အ…

Nouns from Verbs

Level 3

In a shop, အကြီး and အသေး mean "the big one" and "the small one": အကြီး တစ်ခု ပေးပါ။

How It Works

Put အ in front of a verb or describing word, and it becomes a noun. The noun names the thing, the quality or the result.

VerbNounEnglish
လှ (be beautiful)အလှbeauty
ဖြေ (answer)အဖြေan answer
လုပ် (do)အလုပ်work, a job
ကြံ (plan)အကြံan idea
အေး (be cold)အအေးa cold drink
ကြီး (be big)အကြီးthe big one

အကြီး and အသေး (the small one) are handy when you shop: အကြီး တစ်ခု ပေးပါ။ (A big one, please.)

Each noun has its own meaning, and not every verb takes အ, so learn them as words. The အ is said as a short, weak ə, the same sound as in အမေ (mother).

The new noun works like any noun. It takes ကို, မှာ, a number and a classifier: အကြံ တစ်ခု (an idea).

အ also appears in two larger patterns: အ…ဆုံး (the most) and the paired nouns of အ…အ….

Examples (5)

  1. ဒီမေးခွန်းရဲ့ အဖြေ သိလား။

    Do you know the answer to this question?

    အဖြေ comes from ဖြေ (answer).

  2. အကြီး တစ်ခု ပေးပါ။

    A big one, please.

    အကြီး means "the big one".

  3. ကျွန်မမှာ အကြံ တစ်ခု ရှိတယ်။

    I have an idea.

    A woman is speaking; အကြံ comes from ကြံ (plan).

  4. အအေး ဘာသောက်မလဲ။

    What cold drink would you like?

    အအေး comes from အေး (be cold).

  5. ကိုဇော်ဇော် အလုပ်ပြောင်းလိုက်ပြီ။

    Ko Zaw Zaw has changed jobs.

    အလုပ် comes from လုပ် (do).

Common Mistakes

  • Using the bare verb as a noun.

    ဒီမေးခွန်းရဲ့ ဖြေ သိလား။
    ဒီမေးခွန်းရဲ့ အဖြေ သိလား။

    The verb needs အ to become a noun.

How It Connects

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

အ…Level 3Nouns from Verbs

Learn This First

Nouns from verbs often start from describing verbs.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

အ-