သေး

Still

Level 2

With မ and ဘူး, the same word means "not yet": that is the entry မ…သေးဘူး.

How It Works

သေး means "still". Put it after the verb, after any helper words like နေ, and then add the ending.

PlainWith သေး
ရှိတယ်။ There is some.ရှိသေးတယ်။ There's still some.
အိပ်နေတယ်။ He's sleeping.အိပ်နေသေးတယ်။ He's still sleeping.
ငယ်တယ်။ She's young.ငယ်သေးတယ်။ She's still young.

Describing words work the same way, because they are verbs in Burmese: ပူသေးတယ်။ (It's still hot.)

In a shop or at a food stall, ask ရှိသေးလား။ (Do you still have any?) The answer is ရှိသေးတယ်။ (Yes, there's still some.) or မရှိတော့ဘူး။ (There's none left.)

With မ before the verb and ဘူး at the end, သေး means "not yet": မရောက်သေးဘူး။ (She hasn't arrived yet.) That form has its own entry.

A common phrase is စောပါသေးတယ်။ (It's still early.) Hosts say it when a guest gets up to leave, to ask the guest to stay a little longer.

Examples (5)

  1. အချိန် ရှိသေးတယ်။

    There's still time.

    သေး sits before တယ် and means "still".

  2. ကလေး အိပ်နေသေးတယ်။

    The baby is still sleeping.

    သေး follows နေ for an action still going on.

  3. ဒီဟင်း ပူသေးတယ်၊ ဖြည်းဖြည်းစားပါ။

    This curry is still hot. Eat it slowly.

    ပူ is a describing verb, so it takes သေး like any verb.

  4. မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ရှိသေးလား။

    Do you still have mohinga?

    သေးလား asks whether something is still there.

  5. ဦးအောင်ကျော် ရုံးမှာ ရှိသေးတယ်။

    U Aung Kyaw is still at the office.

    သေး says he has not left yet.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting သေး after the ending.

    ရှိတယ်သေး။
    ရှိသေးတယ်။

    သေး goes before the ending, right after the verb.

  • Saying မရှိသေးဘူး when the food has sold out.

    မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ကုန်ပြီ၊ မရှိသေးဘူး။
    မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ကုန်ပြီ၊ မရှိတော့ဘူး။

    မရှိသေးဘူး means there isn't any yet. For "none left", say မရှိတော့ဘူး.

How It Connects

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

သေးLevel 2Still

Learn This First

Still sits where နေ sits, so နေ comes first.

Words in This Pattern

သေး