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.

bo du gi ha ke ju la
 * b : like the 'b' in bat
 * d : like the 'd' in dagger
 * g : like the 'g' in gap
 * h : like the 'h' in house
 * k : like the 'k' in tanker
 * kh: like the 'c' in cat
 * ky: like the 'j' in jeep
 * l : like the 'l' in love
 * m : like the 'm' in mad
 * n : like the 'n' in nut
 * ng : like the 'ng' in dancing
 * ny : like the 'ni' in onion
 * p : like the 'p' in spin
 * ph : like the 'p' in pig
 * r : becomes a 'y', or is silent. In other words, the letter "r" is a lot like a trilled "r" sound ("rrrr") in Burmese (just like the "r" in Latin/Spanish).
 * s : like a 's' in sing, or becomes a 'th' sound
 * shw: like the 'sh' in shack
 * hs : like a 's' in sound
 * t : like a 't' in that
 * th : like a 't' in tongue
 * w : like a 'w' in win. Although there is no consonant "v" in Burmese, "w" sounds much like "v" in "victory" (just like German "w").
 * y : like a 'y' in young
 * z : like a 'z' in zoo

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?)
 * Excuse me. (begging pardon) : . ( )
 * I'm sorry. : . (saw-re-be )
 * Goodbye : . သွားတော့မယ်။(Thwa dau me)
 * Goodbye (informal) : . (Thwa dau me)
 * I can't speak Burmese [well]. : [ ]. ( [ba ma za ga go [kaung-kaung] ma pyaw thet bu.])
 * Do you speak English? : ? ( in glei za ga go pyaw thet de la?)
 * Is there someone here who speaks English? : ? (In glei za-ga pyaw thet de lu di ma shi la?)
 * Help! : ! (A ku nyi lo de!)
 * Look out! : ! (Ai ya! Kyi!)
 * Good morning. : . (Mingalaba )


 * Good night (to sleep) : . (Eigh douh meh )
 * I don't know. :  .  ကျွန်တော်မသိဘူး။(Kya-nau ma thi bu)
 * I don't understand. : . ကျွန်တော်နားမလည်ဘူး။(Kya-nau na ma ley bu)
 * Where is the toilet? : ? (Ka mya yei, ein da ga be ma leh)

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


 * 0 : ၀ (thoun-nya)
 * 1 : ၁ (tit)
 * 2 : ၂ (hni)
 * 3 : ၃ (thoun)
 * 4 : ၄ (lei)
 * 5 : ၅ (nga)
 * 6 : ၆ (kyout)
 * 7 : ၇ (kun hni)
 * 8 : ၈ (shit)
 * 9 : ၉ (ko)
 * 10 : ၁၀ (se)
 * 11 : ၁၁ (seh-tit)
 * 12 : ၁၂ (seh-hnih)
 * 13 : ၁၃ (seh-thoun)
 * 14 : ၁၄ (seh-lei)
 * 15 : ၁၅ (seh-nga)
 * 16 : ၁၆ (seh-chauk)
 * 17 : ၁၇ (seh-kuun)
 * 18 : ၁၈ (seh-shit)
 * 19 : ၁၉ (seh-kou)
 * 20 : ၂၀ (hna-seh)
 * 21 : ၂၁ (hna-seh-tit)
 * 22 : ၂၂ (hna-seh-hnih)
 * 23 : ၂၃ (hna-seh-thoun)
 * 30 : ၃၀ (thoun-zeh)
 * 40 : ၄၀ (lei-zeh)
 * 50 : ၅၀ (mgazeh)
 * 60 : ၆၀ (chau-seh)
 * 70 : ၇၀ (kueh-na-seh)
 * 80 : ၈၀ (shit-seh)
 * 90 : ၉၀ (ko-zeh)
 * 100 : ၁၀၀ (tit-ya)
 * 200 : ၂၀၀ (hni-ya)
 * 300 : ၃၀၀ (thoun-ya)
 * 500 : ၅၀၀ (nga-ya)
 * 1000 : ၁၀၀၀ (tit-taon)
 * 2000 : ၂၀၀၀ (hna-taon)
 * 10,000 : (se-thaon)
 * number _____ (train, bus, etc.) : Burmese uses several measure words. As a general rule, use ku for items, and yau for persons.

Time

 * now : a gu (အခု)
 * later : nao ma
 * before : a shei
 * morning : ma ne
 * afternoon : nei le
 * evening : nya nay
 * night : nya (ည)

Clock time

 * What time is it? : Be ne na yee toe bi le?
 * It is nine in the morning. : Ko nai toe bi.
 * Three-thirty PM. : Thoun na yee kwe.

Duration

 * _____ minute(s) : min-ni (မိနစ္်)
 * _____ hour(s) : nai yi (နာရီ)
 * _____ day(s) : ye' or nei (နေ့)
 * _____ week(s) : ba
 * _____ month(s) : la (လ)
 * _____ year(s) : hni (နှစ်)

Days

 * today : di nei
 * yesterday : ma nei
 * tomorrow : ma ne pyan


 * this week : di ba
 * last week : a yin ba
 * next week : nao ba


 * Sunday : tha nin ga nei (တနင်္ဂနွေ)
 * Monday : tha nin la (တနင်္လာ)
 * Tuesday : in ga (အင်္ဂါ)
 * Wednesday : bo ta hu (ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး)
 * Thursday : kya tha ba dei (ကြာသပတေး)
 * Friday : tao kya (သောကြာ)
 * Saturday : sa nei (စနေ)

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

Colors

 * black : အမည်းရောင် a me yaon
 * white : အဖြူရောင် a pyu yaon
 * gray : မီးခိုးရောင် mi go yaon
 * red : အနီရောင် a ni yaon
 * blue : အပြာရောင် a pya yaon
 * yellow : အဝါရောင် a wa yaon
 * green : အစိမ်းရောင် a sein yaon
 * orange : လိမ္မော်ရောင် lein mau yaon
 * purple : ခရမ်းရောင် ka-yan yaon
 * brown : အညိုရောင် a nyo yaon
 * Do you have it in another color? : Di ha go nao a yaon de she la?

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