တော့

As for and Now

Level 2

After a verb, တော့ means "go ahead now": အိပ်တော့။ (Go to sleep now.)

How It Works

တော့ has two everyday jobs.

1. As for this one. Put တော့ after a person, thing or time. The listener hears that something else is different. With the person doing the action, add က first: ကျွန်မကတော့ မသွားဘူး။ (As for me, I'm not going.) With a time word: ဒီနေ့တော့ မအားဘူး။ (Today I'm busy, though.) That hints another day would work.

2. Now, at this point. Put တော့ after a verb to say the moment has come. In a request it means "go ahead now". Before မယ်, it means you are about to do it.

PhraseMeaning
ကျွန်တော်ကတော့as for me
ဒီနေ့တော့today, at least
စားပါတော့please go ahead and eat
သွားတော့မယ်I'm going now

Saying goodbye, people use the second job: သွားပါတော့မယ်။ (I'll be going now.)

Examples (5)

  1. ကျွန်တော်ကတော့ လက်ဖက်ရည် သောက်မယ်။

    As for me, I'll have tea.

    ကတော့ sets the speaker apart from the others at the table.

  2. ဒီနေ့တော့ မအားဘူး။

    Today I'm busy, though.

    တော့ after ဒီနေ့ hints that another day would be fine.

  3. ကိုးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ၊ အိပ်တော့။

    It's nine o'clock. Go to sleep now. (A mother to her child.)

    တော့ after the verb tells the child the time has come.

  4. ကဲ၊ စားပါတော့ရှင်။

    Well, go ahead and eat.

    ပါတော့ invites the guest to start now; ရှင် shows a woman is speaking.

  5. ကျွန်မ သွားပါတော့မယ်။

    I'll be going now.

    တော့ before မယ် says she is leaving right now.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting တော့ after the ending.

    သွားမယ်တော့။
    သွားတော့မယ်။

    တော့ goes after the verb and before the ending မယ်.

How It Connects

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

တော့Level 2As for and Now

Learn This First

As for often comes after က, so က comes first.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

တော့-တော့