ခင်ဗျာ / ရှင်
Polite Endings for Men and Women
Said alone, ခင်ဗျာ or ရှင် answers when someone calls your name, and it also means "Pardon?".
How It Works
A polite Burmese sentence can close with one more word that adds respect. Men say ခင်ဗျာ and women say ရှင်.
| Meaning | A man says | A woman says |
|---|---|---|
| Yes. | ဟုတ်ကဲ့ခင်ဗျာ။ | ဟုတ်ကဲ့ရှင်။ |
| Thank you. | ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်ခင်ဗျာ။ | ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်ရှင်။ |
Use it with customers, teachers, older people and anyone you want to treat with care. It is never wrong to add it in a polite sentence.
Men also have a short casual word, ဗျ. It sounds friendly between friends and rude to a stranger, so keep it out of polite speech. It is taught at Level 3 with the other casual endings.
Examples (5)
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့ခင်ဗျာ။
Yes.
A man answers politely with ခင်ဗျာ.
- ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါတယ်ရှင်။
Thank you.
A woman adds ရှင် after the thank-you.
- မင်္ဂလာပါခင်ဗျာ။
Hello.
A man adds ခင်ဗျာ to the greeting.
- ကျွန်မ မသိပါဘူးရှင်။
I don't know.
A woman speaks, so ကျွန်မ and ရှင် match.
- ခဏစောင့်ပါခင်ဗျာ။
Please wait a moment.
A man makes a polite request with ခင်ဗျာ.
Common Mistakes
Using casual ဗျ as if it were polite.
ခဏစောင့်ပါဗျ။ခဏစောင့်ပါခင်ဗျာ။ဗျ is casual and sounds rude to a stranger. The polite word for a man is ခင်ဗျာ.
A man ending with ရှင်.
ကျွန်တော် ဆရာပါရှင်။ကျွန်တော် ဆရာပါခင်ဗျာ။ကျွန်တော် shows a man is speaking, so the ending must be ခင်ဗျာ.
How It Connects
Learn This First
These endings follow the speaker's gender and close polite sentences, so the polite words for you and polite statements come first.
Related Patterns
Learn Next
Patterns that build on this one.
Words in This Pattern
Practice ခင်ဗျာ / ရှင် in Bubblegum
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