GUIDE TO VOWEL SOUNDS
Vowel sounds in Burmese come from diacritic marks, like ah, ih, or –uh. In monosyllabic words like la “moon”, the vowel a is just like the English a in “bar” or “car”. But in polysyllabic words like ya-htaa “train”, the first a vowel is not fully voiced. It’s voiced partially, like the initial a in Amanda. The half-voiced a is followed by a hyphen in the romanization to indicate its sound rolls into the next syllable. I’ve singled out only the most commonly used vowels.
| Vowels | Tones | Sounds like | Example | Meaning |
| aahaa | shortlonghigh | star or spa | sasahsaa | to beginletter, wordto eat |
| iihii | shortlonghigh | me | thithihthee | to knowstring togetherto bear fruit |
| uuhuu | shortlonghigh | blue or sue | kukuhkuu | to healto helpto cross |
| aytayayy | shortlonghigh | day or may | maytA-maymayy | to forgetmotherto ask |
| aetaeaee | shortlonghigh | care or bare | maetmaemaee | withoutindicates futuretensedark, black |
| awtawaww | shortlonghigh | flaw or claw | pawtpawpaww | lightto appearabundant, inexpensive |
| oohoe | shortlonghigh | so | popohpoe | to sendextra, morebug, insect |
| intininn | shortlonghigh | sin or fin | yintyinA-yinn | ripe, maturechest, breastcapital, origin |
| antanaan | shortlonghigh | fun | ya-nantnannaan | scentstinkkiss, smell |
| ontoneonne | shortlonghigh | bone oralone | montmone lahmonne | snackradishto hate |
| auntaungaungg | shortlonghigh | round or sound | sauntsaungsaungg | waitblanketharp |
| aintainainne | shortlonghigh | stain orslain | saintsainsainne | rich (with flavor)diamondgreen |
| aingtaingaingg | shortlonghigh | grind ormind | jaintpaingpaingg | lunch boxto possessto cut, divide |
The following vowels should always be pronounced in the short tone with a hard stop.
| ut | hut or cut | thut | to kill |
| et | met or bet | khet | difficult |
| it | sit or fit | chit | to love |
| ote | boat | hote | true, yes |
| aut | about or stout | thauk | drink |
| ait | bait or wait | sait | mind |
| ite | site or lite | lite | follow |
A Brief Guide to Burmese Grammar
Growing up in the heart of Yangon, I learned not one but two varieties of Burmese: The spoken (or conversational) version—for daily conversations, haggling over the price of fish in the open-air bazaar or poking fun at classmates—and the written (or literary) version, for filing reports to a superior, writing articles or literary masterpieces.
There are some distinct differences between the two. With spoken or conversational Burmese (which is what this book provides), you can say a lot of things without explicitly stating the subject and you can just recycle a handful of basic forms to create a string of short, simple sentences. In written or literary Burmese, you use a more elegant style, elevated diction, and stricter grammar, with a different set of conjunctions, prepositions, and sentence-end words.
YES-NO STATEMENTS
The easiest way to make a statement in Burmese is to follow a verb or an adjective with the affirmative sentence-end word, (tae, also pronounced dae). For example:
• The verb “to eat” is saa. Therefore, “I eat” is saa dae (The subject “I” is implied.)
• The adjective “hot” is puh. Therefore, “it’s hot” is puh dae (The subject “it”, e.g., the weather or item is implied.)
To make a negative statement, you add ma in front of the verb or the adjective, and end with the negative sentence-end word, boo. Thus, “I eat” saa dae becomes “I don’t eat” ma-saa boo. Similarly “it’s hot” puh dae will become ma-puh boo “It’s not hot.”
If the subject needs to be explicitly stated for clarity, then you can add it like this, e.g., Thuh saa dae “He/she eats”, Thuh ma-saa boo “He/she doesn’t eat”, Dih nayt puh dae “It’s hot today” and Dih nayt ma-puh boo “It’s not hot today.”
NOTE Many Burmese verbs that involve more than one word, like yay koo “swim” or sah kyet “study”. “To swim” yay koo is made up of the word yay “water” and “to cross” or “pass” koo. Likewise, “to study” sah kyet is made up of the word sah “schoolwork” and kyet “to digest”. To convert them from affirmative to negative, you have to insert the negative tag ma in front of the word that signifies the action (usually the second word). Therefore, “I don’t swim” is yay ma-koo boo and “I don’t study” is sah ma-kyet phoo.
PUNCTUATION
There are only two major punctuation marks in Burmese, which you’ll come across in Burmese