စေ
Making Something Happen
With ချင်, it says what you want someone else to do: လာစေချင်တယ် means "I want you to come".
How It Works
စေ means "make" or "cause". It sits right after the verb that describes the result: ဒီသီချင်းက ကျွန်မကို ပျော်စေတယ်။ (This song makes me happy.)
The order is cause, then the person affected, then the verb with စေ.
| Cause | Person | Result |
|---|---|---|
| ဒီသတင်းက | လူတွေကို | ဝမ်းသာစေတယ်။ |
| သူ့ရဲ့ စကားက | အမေ့ကို | စိတ်ပူစေတယ်။ |
A teacher or parent can also have someone do an action: ဆရာက ကျောင်းသားတွေကို အသံထွက် ဖတ်စေတယ် (the teacher has the students read aloud). For a plain order, speech prefers ခိုင်း.
စေချင် is the everyday spoken use. It says what you want another person to do: ခင်ဗျား လာစေချင်ပါတယ် (I'd like you to come).
Politeness ပါ goes after စေ: ပျော်စေပါတယ်. When ပါ comes before စေ, the meaning changes to a wish: ပျော်ပါစေ (may you be happy).
Writing uses စေ in the same way, and you will see it before ရန် for a goal: နားလည်စေရန် (so that they understand).
The person affected is often left out when it is clear: ဝမ်းသာစေတယ် (it makes you happy).
Examples (5)
- ဒီသီချင်းက ကျွန်မကို ပျော်စေတယ်။
This song makes me happy.
A woman speaks. ပျော်စေ means "makes happy".
- ကော်ဖီက အိပ်ချင်တာကို ပျောက်စေတယ်။
Coffee gets rid of sleepiness.
The cause is coffee, and စေ makes the sleepiness go away.
- ဒီပွဲကို ခင်ဗျား လာစေချင်ပါတယ်ခင်ဗျာ။
I'd really like you to come to this event.
A man uses စေချင် for what he wants the listener to do.
- ဆရာက ကျောင်းသားတွေကို အသံထွက် ဖတ်စေတယ်။
The teacher has the students read aloud.
The teacher causes the action, and the students do it.
- သူ့ရဲ့ စကားက အမေ့ကို စိတ်ပူစေတယ်။
What he said made Mom worry.
The cause, his words, comes first with က. သူ can be he or she.
Common Mistakes
Putting ပါ between the verb and စေ in a statement.
ဒီသီချင်းက ကျွန်မကို ပျော်ပါစေတယ်။ဒီသီချင်းက ကျွန်မကို ပျော်စေပါတယ်။ပါစေ is a wish. In a statement, ပါ goes after စေ.
How It Connects
Learn This First
Making something happen builds on ခိုင်း, which also marks the person with ကို.
Related Patterns
- ပါစေWishing Someone Well
ပါစေ uses the same စေ to make a wish.
Level 2 - ပွင့် / ဖွင့်Paired Verbs for Happening and Doing
Some verbs make a cause with a paired verb, with no စေ.
Level 4 - ခံရHaving Something Done to You
ခံရ looks at the person who has something done to them.
Level 4 - ရန်Purpose in Writing
စေရန် names a goal that someone else should reach.
Level 4
Words in This Pattern
Practice စေ in Bubblegum
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