Language/Burmese/Grammar/Questions

Burmese Grammar - Questions

Hi Burmese learners! 😊
In this lesson, we will learn about the grammar rules related to questions in Burmese.

Basic Questions

In Burmese, basic questions are formed by adding the particle "လေ" (le) at the end of the sentence, without changing the word order. For example:

• သင် ဘာ လေ ရောက်လာပါသလား။ (sang ba le yaauk lar par thanlaw)
• What are you doing?

As you can see, the sentence structure is the same as the affirmative form. The only difference is the addition of the particle "လေ" (le), which indicates that it is a question.

You can also use question words such as "ဘာ" (ba) for "what", "ဘယ်လို" (beya lei) for "how", "အချိုး" (akhkyu) for "how many", and "ဘယ်သူ" (beya thu) for "who", to form questions. For example:

• သင့်အကြောင်း ဘာ ကြောင်းလဲ။ (singaung ba kyauung lar)
• What do you like to eat?

In this case, the question word "ဘာ" (ba) is used, followed by the subject and the predicate of the sentence.

Another way to form questions is by using the rising intonation at the end of the sentence. For example:

• မင်းဘာလဲ။ (ming ba le)
• What about you?

Here, the rising intonation indicates that it is a question. This form is commonly used in casual conversations.

Polar Questions

Polar questions are questions that require a yes or no answer. In Burmese, polar questions are formed by adding the particle "သုံး" (sum) at the end of the sentence. For example:

• လူအများ မျှက်လားလို့။ (lu amyar maky lar sum)
• Do you want to go?

The particle "သုံး" (sum) indicates that it is a polar question that requires a yes or no answer.

Tag Questions

Tag questions are questions that are added at the end of a statement to confirm or check information. In Burmese, tag questions are formed by adding the particle "မှာလာ" (hma lar) at the end of the sentence. For example:

• သင့်လိုလားလဲ။ ဘယ်လိုလာတာလဲ။ (singaulei lar, beya lei lar ta lar)
• You want to go, right?

Here, the first sentence is a statement, and the tag question "ဘယ်လိုလာတာလဲ" (beya lei lar ta lar) is added for confirmation.

Indirect Questions

Indirect questions are questions that are embedded within a sentence. They can be formed by using question words such as "မျှောပေး" (mjaupae) for "ask", "ဘာ" (ba) for "what", and "ဘယ်လို" (beya lei) for "how". For example:

• ငါစားတဲ့အခါ ဘာမေးခြင်းယူလဲမော်။ (nga sa tu auk, ba maikhaung yu lar maau)
• I don't know what to cook.

Here, the question "what to cook" is embedded within the sentence "I don't know". The question word "ဘာ" (ba) is used to introduce the embedded question.

Dialogue

• Person 1: လူအများ ဘာလို့လား။ (lu amyar ba lei lar)
• Person 2: ကြည့်ရှုနိုင်တဲ့ ကုန်ပေါင်းကိုသိရှိနေလဲ။ (kyuinsha nuitau nae taungkhan kite thi shalnae lar)

(Person 1: What are you doing? Person 2: Trying to find the way to the hotel.)

Examples

Here are some examples of questions in Burmese:

Burmese	Pronunciation	English
ဘယ်နှစ်မျိုးလောက်မလဲ။	beya hnai myo le yaauk ma lar?	How many siblings do you have?
မက္ကဋ္ဌရဲ့ အိမ်ထဲမှာ ဘာလိုလာတာလဲ။	makahtet yae ain tha lar ba lei lar ta lar?	What did you find in the room?
ဘယ်အချိုးလို ဒိုင်းမလဲ။	beya akhkyu lei doi ma lar?	How many eggs do you want?

Further Resources

To improve your Burmese Grammar, you can also use the Polyglot Club website. Find native speakers and ask them any questions!

Sources

• Burmese grammar
• Burmese language