Have you ever wondered what is the difference between Burmese and Myanmar? Myanmar has been changed it’s name from “Burma” to “Myanmar” in the late 1980s. Many foreigners still use the name “Burma” since it’s quite easier to pronounce than “Myanmar” and also the new […]
For all of you who want to increase their Burmese Vocabulary skills, we have some great resources for you! High Frequency Word Lists! Below you find two word lists, one for the most 150 frequent Burmese words and one for the top 1000 Burmese words. […]
Burmese have 33 letters. Only around 25 letters are commonly used. You will usually see the Burmese scripts in rounded form, and KG students are trained by their teachers to have beautifully rounded characterized Burmese hand-writing. The more you write rounded, they say […]
(written on March 24, 2020. Pics from Myanmar COVID-19 Community.) I was shocked together with everyone in Myanmar yesterday. We have the first 2 confirmed cases announced at 11.45pm, 23 March, 2020. In the ASEAN countries, Laos and Myanmar are the only two countries left […]
Dear readers, It’s a nice raining day here in Yangon. It’s wet and usually when the rain comes, the light goes off!! I know that’s one disappointing fact about Myanmar. But tonight, EPC (Electric Power Corporation) seems to be quite generous and no black out! […]
Hello! How’s everything going? Today, let’s learn some vocabularies for “daily action words“?
Yes! “Go, come, eat, drink and stay” as the title!
Let’s start from asking, “How’s everything going?”
I do not really want you to use a very direct translated phrase for “how’s everything going?” in spoken language but you can use the following phrases:
အေျခအေနဘယ္လိုုလဲ၊ အဆင္ေျပလား၊ ဘာေတြလုုပ္ေနလဲ။
A Chay A Nay Bel Lo Lal? A Sin Pyay Lar? Bar Tway Lote Nay Lal?
How is the situation? Is it okay? What have you been doing?
And if you like to answer something neutral like “Things just go as usual“, say this:
ဒီအတိုုင္းပါပဲ။ Di A Time Par Pal
or if you want to be more descriptive, say this:
အဆင္ေျပပါတယ္။ ဒီအတုုိင္းပဲ။ သြား၊ လာ၊ စား၊ ေသာက္၊ ေနတာပဲ။
A Sin Pyay Par Tal. Di A Time Pal. Thwarr Lar Sarr Thout Nay Tar Pal.
I am okay. Things just go as usual. I’ve been going, coming, eating, drinking and living (staying).
Vocabularies for you:
သြား Go = Thwarr
လာ Come = Lar
စား Sar = Eat
ေသာက္ Thout = Drink
ေန Nay = Stay
တာပဲ “Tar Pal” is just an ending suffix.
So you can crack “5 daily action words” in this single phrase.
Burmese Phrase: သြား၊ လာ၊ စား၊ ေသာက္၊ ေနတာပဲ။
Romanization: Thwarr Lar Sarr Thout Nay Tar Pal.
Meaning in English: (Someone has) been going, coming, eating, drinking and living (staying).
Hope you enjoy! See you next week!
Mingalarbar! This time let’s learn something simple and new. I have a Myanmar Idiom in my mind to share with you. So the idiom is ” အဝတ်တထည်၊ ကိုယ်တခု” “A Wut Ta Htel Ko Ta Khu” meaning “a body and a dress“. You will like to […]
People in Myanmar usually ask the other person “have you already had your breakfast/lunch yet?” to show that they care about that person. It’s a greeting word like saying “Hi, how are you?” Sometimes, it’s not only just saying “hi” but also because they want […]
The Interjection “Aww”
I was once reading a poem that my local friend posted on Facebook and I felt like it’s a cute idea that he wrote about. He speaks fluent English and the poem is all in English.
So I commented “aww…” under his status to say it’s so sweet but he was not quite happy with that because he thought I did not believe what he said in the poem and that I was making an irony.
For him it sounded like “Is that so?”.
I immediately realized that I was not careful in the word choice and that can be a bias in our language. We have a very different meaning in using the interjection “aww”.
Interjection “Aww” in English is used when someone wants to express the cuteness/sweetness of an idea or of a thing.
In Burmese, we exclaim “aww” in the situation while receiving new information or we are uncertain of an idea but agreeing anyway” or “when the information is a bit different with what we know ”.
It means something like “Oh, is that what happened?” “I have just learned from you” “what I knew is different” or “it’s new to me”, etc.
While speaking, we can see the expression of faces, the tone that is used is different, etc. But in written language, it’s only the words so we need to be extra careful.
Some examples for using “aww” in Burmese:
Aww… hote lar? (Oh, is that so?)
Aww.. Thi Be, Thi Be (I see, I see)
Aww.. A Di Lo Go (I have just realized)
See you in next posts!
Hello again! Thanks for reading our cracking Burmese blog. Wait…. “Thanks” or “Thank You”? What is the difference between “Thanks” and “Thank you”? I goggled it and than it says “thanks” is just a shorten form of “thank you” and sometimes informal than “thank you”, […]
Let’s be honest, learning Burmese is much harder to learn than other languages like e.g. Spanish! Why is that? Lack of Learning Materials Burmese is a very very exotic language and there is a lack of good and high quality learning resources. This encompasses all […]
A Simple Cracking-Burmese Magic Code: Ya Par Tel (It’s okay/I’m okay)uniburma ရပၝတယ္ myanmar3 ရပါတယ် zawgyi-one ရပါတယ္
There are many times that you will hear the word “Ya Par Tel” in Myanmar. Well, what does this mean?
Ya Par Tel or Ya Tel. ရပါတယ္ / ရတယ္ (I am okay.) (Yes, I can.) (I get it.)
Ya Lar? ရလား (Are You okay?) (Is it okay?) (Can you?) (Get it?)
You turn it into question by taking “Per Tel” out and adding “Lar” at the end.
Ya Per Tel + Lar = Ya Lar?
Let’s go to see some example phrases:
Example 1: a teacher to her student
I will teach a bit faster. Ya Lar? (Are you okay?)
Ya Tel. Ya Tel. ( I am okay.)
(Here, we doubled “Ya Tel” to make it stronger and friendly, and you don’t need to add “I”. )
Example 2: a passenger to the taxi driver
Please drive from this way. Ya Lar, Ako? (Can you, bro?) (Ako = bro)
Ya Par Tel. Ya Tel. (Yes, I can)
Example 3: a guy to the receptionist in a cinema
Latmhat/Ticket Ya Lar? (I get a ticket?)
Ya Tel / Ya Par Tel, Ama. (Yes, you get, sis) (Ama =sis)
Example 4: a guest to the host
Oh, I have made this place messy. (Statement only)
Ya Par Tel, Ya Par Tel. (It’s Okay, it’s okay)
Bonus:
Ya Tel Hote? ရတယ္ဟုုတ္
What does “Ya Tal Hote?” means. Hote = right
So (Ya Tel + Hote? )= You get it, right?
You can use “Ya Par Tel” in many phrases. Please let me know if you have more thoughts on it!
Pronunciation Aid if you need this!
Question: Are you okay? (Ya Lar?)
Answer: I am okay. (Ya Par Tel/ Ya Tel)
For all of you who want to increase their Burmese Vocabulary skills, we have some great resources for you! High Frequency Word Lists! Below you find two word lists, one for the most 150 frequent Burmese words and one for the top 1000 Burmese words. […]
Hi, this is Win Thant. My nick name is Bella. Nice to meet you here!
I have a passion for languages, especially in the part of relating languages with senses and emotions, culture and expressions. I work in an American University Program in Myanmar as a full time executive manager, and as a creative director in my small company.
Achim from L-Lingo is helping me with this website by providing great content from their Burmese Language Learning App, technical support and is writing about language learning from time to time.
Enjoy the Website!
Burmese have 33 letters. Only around 25 letters are commonly used. You will usually see the Burmese scripts in rounded form, and KG students are trained by their teachers to have beautifully rounded characterized Burmese hand-writing. The more you write rounded, they say the better you writing is!
Here are 33 consonants in Burmese.
က ခ ဂ ဃ င
စ ဆ ဇ ဈ ည
ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ
တ ထ ဒ ဓ န
ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ
ယ ရ လ ဝ သ
ဟ ဠ အ
Aren’t they beautiful?
#Burmesealphabet