ခါနီး
Just Before
ခါနီးမှ means "only at the last moment": ဧည့်သည်ရောက်ခါနီးမှ အိမ်ရှင်းတယ်။ (I only tidy the house just before the guests arrive.)
How It Works
ခါနီး joins နီး (near) to a verb. It means that moment is very close.
| Form | English |
|---|---|
| ထွက်ခါနီး | just before leaving |
| အိပ်ခါနီး | just before going to sleep |
| ရထားထွက်ခါနီး | just before the train leaves |
| စာမေးပွဲဖြေခါနီး | just before the exam |
For "before" in general, use မ…ခင်: မထွက်ခင် (before leaving). That one has မ in front. ခါနီး never takes မ, so မထွက်ခါနီး is wrong.
Add မှ for something done only at the very last moment: ထွက်ခါနီးမှ ပြင်တယ် (I only get ready right before I leave).
The verb before ခါနီး has no ending. The second part of the sentence carries တယ်, မယ် or ပါ.
Ask with ခါနီး to plan the last step: ထွက်ခါနီး ဘာလုပ်ရမလဲ (What do I need to do just before I leave?). The answer often uses ပါ: ထွက်ခါနီး မီးပိတ်ပါ (Turn off the lights just before you leave).
Examples (5)
- ထွက်ခါနီး ဖုန်းဆက်ပါ။
Call me just before you leave.
ထွက်ခါနီး means "right before you leave".
- ကျွန်မ အိပ်ခါနီး ဖုန်းပိတ်တယ်။
I turn off my phone just before I go to sleep.
A woman speaks about her habit.
- ရထားထွက်ခါနီး ကျွန်တော် ဘူတာရောက်တယ်။
I got to the station just before the train left.
A man speaks. He arrived with very little time to spare.
- စာမေးပွဲဖြေခါနီး သူ အမြဲ စိတ်ပူတယ်။
She always gets worried just before an exam.
ခါနီး marks the time right before the exam. သူ can mean he or she.
- ဧည့်သည်ရောက်ခါနီးမှ အိမ်ရှင်းတယ်။
I only tidy the house just before the guests arrive.
ခါနီးမှ means "only at the last moment".
Common Mistakes
Adding မ, as in မ…ခင်.
မထွက်ခါနီး ဖုန်းဆက်ပါ။ထွက်ခါနီး ဖုန်းဆက်ပါ။ခါနီး takes the plain verb. Only မ…ခင် has မ in front.
How It Connects
Learn This First
Just before builds on before and on about to happen.
Related Patterns
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Patterns that build on this one.
Words in This Pattern
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