Burmese Grammar Guide

Burmese Grammar Guide
A comprehensive review of Burmese Grammar

Table of Contents

Intro

1. SOV
2. comparison with other major languages (English, Chinese/Japanese, SEA languages)
3. importance of particles

verbs

1. tenses
   1. present (-တယ်)
   2. past (-တယ်, -ခဲ့တယ်, -လိုက်, -လာ, -ထား)
   3. general future (-မယ်, -ခဲ့)
   4. intermediate future (-တော့မယ်)
   5. probable future event (-လိမ့်မည်)
2. negative statement (မ-ဘူး)
3. command (-ပါ, မ-နဲ့, -လိုက်, -တော့, -ဦး)
4. progression (-နေ)
5. completion (-ပြီ)
6. pluralisation (-ကြ)
7. change of state (-သွား)
8. expressing modal verbs
   1. can (-ရ, -တတ်, -နိုင်)
   2. may/must (-ရ)

nouns

1. numerical classifiers (such as ခု, ယောက်, ဦး)
2. noun markers (အ-, -မှု, -ချက်, -ရေး, -စရာ, -ခြင်း, -နည်း)
3. အ-[x]-အ-[y] forms
4. understanding nominalisation and how it is used in Burmese
5. plural markers (-များ, -တွေ)

pronouns

1. demonstrative pronouns (ဒီ/ဒါ, ဤ, အဲဒီ/အဲဒါ, ဟို, ထို)
2. personal pronouns
   1. formal
   2. informal
   3. pluralisation (-တို့)
3. interrogatives
   1. what/which (ဘာ, ဘယ်ဟာ)
   2. when (ဘယ်တော့, ဘယ်အချိန်, ဘယ်တုန်းက)
   3. where (ဘယ်မှာ, ဘယ်နေရာ)
   4. why (ဘယ်ဖြစ်လို့, ဘာကြောင့်)
   5. How, Who (ဘယ်လို, ဘယ်သူ)

adjectives

1. adjective markers (-သော, -သည့်, -မည့်, -တဲ့)
2. reduplication
3. adverbs
4. adverb marker (-စွာ)
5. adverbs forming through reduplication

postpositions

1. of location (-မှာ, -ပေါ်, -အောက်, -ထဲ, -ပြင်)
2. how to combine particles such as -မှာ, -ပေါ် and -ထဲ to mean things like 'about/on [this topic]'
3. others (-ကို, -နဲ့, မ-ဘဲ[နဲ့], -အတွက်, -ပေမဲ့/-ပေမယ်)

conjunctions

1. -ပြီး and all its variations
2. -နှင့်, -လို့, -ဖို့, -အောင်

sentence-level syntax

1. subject, object marker
2. reported speech
3. Emphasis Particles (-ပဲ, -လေ, -လေး, -တော့, ပေါ့)
4. order of particles
5. other final particles (such as -စေ, -မိ, -စို့)
   1. analysis of some complex sentences

Comparison Of Formal And Colloquial Speech

1. Mapping Of Particles From Formal To Colloquial

Vocabulary

• Numbers