မိ

Doing Something Without Meaning to

Level 3

Burmese speakers use မိ to say sorry, because it shows you did not plan it: မှားပြောမိတာ တောင်းပန်ပါတယ်။ (I'm sorry I said the wrong thing.)

How It Works

မိ means the action happened by itself, or before you could stop it. English says "ended up", "by mistake" or "couldn't help it".

Form	English
သောက်မိတယ်	I ended up drinking it
ရယ်မိတယ်	I couldn't help laughing
ငိုမိတယ်	I found myself crying
မှားခေါ်မိတယ်	I called someone by the wrong name
ပြောမိတယ်	it slipped out

A plan you make on purpose never takes မိ. Say ဈေးသွားမယ် (I'll go to the market), not ဈေးသွားမိမယ်.

မိ is gentle and a little sorry. Saying မှားပြောမိတယ် sounds kinder than မှားပြောတယ်, because it tells the listener you did not mean it.

For losing or breaking something, Burmese often uses သွား: ဖုန်းပျောက်သွားတယ် (My phone got lost).

The negative keeps မိ and means something slipped past you: သတိမထားမိဘူး (I didn't notice).

ကော်ဖီ များများ သောက်မိတယ်။
I ended up drinking a lot of coffee.
မိ shows the speaker never planned to drink so much.
ကျွန်မ သူ့နာမည်ကို မှားခေါ်မိတယ်။
I called him by the wrong name by mistake.
A woman speaks. မိ marks the slip.
ကျွန်တော် ဇာတ်ကားကြည့်ရင်း ငိုမိတယ်။
I found myself crying while I watched the film.
A man speaks. The tears came before he could stop them.
သူ့စကားကြားတော့ ရယ်မိတယ်။
When I heard what he said, I couldn't help laughing.
မိ shows the laugh just came out.
မှားပြောမိတာ တောင်းပန်ပါတယ်ရှင်။
I'm sorry I said the wrong thing.
A woman apologizes. မိ softens it.

Adding မိ to a plan.
ကျွန်မ မနက်ဖြန် ဈေးသွားမိမယ်။
ကျွန်မ မနက်ဖြန် ဈေးသွားမယ်။
A woman tells her plan. Planned actions take the plain verb; မိ is for things that just happen.

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

မိLevel 3Doing Something Without Meaning to

မိ is a helper after the verb, so the order of a verb phrase comes first.

မိ

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