Language/Burmese/Grammar/Simple-Sentences
Introduction
Welcome to the "Complete 0 to A1 Burmese Course"! In this lesson, you will learn the basic structure of simple sentences in Burmese, including subject-verb-object order and how to form questions.
If you are a beginner to the Burmese language, this lesson is perfect for you. It will provide a solid foundation for your language learning journey.
Let's get started!
With the completion of this lesson, consider investigating these related pages: Give your Opinion & Plurals.
Subject-Verb-Object Order
In Burmese, the basic sentence structure is Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). This means that the subject of the sentence comes first, followed by the verb, and then the object. For example:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| ခေါင်း | kaung | He/She/It |
| ကျွန်တော် | kyawn-daw | is eating |
| ပဲ | pe | rice |
| ဖြစ်သည်။ | pyet-thin | . |
| ခေါင်း ကျွန်တော် ပဲ ဖြစ်သည်။ | kaung kyawn-daw pe pyet-thin | He/She/It is eating rice. |
As you can see in the example above, the sentence structure in Burmese is quite straightforward. Here are a few more examples:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| ကျောင်းသို့ | kyaw-ngu-thay | To school |
| သင့် | ning | You |
| သွားပါ။ | h-twah-ba | go. |
| ကျောင်းသို့ သင့် သွားပါ။ | kyaw-ngu-thay ning h-twah-ba | You go to school. |
| ကြည့်ရှုရန် | kyany-sho yan | To drink |
| မိတ်ဆွေ | mit-sway | Water |
| ပိတ်ပင်ထားပါ။ | pet-pyin-tar-ba | Please. |
| ကြည့်ရှုရန် မိတ်ဆွေ ပိတ်ပင်ထားပါ။ | kyany-sho yan mit-sway pet-pyin-tar-ba | Please give me water to drink. |
Forming Questions
To form a question in Burmese, you simply add the word မဟုတ်ဘူး (ma-hote bu) at the end of a sentence. This word means "right?" or "isn't it?" For example:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| ချင်းစီး ရှာပါ။ | chinn-sei sha-ba | You like tea. |
| ချင်းစီး ရှာပါ မဟုတ်ဘူး။ | chinn-sei sha-ba ma-hote bu | You like tea, right? |
If you want to ask a "wh-" question (who, what, when, where, why, how), you simply add the relevant word at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the rest of the sentence in SVO order. Here are a few examples:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English Translation |
|---|---|---|
| အရေးကြီးပြုတ်တဲ့ လူ ဘယ်လိုချင်းလဲ။ | a-ye gyi-pyu-tat-tae lu-be-jor-lo chinn-lar | What kind of person do you want to be? |
| နောက်ထပ် မှာယူနိုင်သလို။ | naw-kaht htat-yu-nin sa-lor | Where can I get it? |
| ဘယ်စားလဲ။ | be-jar-sal-lar | What are you eating? |
| ဘယ်ရုံးကို လိုချင်တော့မလဲ။ | be-jor-yone-ko lo-chin-taw-maw-lar-ma | Which place do you want to go? |
Conclusion
In this lesson, you have learned the basic structure of simple sentences in Burmese, including subject-verb-object order and how to form questions.
Remember that the Burmese language is quite straightforward, but it uses its own unique script. If you haven't already, be sure to learn the script and practice writing it to help you learn the language more quickly.
Practice using the examples in this lesson to form your own simple sentences and questions. You will be speaking Burmese with ease in no time!
Finished this lesson? Check out these related lessons: Irregular Verbs & Nouns and Pronouns.
Other Lessons
- 0 to A1 Course
- Adjectives
- Plurals
- Nouns
- Describing People and Things
- Expressing Manner and Frequency
- Pronouns
- Nouns and Pronouns
- Conditional Mood
Sources
- Grammar of the Burmese Language - Wikisource, the free online ...
- Burmese Grammar: Verbs, Particles, Postpositional markers