Burmese Language Guide

Official language in
Myanmar (Burma)
Script
Myanmar

Where it's spoken

Myanmar's constitution states that the Myanmar language is the official language. Burmese is the majority language of Myanmar (formerly called Burma). In English the language has come to be called Myanmar, because this word is close to the indigenous name of the Myanmar people. The Yangon-Mandalay dialect is generally recognized as the standard language in Myanmar.

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Script & pronunciation

Burmese is written in the Myanmar script, which derives from a Brahmi-related script borrowed from South India in about the eighth century. Consonant symbols include an inherent "a" vowel, other vowels are shown by signs attached to the consonant, and the writing runs from left to right. The letter nga can take the form of a superscript sign called kinzi over the next consonant, as in မင်္ဂလာပါ (min-ga-la-ba, "Hello").

Burmese does not use spaces between words; spaces are used to mark phrases. Some of this app's cards contain a space, as in အရက် မသောက်ဘူး (a-yet ma-thout-bu, "I do not drink alcohol").

The romanization on this app's cards is not always spelled the same way for the same word: the card for "No" in the basics category writes မဟုတ်ဘူး as ma-hote-bu, while the card for "No" in the greetings category writes it as ma-hout-bu.

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Grammar essentials

The basic word order is subject–object–verb, so the verb comes at the end of the sentence. Burmese tends not to express every argument of a verb in one sentence, and the subject is the argument most often dropped; the card နားမလည်ဘူး (na-ma-le-bu, "I don't understand") has no word for "I."

A negative sentence puts the prefix မ (ma) before the verb and the particle ဘူး (bu) after it, as in အရက် မသောက်ဘူး (a-yet ma-thout-bu, "I do not drink alcohol"). The same negative form can mean "did not," "does not," or "will not."

The particle လား (la) marks a general (yes/no) question, as in ရှိလား? (shi-la?, "Do you have it?"); လဲ (le) marks a question with a question word, as in ဘယ်မှာလဲ? (be-hma-le?, "Where?").

Burmese has two styles: a colloquial (spoken) style and a formal (literary) style used, for example, in newspapers and official documents. Apart from some differences in vocabulary, the main difference lies in the grammatical markers, and every colloquial marker has one or more literary equivalents. For example, the colloquial verb marker တယ်, heard at the end of ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် (kyay-zu-tin-ba-deh, "Thank you"), has a different formal counterpart.

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Politeness & etiquette

The particle ပါ marks politeness. In a verb sentence it can come right before the final verb marker, as in ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် (kyay-zu-tin-ba-deh, "Thank you"), and in a negative sentence it can come between the verb and ဘူး, as in ဘာမှမဟုတ်ပါဘူး (ba-hma-ma-hote-ba-bu, "You're welcome"). In a sentence without a verb, a particle such as ပါ often appears at the end, as in ဂျပန်ကပါ (ja-pan-ga-ba, "I am from Japan").

This app's cards give the word for "I / me" as ကျွန်တော် (kya-naw) when a man speaks and ကျွန်မ (Kyan-ma) when a woman speaks. Likewise, the cards give the word for "You" as ခင်ဗျား (kha-mya) when a man speaks and ရှင် (Shin) when a woman speaks.

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