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Starting to Change

Level 3

With ပြီ, the change has clearly started: နေကောင်းလာပြီ။ (I'm feeling better now.)

How It Works

လာ means "come". After another verb, it shows a change moving toward a new state, step by step, up to now. English says "getting" or "starting to".

Add ပြီ when the change has clearly started: ချမ်းလာပြီ (it's getting cold now).

Put လာ after the verb. Before a verb, လာ means someone comes to do something: လာကြည့်တယ် (comes to look).

လာ keeps its sense of direction too: ယူလာ (bring), ပြန်လာ (come back).

Its partner is သွား, which shows a change that is done: ပိန်သွားတယ် (got thin).

မြန်မာစကား နည်းနည်း နားလည်လာပြီ။
I'm starting to understand a little Burmese now.
လာ shows understanding growing; ပြီ says it has begun.
ညနေရောက်တော့ ချမ်းလာတယ်။
It gets cold when evening comes.
ချမ်းလာ means "get cold".
ဈေးနှုန်းတွေ တက်လာတယ်။
Prices are going up.
တက်လာ shows prices rising over time.
ကျွန်တော် ဆေးသောက်ပြီး နေကောင်းလာပြီ။
I took the medicine, and I'm feeling better now.
A man is speaking; နေကောင်းလာပြီ means "getting better now".
ရန်ကုန်မှာ ကားတွေ များလာတယ်။
There are more and more cars in Yangon.
များလာ means "become more".

Putting လာ before the verb.
ဈေးနှုန်းတွေ လာတက်တယ်။
ဈေးနှုန်းတွေ တက်လာတယ်။
For a change, လာ comes after the verb. Before a verb, လာ means someone comes to do something.

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

လာLevel 3Starting to Change

Starting to change is a helper after a describing word or verb.

လာ

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