Sentence Endings

Foundations

A negative sentence takes မ before the verb and ဘူး at the end, and then it needs no other ending.

How It Works

In Burmese, the verb and its ending close the sentence. Learn these endings first, because almost every sentence you say will finish with one of them.

EndingJobExample
တယ်a fact, now or in the pastလာတယ်။ (came, comes)
မယ်a plan or a future eventလာမယ်။ (will come)
မ…ဘူးnotမလာဘူး။ (didn't come)
လားa yes-or-no questionကောင်းလား။ (is it good?)
လဲa question with ဘာ, ဘယ်ဘယ်တော့လာမလဲ။ (when will you come?)
ပါa polite requestလာပါ။ (please come)

A verb with no ending sounds like a curt order or an unfinished thought. So close each sentence with the ending that fits.

Examples (5)

  1. ကျွန်တော် ကော်ဖီကြိုက်တယ်။

    I like coffee.

    တယ် states a fact. ကျွန်တော် shows a man is speaking.

  2. မနက်ဖြန် လာမယ်။

    I'll come tomorrow.

    မယ် marks a plan.

  3. သူ အသားမစားဘူး။

    He doesn't eat meat.

    မ before the verb and ဘူး at the end make it negative. သူ covers he or she.

  4. ကော်ဖီ ကြိုက်လား။

    Do you like coffee?

    လား turns the sentence into a yes-or-no question.

  5. ဘယ်မှာ နေလဲ။

    Where do you live?

    လဲ closes a question that has a question word.

Common Mistakes

  • Leaving a statement with no ending.

    ကျွန်မ ထမင်းစား။
    ကျွန်မ ထမင်းစားတယ်။

    A bare verb sounds like an order or an unfinished sentence. Add တယ် to state a fact.

How It Connects

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

Sentence EndingsFoundations

Learn This First

Endings close the sentence after the verb, so learners first see that the verb comes last.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

မယ်လားလဲပါ