ဆီ

To a Person

Level 2

Places take ကို or မှာ; people take ဆီ.

How It Works

In English you can "go to Mum" or "go to the shop" with the same word. Burmese splits them. A place takes ကို (ဈေးကို သွားမယ်။), and a person takes ဆီ (အမေ့ဆီ သွားမယ်။).

FormMeaningExample
ဆီ / ဆီကိုto a personဆရာ့ဆီ သွားမယ်။
ဆီမှာat a person's placeသူငယ်ချင်းဆီမှာ နေတယ်။
ဆီကfrom a personအမေ့ဆီက စာရတယ်။

Use ဆီ for going to see someone, sending a letter or message, and leaving or picking up things. ဆရာဝန်ဆီ သွားပြမယ်။ means "I'll go and see a doctor."

Family words, titles and pronouns in the low tone change to the creaky tone before ဆီ, the same change you see before an owned noun: အမေ → အမေ့ဆီ, သူ → သူ့ဆီ. Ask "from whom" with ဘယ်သူ့ဆီက. An ordinary noun such as ဆရာဝန် keeps its own tone: ဆရာဝန်ဆီ.

Examples (5)

  1. မနက်ဖြန် အမေ့ဆီ သွားမယ်။

    I'm going to see Mum tomorrow.

    အမေ့ဆီ means "to Mum"; အမေ takes the creaky tone.

  2. ဒီစာ ဆရာ့ဆီ ပို့ပေးပါ။

    Please send this letter to the teacher.

    ဆရာ့ဆီ marks the person the letter goes to.

  3. ဆရာဝန်ဆီ သွားပြပါ။

    Go and see a doctor.

    ဆရာဝန်ဆီ means "to the doctor".

  4. ကျွန်တော့်ဖုန်း သူငယ်ချင်းဆီမှာ ကျန်ခဲ့တယ်။

    I left my phone at my friend's place.

    A man is speaking; ဆီမှာ means "at the friend's place".

  5. ဒီလက်ဆောင် ဘယ်သူ့ဆီက ရတာလဲ။

    Who did you get this present from?

    ဘယ်သူ့ဆီက asks "from whom".

Common Mistakes

  • Using ကို for going to a person.

    အမေကို သွားမယ်။
    အမေ့ဆီ သွားမယ်။

    With a verb of going, ကို marks a place. When you go to a person, use ဆီ.

How It Connects

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

ဆီLevel 2To a Person

Learn This First

ဆီ is easiest to learn next to ကို, and it takes the short form of a people word.

Words in This Pattern

ဆီ