မှ

Only When and Not Until

Level 3

The main verb stays positive, even where English says "not until".

How It Works

မှ sets a condition that must come first. Nothing happens before it.

BurmeseEnglish
ဆရာ လာမှ စမယ်။We'll start only when the teacher comes.
ကိုးနာရီမှ ရောက်တယ်။I don't get there until nine.
စားပြီးမှ သောက်ပါ။Take it only after you eat.
မနေ့ကမှ ကြားတယ်။I only heard yesterday.

English "not until" has a "not" in it, but the Burmese main verb stays positive. ကိုးနာရီမှ ရောက်တယ် is literally "only at nine, arrive".

မှ works after three kinds of word:

  • a bare verb: လာမှ, ရမှ
  • a time: ညနေမှ, မနေ့ကမှ
  • ပြီး: ပြီးမှ, "only after"

Burmese has other words spelled မှ. In writing, မှ means "from". In ဘယ်သူမှ မလာဘူး it means "nobody". When it follows a verb or a time and the next verb is positive, it means "only when".

Examples (5)

  1. ဆရာ လာမှ စမယ်။

    We'll start only when the teacher comes.

    လာမှ means "only when he comes".

  2. ကျွန်မ ည ကိုးနာရီမှ အိမ်ပြန်ရောက်တယ်။

    I don't get home until nine at night.

    A woman is speaking; the Burmese verb stays positive.

  3. ထမင်းစားပြီးမှ ဆေးသောက်ပါ။

    Take the medicine only after you've eaten.

    ပြီးမှ means "only after".

  4. ပိုက်ဆံရမှ ဝယ်မယ်။

    I'll buy it only once I get paid.

    ရမှ means "only when I get it".

  5. မနေ့ကမှ ဒီသတင်း ကြားတယ်။

    I only heard this news yesterday.

    After a time word, မှ means "not until then".

Common Mistakes

  • Making the main verb negative, as in English "not until".

    ဆရာ လာမှ မစဘူး။
    ဆရာ လာမှ စမယ်။

    After မှ, the main verb stays positive.

How It Connects

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

မှLevel 3Only When and Not Until

Learn This First

Only when is easiest to learn next to ပြီးရင်, where မှ takes the place of ရင်.

Words in This Pattern

မှ