ဘယ်…မှ မ…ဘူး

Nobody and Nothing

Level 3

ဘယ်တော့မှ with a negative means "never": သူ ဘယ်တော့မှ နောက်မကျဘူး။ (She's never late.)

How It Works

Burmese builds "nobody" and "nothing" from a question word plus မှ. The verb must be negative.

A particle such as ကို goes before မှ: ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ (to nobody), ဘယ်ကိုမှ (nowhere).

English needs only one negative word. Burmese always has both parts: မှ and မ…ဘူး. ဘယ်သူမှ လာတယ် is not a sentence.

For "anyone" in a positive sentence, use ဘယ်…မဆို: ဘယ်သူမဆို ဝင်လို့ရတယ် (Anyone can come in).

Even a short answer keeps the negative verb: ဘာစားလဲ။ ဘာမှ မစားဘူး။ (What did you eat? Nothing.)

ဘယ်လိုမှ means "in no way": ဘယ်လိုမှ မရဘူး (There's no way to do it).

ဘယ်သူမှ မလာဘူး။
Nobody came.
ဘယ်သူမှ with a negative verb means "nobody".
ကျွန်မ ဘာမှ မစားရသေးဘူး။
I haven't eaten anything yet.
A woman speaks. ဘာမှ means "nothing".
ဒီနေ့ ဘယ်ကိုမှ မသွားဘူး။
I'm not going anywhere today.
ကို comes before မှ.
ကျွန်တော် ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မပြောဘူး။
I won't tell anyone.
A man promises. ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ means "to nobody".
သူ ဘယ်တော့မှ နောက်မကျဘူး။
She's never late.
ဘယ်တော့မှ means "never". သူ can mean he or she.

Keeping the verb positive.
ဘယ်သူမှ လာတယ်။
ဘယ်သူမှ မလာဘူး။
After ဘယ်…မှ, the verb is always negative.

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

ဘယ်…မှ မ…ဘူးLevel 3Nobody and Nothing

Nobody and nothing use question words with မှ and a negative verb.

မှဘယ်မဘူး

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