Ka Bé Lau Lay also works for ticket prices. Though if the context is not quite right someone might think you are asking how many rooms they have so be more specific. So Acan Bé Lauq Lay means how much is the room. (To get the table cleared of dirty plates and glasses without paying try Sa Bwe Shin Meh.) Say Shi Mé, Bé Lau Lay or Bé Lau Cha Lay in a tea shop and you are asking for the bill. Bé Lau Lay means ‘how much?’ Literally it’s How much. Whereas Information questions you can recognise because they end in Lay. Yes or No? Similarly Ein Dah Shi La means do you have a toilet. There are a few questions all visitors need to ask often. You don’t need to know how to ask all the what, where, who, how, which and when questions from the off – that can come later – but you can’t go far without asking these few questions. Asking – and recognising – questions is a useful skill. Certainly you will hear them a lot.Ĭhé Zu Tin Par Day means ‘thank you very much’ and is more polite than the more simple Ché Zu Bé or Ché Zu Ba. Here are those couple of things everyone needs all the time. What worked for you in Mandalay may not work in Yangon. Most guesthouse reception staff will be happy to run through this lesson with you. Listen out for locals saying these things. If you say things exactly as written here in my made up phonetics you won’t sound quite correct but you will be in the ballpark. It’s tonal most simply in that the emphasis needs to be on the right part of a word. I use accents as in French, put in brackets to show swallowed sounds and overline ‘flat’ sounds if I need to avoid confusion. You need to sort of slightly sing rather than flatly speak Burmese. Burmese words are made up of lots of short syllables. You need to work out how you think words sound and how you want to write them down. Get one of them to show you the alphabet. You’re not on your own … 50 million willing locals will help you to improve. From there you can add basic vocabulary – nouns, verbs and adjectives – and before you know it there’s a lot you can say and a few things you start to recognise when you hear them. These ten lessons can be covered in ten minutes and can be all it takes to get started with a bunch of basic words and phrases and a little bit of structural understanding. That’s a challenge – to begin with and for a while – but great fun.Įven if you are just here on holiday you can easily learn to write the numbers and recognise some place names. If you’re coming to Myanmar for longer than a holiday, if you want to learn the language properly then you will need better resources than this (there’s a link at the bottom of this page) and to learn to read and write. A way that I know has worked for people I’ve shared it with. It’s a good place to start but it’s not very hard to go a bit further, to put the basic building blocks in place and before you know where you are you’re getting the hang of it and getting a great reaction from the people you meet. Most tourists in Myanmar get as far as hello and thankyou. Speak Burmese in ten lessons, in ten minutes.
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