ဘာ / ဘယ်သူ

What and Who

Level 1

ဘယ်သူ becomes ဘယ်သူ့ for "whose", just as သူ becomes သူ့.

How It Works

English moves what and who to the front. Burmese leaves them where the answer goes.

Question	Answer
ဘယ်သူနဲ့ သွားမလဲ။ (Who are you going with?)	အမေနဲ့ သွားမယ်။ (With Mom.)
ဘာဟင်း ကြိုက်လဲ။ (What curry do you like?)	ကြက်သားဟင်း ကြိုက်တယ်။ (Chicken curry.)
ဒါ ဘယ်သူ့ဖုန်းလဲ။ (Whose phone is this?)	ကျွန်တော့်ဖုန်းပါ။ (Mine.)

For the object, ဘယ်သူ takes ကို and changes its tone: ဘယ်သူ့ကို (whom, to whom). Every question with ဘာ or ဘယ်သူ ends with လဲ, or မလဲ for the future.

ဘာ also follows ဒါ to ask about a thing you point at: ဒါ ဘာလဲ။ (What is this?)

ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။
What are you doing?
ဘာ comes before the verb, and လဲ ends the question.
ဒါ ဘယ်သူ့ဖုန်းလဲ။
Whose phone is this?
ဘယ်သူ becomes ဘယ်သူ့ before a noun for "whose".
ဘယ်သူနဲ့ သွားမလဲ။
Who are you going with?
ဘယ်သူ takes နဲ့ (with) like any noun.
ဘာဟင်း ကြိုက်လဲ။
What kind of curry do you like?
ဘာ goes before the noun ဟင်း.
ဘယ်သူ့ကို ပေးမလဲ။
Who will you give it to?
ဘယ်သူ့ကို asks "to whom".

Ending a question-word question with a statement ending.
ဘယ်သူ လာမယ်။
ဘယ်သူ လာမလဲ။
A question with ဘယ်သူ needs မလဲ for the future, or it will not sound like a question.
Leaving out the tone change for "whose".
ဒါ ဘယ်သူဖုန်းလဲ။
ဒါ ဘယ်သူ့ဖုန်းလဲ။
Before a noun, ဘယ်သူ takes ့ to mean "whose".

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

ဘာ / ဘယ်သူLevel 1What and Who

What and who questions end with လဲ, so that ending comes first.

Patterns that build on this one.

ဘာဘယ်သူလဲ

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