ဟန်တူ
A Careful Guess
For something that has not happened yet, put မယ့် before ဟန်တူ in speech and မည့် in writing: မိုးရွာမယ့်ဟန်တူတယ်။ (It looks like rain.)
How It Works
ဟန်တူ says that something looks true from the signs, without saying you are sure. It is a little more careful than ပုံရ.
| Guess about | Speech | Writing |
|---|---|---|
| now | မအားဟန်တူတယ်။ | မအားဟန်တူသည်။ |
| a state going on | ပိတ်ထားဟန်တူတယ်။ | ပိတ်ဆို့နေဟန်တူသည်။ |
| the future | ရွာမယ့်ဟန်တူတယ်။ | မြင့်တက်မည့်ဟန်တူသည်။ |
For something true now, put ဟန်တူ straight after the verb. You will also see it after တဲ့ or သည့်, as in ဇော်ဇော် မအားတဲ့ဟန်တူတယ်, with the same meaning. For something still to come, put မယ့် or မည့် first.
Use ဟန်တူ about other people and things: a shop with its shutters down, a friend who does not answer, dark clouds. Your own feelings you know already, so say them plainly.
News uses the written form for careful reports, when officials have not confirmed a fact: prices look set to rise, roads appear to be blocked. In speech, ဟန်တူ sounds thoughtful; everyday chat more often says ပုံရတယ် or ထင်တယ်.
A negative guess puts မ on the verb: မအားဟန်တူတယ် means he seems to be busy, literally "seems not free".
Examples (5)
- ကိုဇော်ဇော် ဒီနေ့ မအားဟန်တူတယ်။
Ko Zaw Zaw seems busy today.
ဟန်တူ follows the verb in a spoken guess.
- မိုးရွာမယ့်ဟန်တူတယ်။
It looks like it is going to rain.
မယ့် comes before ဟန်တူ for a future guess.
- ဆိုင် ပိတ်ထားဟန်တူတယ်။
The shop seems to be closed.
A guess from what the speaker can see.
- ရေကြီးမှုကြောင့် လမ်းများ ပိတ်ဆို့နေဟန်တူသည်။
The roads appear to be blocked by the floods.
A written report with ဟန်တူသည်.
- ဈေးနှုန်းများ ဆက်လက် မြင့်တက်မည့်ဟန်တူသည်။
Prices look set to keep rising.
In writing, မည့် comes before ဟန်တူ for the future.
Common Mistakes
Using ဟန်တူ about your own feelings.
ကျွန်တော် ဗိုက်ဆာဟန်တူတယ်။ကျွန်တော် ဗိုက်ဆာနေပြီ။You know your own hunger, so state it plainly. A man is speaking.
Using spoken တယ် after the written future.
ဈေးနှုန်းများ မြင့်တက်မည့်ဟန်တူတယ်။ဈေးနှုန်းများ မြင့်တက်မည့်ဟန်တူသည်။မည့် is written, so the sentence ends with သည်.
How It Connects
Learn This First
A careful guess is easiest to learn next to ပုံရ.
Related Patterns
- မယ်ထင်I Think It Will
မယ်ထင် gives your own guess about the future.
Level 2 - မယ့်Future Events Before a Noun
မယ့် comes before ဟန်တူ for a future guess in speech.
Level 3 - မည့်Future Events Before a Noun in Writing
မည့် comes before ဟန်တူ for a future guess in writing.
Level 4 - တယ် / သည်Statements in Writing
The guess ends with တယ် in speech and သည် in writing.
Level 4
Words in This Pattern
Practice ဟန်တူ in Bubblegum
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