Learning Burmese: a practical guide
This is a written companion to the free Burmese course on LanguagePath: what the language is like, how it sounds, the phrases you will use first, how the course is structured, and what to watch out for. Everything here comes from the same lessons you can practise interactively above.
What Burmese is like
Burmese is tonal: every syllable carries one of three tones (low, high, creaky). Word order is Subject–Object–Verb, so the verb comes last. Verbs don't change for the tense the way English ones do — words like ဒီနေ့ (today) or context tell you when. Politeness particles go at the end: ပါ makes a sentence polite. ငါ is intimate 'I', while ကျွန်တော် (men) and ကျွန်မ (women) are polite 'I'.
Words you may already know
Pronunciation notes
Burmese is tonal — the pitch of a syllable changes its meaning, and the script is a circle of rounded letters. Master the open vowels and you can read any word aloud.
- အ — the open vowel "ah" — every syllable is built on a vowel, as in အ = ah · ရေ (yeh) = water.
- င — "ng" — hold it at the start of a word, don't drop it, as in ငါ (nga) = I, me.
- ည — "ny" — as in canyon, as in ညာ (nya) = right.
- သ — "th" — as in think (voiceless, no vibration), as in သုံး (thone) = three.
- ဆ — "s" — a light hiss, as in ဆိုင်း (saing) = shop.
- ပ — "p" — unaspirated p (no puff of air), as in ပါ (ba) = to be / polite.
- low tone — level and calm — falls slightly at the end, as in ပေး (pay) = to give · ယူ (yu) = take.
- high tone — ends high and level — a brighter, sharper sound, as in ကိုး (ko) = 9 · သွား (thwa) = go.
First phrases
The pocket phrases below are the ones learners reach for most often. Say each one out loud a few times before moving on.
| Burmese | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| မင်္ဂလာပါ | min-gah-lah-bah | Hello |
| နေကောင်းလား | neh-kaung-lah | How are you? |
| နေကောင်းပါတယ် | neh-kaung-ba-deh | I'm fine |
| သွားတော့မယ် | thwa-daw-meh | Goodbye |
| မင်္ဂလာနံနက်ခင်း | min-ga-lah nan-neht-chin | Good morning |
| ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် | kya-zu-tin-ba-deh | Thank you |
| ကျေးဇူးပါ | kya-zu-ba | Thanks |
| ရပါတယ် | ya-ba-deh | You're welcome |
| ခွင့်ပြုပါ | khwin-pyu-ba | Excuse me |
| ဟုတ်ကဲ့ | hoht-keh | Yes / OK |
| မဟုတ်ဘူး | ma-hoht-bu | No |
| တစ် | tit | 1 |
| နှစ် | hnit | 2 |
| သုံး | thone | 3 |
| ငါး | nga | 5 |
| တစ်ဆယ် | ta-seh | 10 |
| ထမင်း | ta-min | rice |
| ရေ | yeh | water |
| လက်ဖက်ရည် | la-pek-yeh | tea |
| ကော်ဖီ | kaw-pi | coffee |
| ကြက်သား | chet-tha | chicken |
| စာရင်းပါ | sa-yin-ba | the bill, please |
| ဘယ်မှာလဲ? | bah-mah-leh? | Where is...? |
| ညာဘက် | nya-bet | to the right |
| ဘယ်ဘက် | bah-leh-bet | to the left |
| တည့်တည့် | tih-tih | straight ahead |
| ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင် | but-ka-ka hmet-taing | the bus stop |
| ဘယ်လောက်လဲ? | bah-lauk-leh? | How much is it? |
| ရှိလား? | shi-lah? | Do you have...? |
| ယူချင်တယ် | yu-chin-deh | I'd like to take that |
How the Burmese course is structured
The course has 12 short lessons that build on each other. Each one introduces a few new pieces and then asks you to construct sentences you have never seen, before revealing the answer:
- Greetings & being polite — မင်္ဂလာပါ · နေကောင်းလား · ကျေးဇူးပါ
- Being polite — ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် · ခွင့်ပြုပါ · ဟုတ်ကဲ့
- Numbers 1–10 — တစ် · နှစ် · သုံး · တစ်ဆယ်
- I want" — ချင်တယ် — ငါ · ချင်တယ် · ယူချင်တယ်
- Food & drink — ထမင်း · ရေ · လက်ဖက်ရည် · ကော်ဖီ
- Getting around — ဘယ်မှာလဲ? · ညာဘက် · ဘယ်ဘက် · တည့်တည့်
- Questions & "do you have…?" — ရှိလား? · ဘာ · ရှိပါသလား?
- Family & people — မိသားစု · အမေ · အဖေ · သူငယ်ချင်း
- Time, days & weather — ဒီနေ့ · မနက်ဖြန် · ဘယ်နာရီ · ရာသီဥတု
- Introducing yourself — ကျွန်တော် · ကျွန်မ · နာမည်က · Alex
- Health & emergency — ကူညီပါ · ဆရာဝန် · ဆေးဆိုင် · နားမလည်ဘူး
- Tying it together — a capstone day out
Inside the lessons
Here is how a few of the lessons explain the language, with worked examples and the word-by-word breakdown the course uses.
Greetings & being polite
Key pieces: မင်္ဂလာပါ · နေကောင်းလား · ကျေးဇူးပါ
Start with the first word you'll use: မင်္ဂလာပါ — hello. Say it out loud.
- မင်္ဂလာပါ (min-gah-lah-bah) — hello
- နေကောင်းလား (neh-kaung-lah) — how are you?
- နေကောင်းပါတယ် (neh-kaung-ba-deh) — I'm fine
- သွားတော့မယ် (thwa-daw-meh) — goodbye
- ကျေးဇူးပါ (kya-zu-ba) — thanks
To say “Hello!” in Burmese: မင်္ဂလာပါ (min-gah-lah-bah). Built from မင်္ဂလာပါ = hello.
To ask how someone is: နေကောင်းလား? The reply is နေကောင်းပါတယ် — I'm fine.
To say “Hello, how are you?” in Burmese: မင်္ဂလာပါ၊ နေကောင်းလား (min-gah-lah-bah, neh-kaung-lah). Built from မင်္ဂလာပါ = hello; နေကောင်းလား = how are you?.
To say “I'm fine, thanks” in Burmese: နေကောင်းပါတယ်, ကျေးဇူးပါ (neh-kaung-ba-deh, kya-zu-ba). Built from နေကောင်းပါတယ် = I'm fine; ကျေးဇူးပါ = thanks.
Being polite
Key pieces: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် · ခွင့်ပြုပါ · ဟုတ်ကဲ့
The word that opens every door: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် — thank you. The easy version is ကျေးဇူးပါ .
- ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် (kya-zu-tin-ba-deh) — thank you
- ကျေးဇူးပါ (kya-zu-ba) — thanks
- ရပါတယ် (ya-ba-deh) — you're welcome
- ခွင့်ပြုပါ (khwin-pyu-ba) — excuse me / may I
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့ (hoht-keh) — yes / OK
- မဟုတ်ဘူး (ma-hoht-bu) — no
To say “Thank you” in Burmese: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် (kya-zu-tin-ba-deh). Built from ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ် = thank you.
To get someone's attention: ခွင့်ပြုပါ — excuse me / may I.
To say “Excuse me” in Burmese: ခွင့်ပြုပါ (khwin-pyu-ba). Built from ခွင့်ပြုပါ = excuse me / may I.
ဟုတ်ကဲ့ = yes, မဟုတ်ဘူး = no — the basics of any conversation.
To say “Yes, thank you” in Burmese: ဟုတ်ကဲ့, ကျေးဇူးပါ (hoht-keh, kya-zu-ba). Built from ဟုတ်ကဲ့ = yes; ကျေးဇူးပါ = thanks.
Numbers 1–10
Key pieces: တစ် · နှစ် · သုံး · တစ်ဆယ်
Numbers are the fastest win. Listen and repeat: တစ်, နှစ်, သုံး .
- တစ် (tit) — 1
- နှစ် (hnit) — 2
- သုံး (thone) — 3
- လေး (lay) — 4
- ငါး (nga) — 5
- ခြောက် (chauk) — 6
- ခုနစ် (kun-nhit) — 7
- ရှစ် (shit) — 8
- ကိုး (ko) — 9
- တစ်ဆယ် (ta-seh) — 10
To say “One water, please” in Burmese: ရေတစ်ခွက်, ကျေးဇူးပါ (yeh tit-kwet, kya-zu-ba). Built from ရေ = water; တစ်ခွက် = one (glass).
To ask a price: ဘယ်လောက်လဲ? — how much is it?
To say “How much is it?” in Burmese: ဘယ်လောက်လဲ? (bah-lauk-leh?). Built from ဘယ်လောက် = how much; လဲ = question particle.
To say “It's five” in Burmese: ငါးပါ (nga-ba). Built from ငါး = five; ပါ = polite tick.
I want" — ချင်တယ်
Key pieces: ငါ · ချင်တယ် · ယူချင်တယ်
The magic phrase to want anything: … ချင်တယ် — I want to … . ယူချင်တယ် = I want to take/buy.
ငါ = I (casual). ငါ ယူချင်တယ် = I want to take it.
To say “I want to take it” in Burmese: ငါ ယူချင်တယ် (nga yu-chin-deh). Built from ငါ = I; ယူချင်တယ် = I want to take.
To say “I want coffee” in Burmese: ကော်ဖီချင်တယ် (kaw-pi chin-deh). Built from ကော်ဖီ = coffee; ချင်တယ် = I want.
To ask what someone wants: … ချင်လဲ?
To say “What do you want?” in Burmese: ဘာချင်လဲ? (bah chin-leh?). Built from ဘာ = what; ချင်လဲ = do you want.
Food & drink
Key pieces: ထမင်း · ရေ · လက်ဖက်ရည် · ကော်ဖီ
Eating out? Key words: ထမင်း (rice), ရေ (water), လက်ဖက်ရည် (tea).
- ထမင်း (ta-min) — rice
- ရေ (yeh) — water
- လက်ဖက်ရည် (la-pek-yeh) — tea
- ကော်ဖီ (kaw-pi) — coffee Memory hook: ≈ English coffee.
- ကြက်သား (chet-tha) — chicken
To say “Water, please” in Burmese: ရေ, ကျေးဇူးပါ (yeh, kya-zu-ba). Built from ရေ = water; ကျေးဇူးပါ = please/thanks.
To say “I want tea” in Burmese: လက်ဖက်ရည်ချင်တယ် (la-pek-yeh chin-deh). Built from လက်ဖက်ရည် = tea; ချင်တယ် = I want.
To praise the food: အရမ်းကောင်းတယ် — it's delicious.
To say “It's delicious!” in Burmese: အရမ်းကောင်းတယ် (a-yan kaung-deh). Built from အရမ်း = very; ကောင်းတယ် = it's good.
Getting around
Key pieces: ဘယ်မှာလဲ? · ညာဘက် · ဘယ်ဘက် · တည့်တည့်
The most useful question in any city: ဘယ်မှာလဲ? — where is…?
- ဘယ်မှာလဲ? (bah-mah-leh?) — Where is...?
- ညာဘက် (nya-bet) — to the right
- ဘယ်ဘက် (bah-leh-bet) — to the left
- တည့်တည့် (tih-tih) — straight ahead
- ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင် (but-ka-ka hmet-taing) — the bus stop
- ဟိုတယ် (ho-teh) — the hotel Memory hook: ≈ English hotel.
To say “Where is the bus stop?” in Burmese: ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင်ဘယ်မှာလဲ? (but-ka-ka hmet-taing bah-mah-leh?). Built from ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင် = the bus stop; ဘယ်မှာလဲ = where is.
To say “Where is the bathroom?” in Burmese: အိမ်သာဘယ်မှာလဲ? (aing-tha bah-mah-leh?). Built from အိမ်သာ = bathroom; ဘယ်မှာလဲ = where is.
To say 'over there': အဲဒီမှာ .
To say “It's over there, on the right” in Burmese: အဲဒီမှာ, ညာဘက်မှာ (eh-di-mah, nya-bet-mah). Built from အဲဒီမှာ = over there; ညာဘက်မှာ = on the right.
Questions & "do you have…?"
Key pieces: ရှိလား? · ဘာ · ရှိပါသလား?
To ask if something is there: ရှိလား? — is there? / do you have?
To say “Do you have rice?” in Burmese: ထမင်းရှိလား? (ta-min shi-lah?). Built from ထမင်း = rice; ရှိလား? = is there?.
To say “Is there a bathroom?” in Burmese: အိမ်သာရှိလား? (aing-tha shi-lah?). Built from အိမ်သာ = bathroom; ရှိလား = is there.
For 'what': ဘာ . ဘာလဲ? = what is it?
To say “What is it?” in Burmese: ဘာလဲ? (bah-leh?). Built from ဘာ = what; လဲ = question particle.
The polite form: ရှိပါသလား? — do you have?
To say “Do you have a table?” in Burmese: စားပွဲရှိပါသလား? (sa-pweh shi-ba-da-lah?). Built from စားပွဲ = a table; ရှိပါသလား = do you have?.
Family & people
Key pieces: မိသားစု · အမေ · အဖေ · သူငယ်ချင်း
Family words: မိသားစု (family), အမေ (mother), အဖေ (father).
- မိသားစု (mi-ta-zu) — family
- အမေ (a-may) — mother
- အဖေ (a-pay) — father
- သူငယ်ချင်း (thu-ngay-chin) — friend
To say “I have a friend” in Burmese: သူငယ်ချင်းရှိတယ် (thu-ngay-chin shi-deh). Built from သူငယ်ချင်း = friend; ရှိတယ် = there is / I have.
To say 'I have': ရှိတယ် .
To say “I have a family” in Burmese: မိသားစုရှိတယ် (mi-ta-zu shi-deh). Built from မိသားစု = family; ရှိတယ် = I have.
Time, days & weather
Key pieces: ဒီနေ့ · မနက်ဖြန် · ဘယ်နာရီ · ရာသီဥတု
Today is ဒီနေ့ , tomorrow is မနက်ဖြန် .
- ဒီနေ့ (di-neh) — today
- မနက်ဖြန် (ma-neht-chan) — tomorrow
- ဘယ်နာရီ (bah-na-yi) — what time?
- ရာသီဥတု (ya-thi-u-tu) — weather
- မိုးရွာတယ် (mo-ywa-deh) — it's raining
To say “See you tomorrow” in Burmese: မနက်ဖြန်တွေ့မယ် (ma-neht-chan tweh-meh). Built from မနက်ဖြန် = tomorrow; တွေ့မယ် = we'll meet.
Ask the time: ဘယ်နာရီလဲ?
To say “What time is it?” in Burmese: ဘယ်နာရီလဲ? (bah-na-yi-leh?). Built from ဘယ်နာရီ = what time; လဲ = question particle.
Ask about the weather: ရာသီဥတုဘယ်လိုလဲ?
To say “It's raining” in Burmese: မိုးရွာတယ် (mo-ywa-deh). Built from မိုး = rain; ရွာတယ် = it's falling (raining).
Introducing yourself
Key pieces: ကျွန်တော် · ကျွန်မ · နာမည်က · Alex
Say your name: ကျွန်တော်နာမည်က Alex — my name is Alex. Men say ကျွန်တော် , women say ကျွန်မ .
To say “My name is Alex” in Burmese: ကျွန်တော်နာမည်က Alex (kya-naw nah-meh-ga Alex). Built from ကျွန်တော် = I (male); နာမည်က = my name is; Alex = your name.
As a woman: ကျွန်မနာမည်က Alex .
To say “My name is Alex (female)” in Burmese: ကျွန်မနာမည်က Alex (kya-nah nah-meh-ga Alex). Built from ကျွန်မ = I (female); နာမည်က = my name is.
- နာမည် (nah-meh) — name
- ကျွန်တော် (kya-naw) — I (male)
- ကျွန်မ (kya-nah) — I (female)
- မင်းနာမည်ဘယ်လိုလဲ? (min nah-meh bah-lo-leh?) — what's your name?
To say “What's your name?” in Burmese: မင်းနာမည်ဘယ်လိုလဲ? (min nah-meh bah-lo-leh?). Built from မင်း = you (informal); နာမည် = name; ဘယ်လိုလဲ = how is.
Health & emergency
Key pieces: ကူညီပါ · ဆရာဝန် · ဆေးဆိုင် · နားမလည်ဘူး
The most important words if you need help: ကူညီပါ! (help!), ဆရာဝန် (doctor), ဆေးဆိုင် (pharmacy).
- ကူညီပါ! (ku-nyi-ba!) — help!
- ဆရာဝန် (sa-ya-wun) — the doctor
- ဆေးဆိုင် (say-saing) — the pharmacy
- နားမလည်ဘူး (na-ma-leh-bu) — I don't understand
- အိမ်သာ (aing-tha) — the bathroom
To say “Help!” in Burmese: ကူညီပါ! (ku-nyi-ba!). Built from ကူညီပါ = help!.
To say “I don't understand” in Burmese: နားမလည်ဘူး (na-ma-leh-bu). Built from နား = ear; မလည်ဘူး = doesn't understand.
To say you need a doctor: ဆရာဝန်လိုတယ် .
To say “I need a doctor” in Burmese: ဆရာဝန်လိုတယ် (sa-ya-wun lo-deh). Built from ဆရာဝန် = doctor; လိုတယ် = I need.
Tying it together
Key pieces: a capstone day out
Great — you've built a real toolbox. This capstone uses only words you've met. Build each line yourself before revealing.
To say “Hello, how are you?” in Burmese: မင်္ဂလာပါ, နေကောင်းလား (min-gah-lah-bah, neh-kaung-lah). Built from မင်္ဂလာပါ = hello; နေကောင်းလား = how are you?.
To say “I want a tea, please” in Burmese: လက်ဖက်ရည်ချင်တယ်, ကျေးဇူးပါ (la-pek-yeh chin-deh, kya-zu-ba). Built from လက်ဖက်ရည်ချင်တယ် = I want tea; ကျေးဇူးပါ = please.
To say “Where is the bus stop?” in Burmese: ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင်ဘယ်မှာလဲ? (but-ka-ka hmet-taing bah-mah-leh?). Built from ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင် = the bus stop; ဘယ်မှာလဲ = where is.
To say “How much is it?” in Burmese: ဘယ်လောက်လဲ? (bah-lauk-leh?). Built from ဘယ်လောက်လဲ = how much is it?.
Common mistakes and things to watch out for
- ကျွန်မ (kya-nah): female.
Culture and etiquette
Thingyan — the water festival
In April, Burmese New Year ('Thingyan') is a national water fight. Buckets, hoses and water guns drench everyone alike. Getting wet is a blessing and good luck — expect to get soaked.
Shoes off at the pagoda
Before entering any pagoda or monastery you must remove your shoes and socks, and keep your head lower than the Buddha and the monks. Cover your shoulders and knees. It's a sign of deep respect.
Tea is everywhere
Burmese love tea. 'Lahpet' (fermented tea leaves) is served as a salad with nuts and sesame, and sweet milky 'lahpet yeh' is the everyday drink. A tea shop is the social heart of any town.
A gentle greeting
Burmese people greet with a smile and a soft 'mingalaba', often with a small bow or the hands loosely at the chest. Loud, aggressive gestures are avoided — warmth and calm go a long way.
Head high, feet low
The head is the most sacred part of the body in Burmese culture; the feet are the lowest. Never touch someone's head, and don't point your feet at a person or a sacred image.
Rice is the meal
A Burmese meal is a bowl of rice ('htamin') with side dishes. It's usually eaten with your right hand or with a fork and spoon. Sharing from the centre of the table is the norm.
Example dialogues
At a tea shop
You: လက်ဖက်ရည်တစ်ခွက်ပါ။ (la-pek-yeh tit-kwet ba) — One cup of tea, please.
Server: ပူပူလား အေးအေးလား? (pu-pu-lah eh-eh-lah?) — Hot or cold?
You: ပူပူပါ။ (pu-pu ba) — Hot, please.
Server: ဒါပါ။ ကျပ်ငါးရာပါ။ (da ba, kyat nga-ya ba) — Here you are. Five hundred kyats.
You: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (kya-zu-tin-ba-deh) — Thank you.
Getting around
You: ခွင့်ပြုပါ၊ ဘတ်စ်ကားမှတ်တိုင်ဘယ်မှာလဲ? (khwin-pyu-ba, but-ka-ka hmet-taing bah-mah-leh?) — Excuse me, where is the bus stop?
Local: အဲဒီမှာ၊ ညာဘက်မှာ။ (eh-di-mah, nya-bet-mah) — Over there, on the right.
You: ကျေးဇူးပါ။ ရန်ကုန်ကိုသွားတဲ့ဘတ်စ်ကားရှိလား? (kya-zu-ba, yan-gaun-go thwa-deh but-ka-ka shi-lah?) — Thanks. Is there a bus to Yangon?
Local: ဟုတ်ပါတယ်။ တက္ကစီလည်းရှိတယ်။ (hoht-ba-deh, tak-ka-si leh shi-deh) — Yes. There are taxis too.
You: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (kya-zu-tin-ba-deh) — Thank you.
At a restaurant
Waiter: ဘာစားချင်လဲ? (bah sa-chin-leh?) — What would you like to eat?
You: ထမင်းနဲ့ကြက်သားရှိလား? (ta-min-neh chet-tha shi-lah?) — Do you have rice and chicken?
Waiter: ရှိပါတယ်။ (shi-ba-deh) — Yes, we do.
You: ထမင်းတစ်ပွဲ၊ ကျေးဇူးပါ။ (ta-min tit-pweh, kya-zu-ba) — One rice dish, please.
Waiter: ဒါပါ။ သုံးထောင်ပါ။ (da ba, thone-daung ba) — Here you are. Three thousand.
You: ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်။ (kya-zu-tin-ba-deh) — Thank you.
Written by the LanguagePath editorial team from our own course material. Pronunciation guides are approximate English respellings; tap any phrase in the app above to hear it. Native-speaker review of every course is ongoing — tell us if you spot an error.