 1

    ၁ (tit)

#### 2

    ၂ (hni)

#### 3

    ၃ (thoun)

#### 4

    ၄ (lei)

#### 5

    ၅ (nga)

#### 6

    ၆ (kyout)

#### 7

    ၇ (kun hni)

#### 8

    ၈ (shit)

#### 9

    ၉ (ko)

#### 10

    ၁၀ (se)

#### 11

    ၁၁ (seh-tit)

#### 12

    ၁၂ (seh-hnih)

#### 13

    ၁၃ (seh-thoun)

#### 14

    ၁၄ (seh-lei)

#### 15

    ၁၅ (seh-nga)

#### 16

    ၁၆ (seh-chauk)

#### 17

    ၁၇ (seh-kuun)

#### 18

    ၁၈ (seh-shit)

#### 19

    ၁၉ (seh-kou)

#### 20

    ၂၀ (hna-seh)

#### 21

    ၂၁ (hna-seh-tit)

#### 22

    ၂၂ (hna-seh-hnih)

#### 23

    ၂၃ (hna-seh-thoun)

#### 30

    ၃၀ (thoun-zeh)

#### 40

    ၄၀ (lei-zeh)

#### 50

    ၅၀ (mgazeh)

#### 60

    ၆၀ (chau-seh)

#### 70

    ၇၀ (kueh-na-seh)

#### 80

    ၈၀ (shit-seh)

#### 90

    ၉၀ (ko-zeh)

#### 100

    ၁၀၀ (tit-ya)

#### 200

    ၂၀၀ (hni-ya)

#### 300

    ၃၀၀ (thoun-ya)

#### 500

    ၅၀၀ (nga-ya)

#### 1000

    ၁၀၀၀ (tit-taon)

#### 2000

    ၂၀၀၀ (hna-taon)

#### 10,000

    (se-thaon)

#### number _____ (train, bus, etc.)

    Burmese uses several measure words. As a general rule, use ku for items, and yau for persons.

### Time
#### now

    a gu (အခု)

#### later

    nao ma

#### before

    a shei

#### morning

    ma ne

#### afternoon

    nei le

#### evening

    nya nay

#### night

    nya (ည)

#### Clock time
##### What time is it?

    Be ne na yee toe bi le?

##### It is nine in the morning.

    Ko nai toe bi.

##### Three-thirty PM.

    Thoun na yee kwe.

#### Duration
##### _____ minute(s)

    min-ni (မိနစ္်)

##### _____ hour(s)

    nai yi (နာရီ)

##### _____ day(s)

    ye' or nei (နေ့)

##### _____ week(s)

    ba

##### _____ month(s)

    la (လ)

##### _____ year(s)

    hni (နှစ်)

#### Days
##### today

    di nei

##### yesterday

    ma nei

##### tomorrow

    ma ne pyan

##### this week

    di ba

##### last week

    a yin ba

##### next week

    nao ba

##### Sunday

    tha nin ga nei (တနင်္ဂနွေ)

##### Monday

    tha nin la (တနင်္လာ)

##### Tuesday

    in ga (အင်္ဂါ)

##### Wednesday

    bo ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး)

##### Thursday

    kya tha ba dei (ကြာသပတေး)

##### Friday

    tao kya (သောကြာ)

##### Saturday

    sa nei (စနေ)
Note: The Burmese calendar consists of 8 days, with one day between Wednesday and Thursday, called ya-hu, although this is purely ceremonial.

#### Writing time and date
### Colors
#### black

    အမည်းရောင် a me yaon

#### white

    အဖြူရောင် a pyu yaon

#### gray

    မီးခိုးရောင် mi go yaon

#### red

    အနီရောင် a ni yaon

#### blue

    အပြာရောင် a pya yaon

#### yellow

    အဝါရောင် a wa yaon

#### green

    အစိမ်းရောင် a sein yaon

#### orange

    လိမ္မော်ရောင် lein mau yaon

#### purple

    ခရမ်းရောင် ka-yan yaon

#### brown

    အညိုရောင် a nyo yaon

#### Do you have it in another color?

    Di ha go nao a yaon de she la?

### Transportation
#### Bus and train, ship and plane

Train yeh-ta
Train Station bu ta yone
Bus ba(sa) ka 2 Bus Stop ka hma tine
Bus Station ka gey
Ship thin bau 3
Port thin bau sey 5
Airplane leyin pyan 6
Airport ley yein gun 5 Ticket leh hma
Fare ka
Depart/Leave tweh
Arrive yow
Luggage pyit see

#### Directions

Over there ho beht Left Side beh beht Right Side nya beht

#### Taxi

Is this taxi free? Te ka se ahh tha la

### Lodging

To Stay theh
Bed ga din
Restroom ehn tha
Shower yay cho khan
Food
asar

### Money

How much is it?
Zey beh lout le? Money kyat
one dollar deh kyat
two dollars neh kyat
three dollars thone kyat
four dollars ley kyat
five dollars nga kyat
six dollars chowt kyat
seven dollars cuni kyat
eight dollars sheh kyat
nine dollars coh kyat
ten dollars se kyat
twenty dollars neh se kyat
twenty-five dollars neh se nga kyat or more commonly a sait
fifty dollars nga se kyat
one hundred dollars tayar kyat
When referring to US currency, it is important to remember to say "dollar" before the specified amount For example US $50 would be "dollar nga se".

### Eating

I am hungry. Nga bite sa de.
Where do you want to go eat? Beh sau thot sine thwa meh le?
I can only drink bottled water Kha naw ye bu ye be thouk lo ya de
Are there any napkins (Can I have one?) napkin she tha la
Fried foods uh chaw sa
Noodles cow sweh
Rice (white) htamin
Fried rice htamin chaw
Ice yey ghe
Ice cream bar
yey ghe mou
Sugar de ja
Salt sa
MSG a cho mout
Potato ah lou
Vegetable a yweh
Fruit a thee
Banana nguh pyaw thee
Apple pun thee
Apple Juice pun thee yay
Grapes duh beh thee
Durian doo hinh thee
Orange lei maw thee
Chicken chet tha
Beef ameh tha
Goat seit tha
Lamb tho tha
Fish nga

### Bars

Beer/Alcohol ayet
Round (As in "A round of beers") pweh
Ciggaretts sei lait
Glass kwut

### Shopping

Store sine
Clothes ain gee
Pants boun bee
Shoes punuht
Bra bou le
Ring lut sout
Socks chey sout
House ehn
Purse/Wallet puh sun eight
Backpack saw ough eight
Movies youh shin

### Driving

Car ka
Stop yet/ho
Go/Drive thwa/moun
Traffic Light Mee point

### Authority

Administration oh cho yey
Prime Minister wan-jee cho
President thanmada
Vice President duteya thanmada
Military tatmadaw
Chairman oh ga taw
Parliament hluttaw
Politics nine-nga yey