Learn Burmese ten words at a time
Ten short games: the 102 most useful Burmese words and expressions you could live on for years, from greetings and ordering food to numbers, small talk and getting around. Play a lesson in the box beside its words, and the next one starts itself.
The Tibeto-Burman languages
Burmese is one of about 400 Tibeto-Burman languages, the family of Tibetan and Burmese. It stretches from Ladakh to Sichuan and down the Thai border, but its densest knot is around Manipur, where every few valleys and ridges speak a different member. These are the largest and best known, each drawn from the ground it is spoken on.
Circles are sized by first-language speakers; Kuki-Chin and Naga are dozens of languages each, with no reliable combined count, so they have none. Areas are traced from the terrain where each language is spoken, not from borders, and smaller languages draw over larger ones where they overlap. Sources: Speaker figures from each language's Wikipedia article and the 2011 Census of India; Terrain: Mapzen terrain tiles (SRTM and others) via AWS Open Data.
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
- မင်္ဂလာပါmin-ga-la-BA
- Hello
- မင်္ဂလာနံနက်ခင်းပါmin-ga-la nan-net-KHIN-ba
- Good morning
- မင်္ဂလာညနေခင်းပါmin-ga-la nya-nay-KHIN-ba
- Good evening
- သွားတော့မယ်နော်thwa-daw-MEH-naw
- Goodbye
- နောက်မှတွေ့မယ်nauk-HMA tway-MEH
- See you
- ကျေးဇူးပြုပြီးkyay-ZOO pyu-BYEE
- Please
- ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်kyay-ZOO tin-ba-DEH
- Thank you
- ကိစ္စမရှိပါဘူးkate-sa ma-SHI-ba-boo
- You're welcome
- တောင်းပန်ပါတယ်taung-BAN-ba-deh
- Sorry
- ခွင့်ပြုပါkhwin-PYU-ba
- Excuse me
- တွေ့ရတာ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ်tway-ya-DA wun-tha-ba-DEH
- Nice to meet you
Order anything by pointing
I would like, this one, how much, the bill: survive any counter or menu.
- ...လိုချင်ပါတယ်lo-CHIN-ba-deh
- I would like...
- ဒီဟာdi-HA
- This one
- ဘယ်လောက်လဲbeh-LAUK-leh
- How much is it?
- ပိုက်ဆံရှင်းမယ်paik-san SHIN-meh
- The bill, please
- ကတ်နဲ့KAT-neh
- By card
- ငွေသားနဲ့ngway-THA-neh
- In cash
- ရေYAY
- Water
- ကော်ဖီkaw-PHI
- Coffee
- လက်ဖက်ရည်lah-pet-YAY
- Tea
- ဘီယာbi-YA
- Beer
- ...မပါနဲ့ma-PA-neh
- Without...
Yes, no and the essentials
The small words that carry half of every conversation, and the ones that rescue it.
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့hoke-KEH
- Yes
- မဟုတ်ဘူးma-HOKE-boo
- No
- အိုကေo-KAY
- Okay
- နားမလည်ဘူးna ma-LEH-boo
- I don't understand
- အင်္ဂလိပ်လို ပြောတတ်လားin-ga-LAIK-lo pyaw-TAT-la
- Do you speak English?
- ထပ်ပြောပေးပါhtat pyaw-PAY-ba
- Can you repeat that?
- ဖြည်းဖြည်း ပြောပေးပါphyay-PHYAY pyaw-PAY-ba
- Slowly, please
- ဒါ ဘာလဲda BA-leh
- What is this?
- ...လိုတယ်lo-DEH
- I need...
- ကူညီပေးနိုင်မလားku-nyi pay-NAING-ma-la
- Can you help me?
Counting to ten
One to ten, for prices, platforms, rooms and how many beers.
- တစ်tit
- One
- နှစ်hnit
- Two
- သုံးthone
- Three
- လေးlay
- Four
- ငါးnga
- Five
- ခြောက်chauk
- Six
- ခုနစ်khun-NIT
- Seven
- ရှစ်shit
- Eight
- ကိုးko
- Nine
- တစ်ဆယ်ta-SEH
- Ten
Shops and hotels
Open, closed, a bag, the wifi password: the checkout and the front desk.
- ...ရှိလားSHI-la
- Do you have...?
- ...ဘယ်မှာလဲbeh-HMA-leh
- Where is...?
- ဖွင့်တယ်PHWIN-deh
- Open
- ပိတ်တယ်PAIK-teh
- Closed
- အိတ် လိုချင်လားAIT lo-CHIN-la
- A bag?
- ဈေးကြီးလွန်းတယ်zay-JEE lun-DEH
- Too expensive
- ဘိုကင် လုပ်ထားပါတယ်bo-KIN loke-HTA-ba-deh
- I have a reservation
- မနက်စာ ပါလားma-NET-sa PA-la
- Is breakfast included?
- ဝိုင်ဖိုင် စကားဝှက် ဘာလဲWAI-phai za-ga-HWET BA-leh
- What's the wifi password?
- ...လို့ ရလားlo YA-la
- Can I...?
Cafe and restaurant
A table, the menu, what you cannot eat, and a compliment to the kitchen.
- နှစ်ယောက်စာ စားပွဲhna-YAUK-sa za-BWEH
- A table for two
- မီနူး ပေးပါmi-NU pay-BA
- The menu, please
- ဘာ ကောင်းလဲba KAUNG-leh
- What do you recommend?
- ...မစားဘူးma-SA-boo
- I don't eat...
- ...နဲ့ ဓာတ်မတည့်ဘူးneh dat ma-TEH-boo
- I'm allergic to...
- အသားa-THA
- Meat
- ကြက်သားchet-THA
- Chicken
- ငါးဟင်းnga-HIN
- Fish
- စားလို့ကောင်းတယ်sa-lo KAUNG-deh
- It's delicious
- ချီးယားစ်chee-YAZ
- Cheers
Meeting people
How are you, what is your name, where are you from, I like it: the first five minutes.
- နေကောင်းလားnay-KAUNG-la
- How are you?
- နေကောင်းပါတယ်၊ ကျေးဇူးပဲnay-KAUNG-ba-deh, kyay-ZOO-beh
- I'm fine, thanks
- ခင်ဗျားကောkhin-MYA-ko
- And you?
- နာမည် ဘယ်လို ခေါ်လဲnan-MEH beh-lo KHAW-leh
- What's your name?
- ကျွန်တော့်နာမည် ...ပါkya-NAW nan-MEH ... BA
- My name is...
- ဘယ်က လာတာလဲbeh-GA la-DA-leh
- Where are you from?
- ...က လာတာပါ... GA la-da-BA
- I'm from...
- ကြိုက်တယ်chaik-TEH
- I like it
- လှတယ်HLA-deh
- It's beautiful
- ကြိုဆိုပါတယ်jo-so-ba-DEH
- Welcome
Getting around
Left, right, the station, one ticket, where is the toilet.
- အိမ်သာ ဘယ်မှာလဲain-THA beh-HMA-leh
- Where is the toilet?
- ...ကို ဘယ်လို သွားရမလဲko beh-lo thwa-YA-ma-leh
- How do I get to...?
- ဘယ်ဘက်ကိုbeh-BET-ko
- To the left
- ညာဘက်ကိုnya-BET-ko
- To the right
- တည့်တည့်teh-DEH
- Straight ahead
- ဒီမှာdi-HMA
- Here
- ဘူတာbu-DA
- Train station
- ဘတ်စ်ကားbat-sa-KA
- Bus
- လေဆိပ်lay-ZAIK
- Airport
- လက်မှတ် တစ်စောင် ပေးပါlet-HMAT ta-SAUNG pay-BA
- One ticket, please
Time and days
Now, later, tomorrow, what time it opens and one moment please.
- အခုa-KHU
- Now
- နောက်မှnau-HMA
- Later
- ဒီနေ့di-NEH
- Today
- မနက်ဖြန်ma-NET-phyan
- Tomorrow
- ဒီညdi-NYA
- Tonight
- ဘယ်တော့လဲbeh-DAW-leh
- When?
- ဘယ်အချိန် ဖွင့်လဲbeh a-CHAIN PHWIN-leh
- What time does it open?
- ခဏလေးkha-NA-lay
- One moment, please
- မိနစ်mi-NIT
- Minutes
- နာရီna-YI
- Hours
Help and emergencies
The words you hope to never need.
- ကယ်ကြပါkeh-ja-BA
- Help!
- ဆရာဝန် ခေါ်ပေးပါsa-ya-WUN khaw-pay-BA
- Call a doctor
- ရဲYEH
- Police
- ဆေးဆိုင်say-ZAIN
- Pharmacy
- ဆေးရုံsay-YONE
- Hospital
- လမ်းပျောက်နေတယ်lan-PYAUK-nay-deh
- I'm lost
- နေမကောင်းဘူးnay ma-KAUNG-boo
- I don't feel well
- ခိုးသွားတယ်KHO-thwa-deh
- It was stolen
- အရေးပေါ်ပါa-yay-PAW-ba
- It's an emergency
- မနှောင့်ယှက်ပါနဲ့ma-hnaung-SHET-pa-neh
- Leave me alone