ခါစ

Just Having Done Something

Level 4

Before a noun it means "newly" or "fresh": မွေးခါစ ကလေး is a newborn baby.

How It Works

ခါစ marks a fresh start. It follows a bare verb and says the action has only just happened: ရန်ကုန် ရောက်ခါစပါ။ (I've only just arrived in Yangon.)

It works in three places.

  • At the end, with ပါ: သင်ခါစပါ (I've only just started learning).
  • With a reason: ရောက်ခါစမို့ လမ်းတွေ မသိသေးဘူး (I've just arrived, so I don't know the streets yet).
  • Before a noun: မွေးခါစ ကလေး (a newborn baby), ဖုတ်ခါစ ပေါင်မုန့် (freshly baked bread).

For a time in the past, add က or တုန်းက: စလုပ်ခါစက (when I had just started).

WordMeaning
ရောက်ခါနီးabout to arrive
ရောက်ခါစjust arrived

Keep ခါစ and ခါနီး apart. ခါနီး comes before the event, and ခါစ comes right after it.

ခါစ is a handy way to ask for patience. A new learner can say မြန်မာစကား သင်ခါစပါ, and people will slow down.

The verb before ခါစ stays bare, and the ending goes at the end of the sentence.

Examples (5)

  1. မန္တလေးကို ရောက်ခါစမို့ လမ်းတွေ မသိသေးဘူး။

    I've only just got to Mandalay, so I don't know the streets yet.

    ရောက်ခါစ gives the reason the speaker is lost.

  2. မွေးခါစ ကလေးလေးက အရမ်း သေးတယ်။

    The newborn baby is so tiny.

    Before a noun, မွေးခါစ means "newborn".

  3. ဒီအလုပ်ကို စလုပ်ခါစက အရမ်း ပင်ပန်းတယ်။

    When I had just started this job, it was really tiring.

    က after ခါစ points back to that time.

  4. ကျွန်မ မြန်မာစကား သင်ခါစပါရှင်၊ ဖြည်းဖြည်း ပြောပေးပါ။

    I've only just started learning Burmese, so please speak slowly.

    A woman uses သင်ခါစ to ask for patience.

  5. ဖုတ်ခါစ ပေါင်မုန့်က မွှေးတယ်။

    Freshly baked bread smells wonderful.

    ဖုတ်ခါစ describes bread that has just come out of the oven.

Common Mistakes

  • Using ခါနီး to say you have just arrived.

    ရန်ကုန် ရောက်ခါနီးပါ။
    ရန်ကုန် ရောက်ခါစပါ။

    ခါနီး means you are about to arrive. Once you are there, say ခါစ.

How It Connects

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

ခါစLevel 4Just Having Done Something

Learn This First

Just having done something is easiest to learn next to just before.

Words in This Pattern

စခါ