သူ / သူတို့

He, She and They

Level 1

After a name, တို့ means that person and the people with them: အောင်အောင်တို့ is "Aung Aung and his friends".

How It Works

Spoken Burmese has one word, သူ, for both he and she, so ကျွန်တော့်အစ်မ (my older sister) and ကျွန်တော့်အစ်ကို (my older brother) are both သူ in the next sentence.

EnglishBurmese
he, sheသူ
theyသူတို့
his, herသူ့
theirသူတို့ရဲ့

တို့ makes a group out of a person. It works after names and family words too: အမေတို့ means Mom and the others at home.

Books and news write သူမ for she. In speech, say သူ for a woman as well.

With an older person, a family word sounds warmer than သူ: Burmese speakers say ဦးလေး (uncle) or အန်တီ (auntie).

Examples (5)

  1. သူ ဆရာဝန်ပါ။

    She's a doctor.

    သူ covers he or she, so this sentence can also mean "He's a doctor."

  2. မနေ့က သူ မလာဘူး။

    He didn't come yesterday.

    The same word သူ means "he" in this sentence.

  3. သူတို့ ဈေးသွားတယ်။

    They went to the market.

    သူတို့ means "they".

  4. သူတို့ ကျောင်းသားတွေပါ။

    They're students.

    သူတို့ and the plural တွေ both show a group.

  5. သူ ကော်ဖီ မကြိုက်ဘူး။

    He doesn't like coffee.

    သူ is the subject, and the verb comes last.

Common Mistakes

  • Using the written word သူမ in speech.

    သူမ ဆရာဝန်ပါ။
    သူ ဆရာဝန်ပါ။

    သူမ belongs to books and news. In conversation, a woman is သူ too.

How It Connects

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

သူ / သူတို့Level 1He, She and They

Learn This First

He, she and they come after the words for I, which show how a people word fits in a sentence.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

သူသူတို့တို့-တို့