လုနီးပါး

Almost

Level 4

It is used most for close calls, such as nearly falling or nearly missing a bus.

How It Works

လုနီးပါး means "almost" or "nearly". It follows a bare verb, and the sentence ends with ဖြစ်: ရထား လွတ်လုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ်။ (I almost missed the train.)

It joins two parts. လု means "on the point of", and နီးပါး means "nearly". The listener knows the action came close and then did not happen.

PhraseMeaning
ကျလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ်almost fell
မေ့သွားလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ်almost forgot
ငိုလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်almost cried

လုနီးပါး is not a verb itself, so the ending goes on ဖြစ်. With သွား, ဖြစ်သွားတယ် adds the feeling that it came on suddenly.

Without လု, နီးပါး goes after a number or amount: နှစ်နာရီနီးပါး (almost two hours), လူ တစ်ထောင်နီးပါး (nearly a thousand people). This use is common in the news.

It pairs well with a reason: အလုပ်များလို့ မေ့သွားလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ် (I was so busy I almost forgot).

For something that is about to happen and will happen, use ခါနီး. လုနီးပါး is for a close call.

Most sentences with လုနီးပါး tell the story of a close call, so they are usually about the past.

Examples (5)

  1. ဒီမနက် ရထား လွတ်လုနီးပါး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။

    I almost missed the train this morning.

    လုနီးပါး shows the speaker came close to missing it.

  2. ကလေး လှေကားပေါ်က ပြုတ်ကျလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။

    The child almost fell down the stairs.

    The fall nearly happened, and ဖြစ်သွားတယ် ends the sentence.

  3. အလုပ်များလို့ အမေ့မွေးနေ့ကို မေ့သွားလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ်။

    I was so busy that I almost forgot Mom's birthday.

    The reason comes first, then the near miss.

  4. ကျွန်မ ပျော်လွန်းလို့ ငိုလုနီးပါး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်ရှင်။

    I was so happy that I almost cried.

    A woman says she nearly cried for joy.

  5. ဘတ်စ်ကားက ကားတစ်စီးနဲ့ တိုက်လုနီးပါး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။

    The bus nearly hit a car.

    The crash almost happened and then did not.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting the ending straight on လုနီးပါး.

    ရထား လွတ်လုနီးပါးတယ်။
    ရထား လွတ်လုနီးပါး ဖြစ်တယ်။

    လုနီးပါး is not a verb, so the ending goes on ဖြစ်.

How It Connects

Tap a pattern to see what it builds on and what it leads to.

လုနီးပါးLevel 4Almost

Learn This First

Almost builds on just before and ends with ဖြစ်.

Words in This Pattern

လုနီးပါး