ပဲ

Only and Just

Level 3

With အခု, ပဲ means "just now": ကျွန်မ အခုပဲ ရောက်တာပါ။ (I've only just got here.)

How It Works

ပဲ is short and very common. It points at one word and says "this one, and no other".

FormEnglish
ရေပဲonly water
ဒီတစ်ခုပဲonly this one
အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုပဲonly in English
အခုပဲjust now
ကောင်းတာပဲthat's great

The place of ပဲ decides the meaning. In ရေပဲ သောက်မယ် (I'll drink only water), ပဲ sits right after ရေ, the word it limits.

At the end of a short sentence, ပဲ adds weight: ကောင်းတာပဲ (That's great!).

Writing uses သာ for "only". Do not confuse ပဲ with ဘဲ: မ…ဘဲ means "without".

ပဲ follows other particles too: ဒီမှာပဲ (right here), အိမ်မှာပဲ နေမယ် (I'll just stay home). In a reply, ဟုတ်တယ်၊ အဲဒါပဲ means "Yes, that's the one."

At the end of a sentence, speakers often say ပါပဲ: ဒီလိုပါပဲ (That's how it is).

Examples (5)

  1. ရေပဲ သောက်မယ်။

    I'll just have water.

    ပဲ limits the drink to water.

  2. ဒီတစ်ခုပဲ ကျန်တော့တယ်။

    Only this one is left.

    ပဲ follows the number and classifier.

  3. ကျွန်တော် အင်္ဂလိပ်လိုပဲ ပြောတတ်တယ်။

    I can only speak English.

    A man speaks. ပဲ follows the language.

  4. ကျွန်မ အခုပဲ ရောက်တာပါ။

    I've only just got here.

    A woman speaks. အခုပဲ means "just now".

  5. အဲဒါ ကောင်းတာပဲ။

    That's great!

    ပဲ at the end adds weight.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting ပဲ after the verb.

    ရေ သောက်ပဲမယ်။
    ရေပဲ သောက်မယ်။

    ပဲ goes right after the word it limits, here ရေ.

How It Connects

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

ပဲLevel 3Only and Just

Learn This First

ပဲ goes right after the word it is about, just like လည်း.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

ပဲ