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Intro to Questions (I)
Question Words (note : question word + phrase + လဲ)
| ဘယ်သူ (beh-dhu) | Who, Whose |
| ဘာ (ba) | What |
| ဘယ် (beh) | Which |
| ဘယ်ဟာ (beh-ha) | Which one |
| ဘယ်မှာ (beh-hma) | Where (at) |
| ဘယ်က (beh-gá) | Where (from) |
| ဘယ်ကို (beh-go) | Where (to) |
| ဘယ်တော့ (beh-dáw) | When (future) |
| ဘယ်တုန်းက (beh-dòun-gá) | When (past) |
| ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ (beh-hnă-na-yi) | At what hour |
| ဘယ်အချိန် (beh-ăc’ein) | At what time |
| ဘယ် (beh) | How |
| ဘယ်လို (beh-lo) | How, in what way |
| ဘာဖြစ်လို့ … (ba-p’yiq-lo … ) | Why |
| ဘာကြောင့် (ba-jaún) | Why, for what reason |
| ဘာလုပ်(ဖို့) (ba-louq-(p’ó)) | Why, to do what, what for |
| ဘယ်လောက် (beh-lauq) | How much |
| ဘယ်နှစ် + counterword (beh-hnă) | How many |
| ဘယ်လောက်ကြာကြာ (beh-lauq ca-ja) | For how long (time duration) |
| ဘယ်—ကြာလဲ (beh — ca-lèh) | How long (time duration) |
| အသက် ဘယ်လောက် ရှိပြီလဲ။ (ătheq beh-lauq shí-bi-lèh) | How old are you? |
| ဘယ်အရွယ် ရှိပြီလဲ။ (beh-ăyweh shí-bi-lèh) | How old are you? (for kids) |
| -- လား (-là) | for yes or no question |
| Question word (ဘာ/ဘယ်/etc) -- လဲ (-lèh) | for information question |
| -- နော် (-naw) | -- isn't it? |
Sentences
Audio by Grace de Jong:| No | Burmese | English Translation | Note |
| 1 | ဒါဘယ်သူလဲ။ | Who is she? | |
| 2 | ဒါဘယ်သူ့စာအုပ်လဲ။ | Whose book is this? | |
| 3 | ဘာမှာချင်လဲ။ | What do (you) want to order? | |
| 4 | ဘယ်ဟာဝယ်ချင်လဲ။ | Which one do (you) want to buy? | |
| 5 | ရှင်ဘယ်မှာနေလဲ။ | Where do you live? | |
| 6 | ရှင်ဘယ်ကလာလဲ ။ ရှင်ဘယ်နိုင်ငံကလာလဲ | Where do you come from? Which country do you come from? | |
| 7 | ရှင် Bangkokကို ဘယ်တော့သွားမလဲ။ | When are you going to Bangkok? | |
| 8 | ရှင် Jakartaကို ဘယ်တုန်းကရောက်လဲ။ | When did you arrive in Jakarta? | |
| 9 | ရှင် TV ဘာဖြစ်လို့ဖွင့်တာလဲ။ | Why did you turn on the TV? | |
| 10 | ဒါဘယ်လောက်လဲ။ | How much is it? (price) | |
| 11 | ရှင်ဘယ်နှစ်လုံးသောက်ပြီးပြီလဲ။ | How many bottles did you drink? | |
| 12 | Person 1 says: ရှင် Singapore မှာဘယ်လောက်ကကြာကြာ(နေ)မလဲ။ | How long are you going to stay in Singapore? | The context: Person 1 asks Person 2 who is going to Singapore. Now both are still in Yangon. |
| 13 | Person 1 says: ရှင် Singapore မှာနေတာကြာဦးမလား။ | How long are you going to stay in Singapore? | The context: Person 1 unexpectedly meets person 2 in Singapore (Person 2 is not living in Singapore, so it is unexpected for Person 1 to see Person 2 in Singapore). [Credit: Tyler Davis]. |
Notes
Notice that when female speaker speaking, she will use ကျွန်မ to refer to "I" and ရှင် to refer to "you" or as polite tag.
Meanwhile when the speaker is a male, he will use ကျွန်နော် to refer to "I" and ခင်ဗျား to refer to "you" or as polite tag.
Contributors
Ko Kyaw Htet - Reviewer.
Tyler Davis - Reviewer.
Săya Khant Zin - Reviewer.
John de Jong and his daughter Grace - Reviewer.