Describing Words After a Noun
Some describing words take အ in front when they follow a noun: ကားအသစ် (a new car).
How It Works
In Burmese the noun comes first and the describing word follows it, and the two say together what kind of thing it is.
| Noun | Describing word | Together |
|---|---|---|
| ရေ (water) | အေး (cold) | ရေအေး (cold water) |
| အိမ် (house) | ကြီး (big) | အိမ်ကြီး (a big house) |
| လူ (person) | ကောင်း (good) | လူကောင်း (a good person) |
| ကား (car) | အသစ် (new) | ကားအသစ် (a new car) |
| အင်္ကျီ (shirt) | အဖြူ (white) | အင်္ကျီအဖြူ (a white shirt) |
Words for new, old and colours usually take အ when they follow a noun. A doubled describing word also follows the noun: လက်ဖက်ရည်ပူပူ (nice hot tea).
When you count, the number and classifier come last: ရေအေး တစ်ခွက် (a glass of cold water), ကားအသစ် တစ်စီး (one new car).
A longer description goes before the noun with တဲ့: ကြီးတဲ့အိမ် (a house that is big). Both are correct, and the short form after the noun is the everyday one.
Examples (5)
- ရေအေး တစ်ခွက် ပေးပါ။
A glass of cold water, please.
အေး follows ရေ, and the number and classifier come after both.
- ကျွန်မ ကားအသစ်တစ်စီး ဝယ်ခဲ့တယ်။
I bought a new car.
A woman is speaking; အသစ် takes အ after the noun.
- ဒီမှာ အိမ်ကြီးတွေ များတယ်။
There are lots of big houses here.
ကြီး follows အိမ်, and တွေ comes after both.
- လက်ဖက်ရည်ပူပူ သောက်ချင်တယ်။
I'd like some nice hot tea.
The doubled ပူပူ follows the noun.
- သူက လူကောင်းပါ။
He's a good person.
လူကောင်း is noun plus describing word; သူ means "he" or "she".
Common Mistakes
Putting the describing word before the noun, as in English.
အေးရေ တစ်ခွက် ပေးပါ။ရေအေး တစ်ခွက် ပေးပါ။The short describing word follows the noun.
Putting the number between the noun and the describing word.
ကား တစ်စီးအသစ် ဝယ်ခဲ့တယ်။ကားအသစ် တစ်စီး ဝယ်ခဲ့တယ်။The number and classifier come after the describing word.
How It Connects
Learn This First
A describing word after a noun is still a verb, so describing verbs come first.
Related Patterns
- တဲ့Describing a Noun with a Clause
A longer description goes before the noun with တဲ့.
Level 3 - တစ်… / နှစ်…Counting Things
Numbers and classifiers come after the noun and its describing word.
Level 2 - Repeating Words
A doubled describing word can follow a noun too.
Level 2 - အ…Nouns from Verbs
The အ in အသစ် is the same one that makes nouns from verbs.
Level 3
Practice Describing Words After a Noun in Bubblegum
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