Language/Burmese/Grammar/Describing-People-and-Things
Burmese is a tonal language and is the official language of Myanmar. It is spoken by over 32 million people worldwide. Learning Burmese grammar is an essential part of the language learning process. In this lesson, you will learn how to use adjectives in Burmese to describe people, places, and things, as well as how to form comparative and superlative forms.
Take a moment to explore these relevant pages as you conclude this lesson: 0 to A1 Course & Connecting Ideas.
Adjectives in Burmese
Adjectives are used to describe or modify nouns. In Burmese, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe. Unlike in English, where adjectives come before the noun, this word order makes it easier to emphasize the noun in Burmese sentences.
Here are some examples:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| အဘယျသား | a-bay-za: | what-kind-of man |
| ညီအောင်လေး | ni aung lay: | beautiful girl |
In the first example, "အဘယျ" means "what kind of," and "သား" means "man." When combined, "အဘယျသား" means "what kind of man." In the second example, "ညီ" means "beautiful," "အောင်" means "body," and "လေး" means "girl." When combined, "ညီအောင်လေး" means "beautiful girl."
Note that sometimes, the adjective comes before the noun in Burmese. This occurs when expressing strong emotions or emphasizing the adjective. For example, "အလုပ်မလုပ်သောကြောင့် မောင်စပ်" means "an extremely delicious mango." In this case, "အလုပ်မလုပ်သော" comes before the noun "ကြောင့်" to emphasize how delicious the mango is.
- Basic Adjectives
Here are some basic adjectives in Burmese:
- မြေ (mre): small
- အလယ် (ala): big
- လူသော (lu saou): good
- မျှော်လင် (hlaunghn): bad
- ချောင်း (chaung): pretty
- မှီး (hmi): ugly
- Comparative and Superlative Forms
In Burmese, the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives are formed by adding the words "ပြင့်" (prang) and "အမြင့်" (a-myein) respectively after the adjective. For example:
- လူသော (lu saou): good
- လူသောပြင့် (lu saou prang): better
- လူသောအမြင့် (lu saou a-myein): best
Here are some more examples:
- တိုး (to): short
- တိုးပြင့် (to prang): shorter
- တိုးအမြင့် (to a-myein): shortest
- လူသော (lu saou): good
- လူသောပြင့် (lu saou prang): better
- လူသောအမြင့် (lu saou a-myein): best
- Colors
Colors are a vital part of life and communication. Knowing the names of colors in Burmese can help you describe the style, emotions, and even appearance of a character, thing or place. These are the most common colors used in Burmese:
- အနီ (ani): red
- အပိုးသာ (a-poe-sa): orange
- ဟင်းသာ (hang sa): yellow
- ပန်း (pan): green
- အလေး (a-lay): blue
- အလယ် (a-la): purple
- မြေပြား (mre-pra): brown
- ထန်း (htan): black
- အခမ်း (akman): white
- သို့ (thue): grey
- Describing Physical Appearance
Describing someone's physical appearance is an essential skill to have in language learning. In Burmese, you can use the following adjectives to describe someone's physical attributes:
- လူကြီး (lu kre): tall
- တုံး (toung): short
- မျောက်သော (hauk saou): handsome
- မျောက်ပန်း (hauk pan): beautiful
- ချစ်သော (cha saou): cute
- ရွှေအိမ် (shwe ai): blonde
- မသိပါက (ma thipar ka): bald
Here are some example sentences:
- ဒီလူကြီးဟာ ရန်ကုန်တို့ရဲ့ အကြိုးသားတွေထဲကို ရန်ထိုင်သောအရာအရာတွေကို ထောက်ပံ့ထားပါတယ်။ (Di lu kre hga yu Taingyire's akyui-taw-kya-tar-tar-taw gyi dar ahr dway-thanu-san-tha-loht-dway-chi Ktok-pang-thibya) - This tall guy knows how to handle situations in Taingyire's company.
- ဒီလူ မျောက်သောပန်းပေါင်းဟာ အရောင်တခု အလွန်အကောင်းဖြစ်နိုင်ပါသည်။ (Di lu hauk-saou pan-paung hga arn-ta khu a-lwan-aung pyay-nein) - This beautiful woman is one of the kindest people in the world.
- Describing Personality
In Burmese, adjectives can also be used to describe someone's character or personality. Here are some examples:
- တကယ်တမ်း (ta kay: ta myam): cheerful
- ဆန့်ကျင့်သော (san kyaing saou): sincere
- သံယူပြီး (saing ye prir): caring
- မာတိုက်သော (ma-touk saou): fearless
- ခိုးပေါင်း (khu paung): lazy
Here are some examples:
- ပြည်တွေ့ရဲ့ ကလော(ဘာသာရပ်)သို့မဟုတ် ပိုကောင်းသော ညီအောင်လေးကို နောက်ပိုင်းပြင်ရေးချိန်းကို ဖတ်ပါ။ (Pyi-twey-ra-ya: bara-sar ah-myu-thue mat ta-pawkaung--tha-lay-kaw hga Naw-kaw-paw yaung baung-rhe-kyinn kyaung) - Read the sincere letter written by the beautiful girl who won the Miss Myanmar title.
- လက်ထပ်တိုင်း စိတ်ကြိုက်များစွာထုတ်ပြီး ဆိုသည်က
Other Lessons
- Regular Verbs
- Future Tense
- Questions
- Conditional Mood
- Expressing Manner and Frequency
- Nouns
- Nouns and Pronouns
- Location and Direction
- 0 to A1 Course
- How to Use Be
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