က

The Doer and from

Level 1

က also marks the topic you are talking about: ဒီဖုန်းက ဈေးကြီးတယ် means "This phone is expensive."

How It Works

က has two jobs.

  • The doer or the topic: ဒီဟင်းကို အမေက ချက်တယ်။ (Mum cooked this curry.) Use it when you answer "who?", point someone out, or name the thing you are talking about.
  • From a place: ကျွန်တော် ရန်ကုန်ကပါ။ (I'm from Yangon.)

In a plain sentence the doer needs no က: ကျွန်မ ကော်ဖီသောက်တယ်။ (I drink coffee.) Add က when you want to say "it's me, not someone else", or when the doer and the object are both in the sentence.

A few time words also end in က: မနေ့က (yesterday), ဟိုတုန်းက (back then).

Keep က and ကို apart: က marks who does it or where it starts, and ကို marks who receives it or where it goes.

Examples (5)

  1. ဘယ်ကလာလဲ။

    Where are you from?

    ဘယ်က means "from where".

  2. ကျွန်တော် ရန်ကုန်ကပါ။

    I'm from Yangon.

    A man answers; ရန်ကုန်က means "from Yangon".

  3. ဒီဟင်းကို အမေက ချက်တယ်။

    Mum cooked this curry.

    အမေက points out who did the cooking.

  4. ဘယ်သူက လာမလဲ။

    Who's coming?

    ဘယ်သူက asks who the doer is.

  5. ဒီဖုန်းက ဈေးကြီးတယ်။

    This phone is expensive.

    ဒီဖုန်းက names the topic.

Common Mistakes

  • Using က for the place you go to.

    ရန်ကုန်က သွားမယ်။
    ရန်ကုန်ကို သွားမယ်။

    က means "from". The place you go to takes ကို.

How It Connects

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

ကLevel 1The Doer and from

Learn This First

က is easiest to learn next to ကို, which marks the other person in the sentence.

Learn Next

Patterns that build on this one.

Words in This Pattern

ကက