ပေး

Doing Something for Someone

Level 3

In a request, ပေးပါ sounds kinder than ပါ alone.

How It Works

ပေး is the verb "give". When it follows another verb, the action becomes a gift: you do it for someone else.

VerbWith ပေးEnglish
ကူညီ (help)ကူညီပေးပါ။Please help me.
ဖွင့် (open)ဖွင့်ပေးပါလား။Could you open it for me?
ဝယ် (buy)ဝယ်ပေးမယ်။I'll buy it for you.
ချက် (cook)ချက်ပေးတယ်။cooks for someone

In requests, Burmese speakers add ပေး often. ကူညီပါ is a bit plain; ကူညီပေးပါ asks for a favour. ပေးပါလား softens it more, like "could you".

The person who gets the favour takes ကို: အမေက ကျွန်မကို ထမင်းချက်ပေးတယ်။ (My mum cooks for me.) Often you leave the person out, because the situation makes it clear.

ပေး joins well with ပြ: ပြောပြပေးပါ။ (Please tell me.)

When someone asks you for a favour, you can answer ရပါတယ် (sure) or ကူညီပေးပါမယ် (I'll help).

Examples (5)

  1. ကူညီပေးပါ။

    Please help me.

    ပေး makes the request a favour for the speaker.

  2. တံခါးလေး ဖွင့်ပေးပါလား။

    Could you open the door for me?

    ပေးပါလား asks gently.

  3. အမေက ကျွန်မကို ထမင်းချက်ပေးတယ်။

    My mum cooks for me.

    A woman is speaking; ကျွန်မကို names who gets the favour.

  4. ကျွန်တော် ခင်ဗျားကို ဓာတ်ပုံရိုက်ပေးမယ်။

    I'll take a photo for you.

    A man offers; ရိုက်ပေးမယ် means "I'll take it for you".

  5. ဈေးကနေ ငှက်ပျောသီး ဝယ်ပေးပါ။

    Please buy me some bananas at the market.

    ဝယ်ပေးပါ asks someone to buy for you.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting ပေး before the verb.

    ပေးကူညီပါ။
    ကူညီပေးပါ။

    ပေး comes after the main verb, before ပါ.

How It Connects

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

ပေးLevel 3Doing Something for Someone

Learn This First

ပေး is a helper that says the action is done for someone, so the helper place and အတွက် come first.

Words in This Pattern

ပေး