လား…လား

Which of Two?

Level 2

The choices can be whole actions too: မနက်ဖြန် လာမှာလား မလာဘူးလား။ (Are you coming tomorrow or not?)

How It Works

To ask "this or that?", put လား after each choice. Every choice gets its own လား.

QuestionMeaning
လက်ဖက်ရည်လား ကော်ဖီလား။Tea or coffee?
အပူလား အအေးလား။Hot or iced?
ဒီမှာ စားမလား ပါဆယ်လား။For here or to go?
လာမှာလား မလာဘူးလား။Are you coming or not?

A waiter at a teashop asks these all day. Reply with your choice, and add ပါ to be polite: ကော်ဖီပါ။ (Coffee, please.)

The choices can be full actions, each with its own ending before လား: ရထားနဲ့ သွားမလား ဘတ်စ်ကားနဲ့ သွားမလား။ (Are you going by train or by bus?)

For "or not?", put the positive form first and the negative second: လာမှာလား မလာဘူးလား။

For "or" in a statement or plan, use ဒါမှမဟုတ်.

Three choices work the same way: each one takes its own လား.

Examples (5)

  1. လက်ဖက်ရည်လား ကော်ဖီလား။

    Tea or coffee?

    Each choice takes its own လား.

  2. အပူလား အအေးလား။

    Hot or iced?

    A teashop waiter asks which one you want.

  3. ဒီမှာ စားမလား ပါဆယ်လား။

    For here or to go?

    Both choices end in လား.

  4. ရထားနဲ့ သွားမလား ဘတ်စ်ကားနဲ့ သွားမလား။

    Are you going by train or by bus?

    Each full action has its own ending and လား.

  5. မနက်ဖြန် လာမှာလား မလာဘူးလား။

    Are you coming tomorrow or not?

    The positive comes first, then the negative.

Common Mistakes

  • Putting လား only after the second choice.

    လက်ဖက်ရည် ကော်ဖီလား။
    လက်ဖက်ရည်လား ကော်ဖီလား။

    Each choice needs its own လား.

How It Connects

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

လား…လားLevel 2Which of Two?

Learn This First

A which-of-two question adds လား to each choice, so လား comes first.

Words in This Pattern

လား