Mini Burmese Dictionary: Burmese-English / English-Burmese

By Aung Kyaw Phyo

Tuttle Mini Burmese Dictionary is the most up-to-date Burmese dictionary available and is ideal for any application where a handy, portable dictionary is required. This powerful pocket reference contains the following special features:

• Bidirectional Burmese-English and English-Burmese sections.
• 4,000 to 5,000 entries in each direction.
• Headwords printed in color for quick and easy reference.
• Romanized forms and Burmese script for all Burmese words.
• A guide to pronunciation helps the user to pronounce Burmese words correctly.
• Latest computer, Internet, mobile phone and social media terms .
• The ideal dictionary for business, study and travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
• Release date: May 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781462914418

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar, used by the majority Burmese people and as the lingua franca by the other ethnic minority groups in the country. It is officially called Myanmar language for easy reference and political reasons within the country.

Sitting like a bridge between China and India, Myanmar has many sociocultural connections to those two Asian giants and language is an example. The Burmese language is in the Tibeto-Burman family, and is a tonal language like Thai and Chinese. Burmese borrowed and adapted Brahmic alphabets which originated in India. Over time, the letters evolved into the rounded version used today.

The following sections provide some basic information about Burmese grammar, and how to put a sentence together.

Grammar

English is a SVO language (i.e., subjects come before verbs, and verbs come before objects), but Burmese is more of a SOV language. It is also possible to start a sentence with an object but verbs almost always come at the end of the sentences. The subject of a sentence is followed by the particle ka or ga. The object of a sentence is followed by the particle ko or go. The verb, in spoken sentences, is followed by the particle tae or dae (or thi in written sentences). For example:

Kya naw ga ngarr ko kyite dae.

I (kya naw) like (kyite) fish (ngarr).

Pronunciation

Burmese has three major tones: (1) short and creaky, (2) level and long, and (3) high, long and falling tone.

လ လာ လား

la lar larr

The first tone sounds like it or eat in English, with the final t sound swallowed in the back of the throat. The second tone has a rising tone similar to huh? in English. The last tone sounds like long vowels with no stop at the end in English as in the words see, saw, or zoo.

There are two other tones: the shortened tone and the stopped tone. The shortened tone is similar to the sound of a in the English word ago. Stopped tones are also very short. They are similar to English vowels with the stops such as p, t, or k at the end.

In this dictionary, the tone of a word is reflected by its romanized spelling.

Aspiration

Aspiration means adding a breath of air to a sound. For example, the letter p in the words spin and spot is not aspirated, but it is aspirated in the words pin and pot. In this dictionary, the letter ‘h’ is used to mark consonants that are aspirated.

Romanization of the Burmese sounds

Unlike Chinese, Japanese, and some other languages, Burmese does not have a standardized romanized version of its sounds. The romanization format used in this dictionary is mainly based on the model that young people in Myanmar are using on social media and the Internet.

When speaking Burmese, remember not to pronounce the final consonants of words. Final consonants given in the romanized words in this dictionary are a guide to the length, tone and rhythm of a word.

BURMESE–ENGLISH

A

a ADJ အ 1 permanently or temporarily unable to speak 2 stupid; dumb

a-ayy N အေအး 1 cold drink 2 coldness

aba N အဘ 1 old uncle 2 way of addressing someone with high position in the government or military 3 (slang) powerful person, usually who had close connection with the former military government

achaint N အခ်ိဳင့္ dent; dimple; hollow

achann N အျခမ္း side; half

acharr N အျခား other; another; something else

achat N အခ်ပ္ slice; sheet; layer

achaung ADV အေခ်ာင္ without exerting effort

achaungg N အေခ်ာင္း rod; stick; rod-like thing

achaung thamarr N အေခ်ာင္သမား shirker; opportunist

achaww N အေခ်ာ final draft

achaww that V အေခ်ာသပ္ 1 finalize 2 smooth; polish

achay anay N အေျခအေန situation; condition

achay gan ADJ အေျခခံ basic; primary

achay kya V အေျခက် be settled

achay site V အေျခစိုက္ base at a place

acheain N အခ်ိန္ time

acheain akhar N အခ်ိန္အခါ time; occasion

acheain baii N အခ်ိန္ပိုင္း part-time

acheain bo N အခ်ိန္ပို overtime

acheain byayt ADJ အခ်ိန္ျပည့္ full-time

acheain gite V အခ်ိန္ကိုက္ be right on time

acheain hman ADJ အခ်ိန္မွန္ punctual

acheain kown V အခ်ိန္ကုန္ waste time

acheain kya V အခ်ိန္က် be due; arrive

acheain lon V အခ်ိန္လြန္ be past the time limit; be late

acheain mataw N အခ်ိန္မေတာ္ late hours; inopportune time

acheain maywayy ADV အခ်ိန္မေရြး anytime; whenever

acheain mi ADV အခ်ိန္မီ in time

acheain poat V အခ်ိန္ပုပ္ lose time; waste time

acheain sayinn N အခ်ိန္စာရင္း timetable; schedule

acheain ya V အခ်ိန္ရ have time

achet alet N အခ်က္အလက္ fact

achet apyoat N အခ်က္အျပဳတ္ cookery

achet payy V အခ်က္ေပး give a signal

achet pya N အခ်က္ျပ signal

achin N အခ်ဥ္ 1 sourness; sour snacks 2 (slang) a person who is easy to trick

achinn N အခ်င္း 1 diameter 2 song, poem 3 placenta

achinn chinn PREP အခ်င္းခ်င္း among one another; between each other

achinn wet N အခ်င္း၀က္ radius

achin pout V အခ်ဥ္ေပါက္ 1 turn sour (food) 2 become sour (feelings)

achit N အခ်စ္ love

achoat N အခ်ဳပ္ 1 person in charge 2 gist; summary

achoat kya V အခ်ဳပ္က် be imprisoned; be detained

acho bwell N အခ်ိဳပြဲ dessert

achohh N အခ်ိဳး proportion; ratio

achohh gya ADV အခ်ိဳးက် proportionately

acho hmownt N အခ်ိဳမႈန္ ့ MSG, monosodium glutamate

achon N အခြ်န္ point; sharp tip

achout N အေျခာက္ 1 dryness; the dry one 2 (informal) gay

ae di tar N အယ္ဒီတာ editor

aet gyo N ဧည့္ႀကိဳ receptionist

aet khan bwell N ဧည့္ခံပြဲ reception; welcome party

aet thae N ဧည့္သည္ guest; visitor

a gadeet N အဂတိ corruption

ahar ra N အာဟာရ food; nourishment

ahar ra choht daet N အာဟာရခ်ိဳ ႔တဲ့ malnutrition

ahaungg N အေဟာင္း something old; the old one

ahla N အလွ beauty; decoration

ahlu N အလွဴ donation

ahlu shin N အလွဴရွင္ donor

ahlwar N အလႊာ layer; class

ahlyarr N အလ်ား length

ahmaet N အမွည့္ ripeness

ahman N အမွန္ truth

ahmarr N အမွား mistake; error

ahmat N အမွတ္ mark; point

ahmat atharr N အမွတ္အသား mark; sign

ahmat dazate N အမွတ္တံဆိပ္ symbol; trademark; label

ahmaung N အေမွာင္ darkness

ahmayy N အေျမွး membrane; diaphragm

ahmi ADV အမွီ in time

ahmite N အမႈိက္ rubbish; trash

ahmook N အမႈ case; lawsuit

ahmook dann N အမႈထမ္း crewman; government staff

ahmook dwell N အမႈတြဲ case file

ahmook phwint V အမႈဖြင့္ (legal) open a case

ahmook sit V အမႈစစ္ (legal) hear a case

ahmook thae N အမႈသည္ client (of a lawyer)

ahmook zaung N အမႈေဆာင္ executive

ahmown N အမႈန္ dust; particle

ahmownt N အမႈန္ ့ powder

ahmwar N အျမႊာ twin

ahmwayy dai N အေမႊးတိုင္ stick of incense

ahmya N အမွ် 1 equal share; act of sharing equally 2 the act of sharing the benefits of one’s good deeds (Buddhism)

ahmya way V အမွ်ေ၀ express a wish that others may also acquire benefit from one’s meritorious deed (Buddhism)

ahmyin N အမ်ွင္ string; thread; filament

ahmyout N အေျမွာက္ 1 multiplication 2 flattery

ahngarr cha V အငွားခ် lease; hire out (land, property, etc.)

ahnyohh N အၿငိဳး grudge

ahnyonn N အညႊန္း direction for use; prescription

ahtoat pat teet N အတၳဳပတၱိ biography

aka N အက dance

akae ywayt CONJ အကယ္၍ if

akant athat N အကန္ ့အသတ္ limitation; constraint

akar N အကာ cover; shell

akaung N အေကာင္ general term to refer to an animal

akaung ahtae phaw V အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ implement

akell phyat V အကဲျဖတ္ evaluate; judge

akha N အခ fee; charge

akhai amar ADV အခိုင္အမာ firmly; strongly

akha maet ADJ အခမဲ့ free; free of charge

akhan N အခံ base; foundation

akhann N အခန္း room

akhann anarr N အခမ္းအနား event; occasion; ceremony

akhann anarr hmoo N အခမ္းအနားမွဴး master of ceremonies

akhant mathint ADV အခန္ ့မသင့္ accidentally

akharr N အခါး bitterness

akhaungg N အေခါင္း 1 cavity 2 hole 3 coffin

akhaw awaw N အေခၚအေ၀ၚ term; jargon

akhet akhell N အခက္အခဲ difficulty; obstacle

akhinn N အခင္း 1 sheet; cloth 2 occurrence; event; incident; circumstance

akhohh N အခိုး fume; smoke

akhon N အခြန္ tax

akhon N အခြံ outer skin of a fruit; peel; shell

akhon khwar V အခြံခြာ remove the peel or shell

akhon kout V အခြန္ေကာက္ tax; put a tax on sb

akhon saung V အခြန္ေဆာင္ pay tax

akhook ADV အခု now

akhook hteet ADV အခုထိ up to now; till now

akhout N အေခါက္ 1 bark (of tree) 2 rind (of pork) 3 time(s)

akhownn N အခုံး 1 convexity 2 bump; hump 3 dome

akhway N အေခြ 1 coil 2 general term for cassette, CD and DVD 3 music album

akhwet N အခြက္ 1 concavity 2 (slang) one’s face

akhwint N အခြင့္ permission; chance; opportunity

akhwint alann N အခြင့္အလမ္း opportunity; chance

akhwint arnar N အခြင့္အာဏာ authority

akhwint ayayy N အခြင့္အေရး right; opportunity

akhwint ayayy yu V အခြင့္အေရးယူ take advantage; exploit

akhwint doo gan N အခြင့္ထူးခံ privileged person

akin N အကင္ barbecue; grill

akite akhell N အကိုက္အခဲ ache

akite akhell pyout sayy N အကိုက္အခဲေပ်ာက္ေဆး pain killer; analgesic

ako N အကို older brother

akohh akarr N အကိုုးအကား reference; citation

akown N အကုန္ all; everything

akown akya N အကုန္အက် expense

akown khan V အကုန္ခံ bear the expense

aku anyi N အကူအညီ aid; help

akwae N အကြယ္ cover; shelter

akwar awayy N အကြာအေ၀း distance

akwayt N အေကြ႕ turn; bend

akwayy N အေကြး curve

akwinn N အကြင္း circle; ring

akyae N အက်ယ္ breadth; width

akyae gyoat N အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ internment; house arrest

akyae tawint ADV အက်ယ္တ၀င့္ in detail; extensively

akyan N အၾကံ advice

akyan aphan N အၾကံအဖန္ idea; scheme

akyan azi N အၾကံအစည္ idea; advice; intention; design

akyan bayy N အၾကံေပး advisor; consultant

akyan kown V အၾကံကုန္ be lost; run out of ideas

akyan nyan N အၾကံဥာဏ္ idea

akyan payy V အၾကံေပး advise

akyann N အၾကမ္း draft; sketch

akyann khan ADJ အၾကမ္းခံ durable

akyann nee N အၾကမ္းနည္း violent method

akyann phet V အၾကမ္းဖက္ terrorize

akyann phet thamarr N အၾကမ္းဖက္သမား terrorist

akyarr N အၾကား 1 hearing; listening 2 stripe; streak

akyat atell N အက်ပ္အတည္း difficult situation; crisis

akyate N အက်ိတ္ gland; tumor

akyaungg N အေၾကာင္း 1 fact or matter relating to an event 2 reason; purpose; cause

akyaungg ayar N အေၾကာင္းအရာ subject; topic

akyaungg kyarr V အေၾကာင္းၾကား inform; report

akyaungg kyaungg gyaungt N အေၾကာင္းေၾကာင္းေၾကာင့္ for various reasons

akyaungg maet ADV အေၾကာင္းမဲ့ with no reason

akyaungg pya V အေၾကာင္းျပ give reasons; give excuses

akyaungg tayarr N အေၾကာင္းတရား reason; cause

akyaungg yinn N အေၾကာင္းရင္း root cause; main reason

akyaw N အေၾကာ္ 1 snack or dish of sth fried 2 fritter

akyaww N အေၾကာ nerves

akyaww swell V အေၾကာဆြဲ have an uncontrollable muscle contraction; twitch

akyaww tet V အေၾကာတက္ have a stiff back or neck

akyaww zayy N အေၾကာေဆး intravenous injection

akyeain N အႀကိမ္ time(s)

akyee N အႀကီး 1 (age) the older one; (size) the bigger one

akyee akyae ADV အႀကီးအက်ယ္ 1 fiercely (burning / on fire) 2 seriously (ill) 3 drastically (change) 4 violently (fight)

akyinn cha V အက်ဥ္းခ် imprison

akyinn gyoat N အက်ဥ္းခ်ဳပ္ summary

akyinn htaung N အက်ဥ္းေထာင္ prison

akyinn kya V အက်ဥ္းက် be put in prison

akyinn tharr N အက်ဥ္းသား prisoner

akyint N အက်င့္ habit

akyint pyet ADJ အက်င့္ပ်က္ immoral

akyite N အႀကိဳက္ preference

akyo nayt N အႀကိဳေန႔ 1 eve 2 first day of the Thingyan Festival

akyohh N အက်ိဳး benefit

akyohh akyaungg N အက်ိဳးအေၾကာင္း circumstances

akyohh khan zarr gwint N အက်ိဳးခံစားခြင့္ perk; benefit

akyohh zaung N အက်ိဳးေဆာင္ broker; agent

akyout tayarr N အေၾကာက္တရား fear

akyownn win V အက်ဳံး၀င္ be inclusive

akywann tawin ADJ အကြ်မ္းတ၀င္ familiar with; intimate with

akyway N အေၾကြ change; coins

akywayy N အေၾကြး debt

akywayy sat V အေၾကြးဆပ္ pay off a debt

akywayy taungg V အေၾကြးေတာင္း ask someone to give back borrowed money

akywayy tin V အေၾကြးတင္ be in debt; owe

akywinn N အၾကြင္း remainder

akywinn akyan N အၾကြင္းအက်န္ remains; leftovers

akywinn maet ADV အၾကြင္းမဲ့ totally; absolutely

alae N အလယ္ center; middle

alagarr ADV အလကား 1 free of charge; freely 2 without reason

alan N အလံ flag

alat N အလတ္ 1 medium size 2 fair quality 3 middle child

alate N အလိပ္ roll; bale

alaungg N အေလာင္း corpse; body

alaungg asarr N အေလာင္းအစား gambling; betting

alayt akyint N အေလ့အက်င့္ practice; training; habit

alayy N အေလး 1 (piece of metal) weight 2 things that are heavy

alayy gyeain N အေလးခ်ိန္ weight

alayy htarr V အေလးထား respect; give special consideration

alayy pyook V အေလးျပဳ salute; bow

alinn yaung N အလင္းေရာင္ light

alite N အလိုက္ 1 sth thrown in to make up the difference when exchanging goods or properties of unequal values 2 melody of a song

alo N အလို wish; desire; need; want

aloat N အလုပ္ activity; task; business; work; job

aloat htoat V အလုပ္ထုတ္ dismiss from job; fire

aloat khwin N အလုပ္ခြင္ workplace; worksite

aloat kyann N အလုပ္ၾကမ္း manual labor; hard labor

aloat let maet ADJ အလုပ္လက္မဲ့ unemployed

aloat pyoat V အလုပ္ျပဳတ္ get fired; get dismissed

aloat shin N အလုပ္ရွင္ employer

aloat shoat ADJ အလုပ္ရႈပ္္ busy

aloat sinn V အလုပ္ဆင္း 1 go to work 2 leave work

aloat thamarr N အလုပ္သမား employee; worker

aloat thin N အလုပ္သင္ trainee; apprentice; intern

alolo ADV အလိုလို naturally; automatically; spontaneously

alon ADV အလြန္ so; very

alont alon ADV အလြန္ ့အလြန္ 1 excessively; unduly 2 extremely

alo sheet V အလုိရွိ want

alownn N အလုံး ball; globe; sphere

alut ADJ အလြတ္ empty; blank

alwann N အလြမ္း longing; yearning; sorrow

an V အန္ vomit; throw up

an dayae N အႏၱရာယ္ danger

angae N အငယ္ the younger one

angan N အငန္ saltiness; salty food

angat N အငတ္ 1 hunger (for food); thirst (for a drink) 2 starving person

angat bay N အငတ္ေဘး famine; starvation

an gite V အံကိုက္ fit tightly

angite meet V အငိုက္မိ be taken by surprise

angwayt N အေငြ ့ vapor; fumes

angwayt pyan V အေငြ ့ျပန္ evaporate

anook my N အဏုျမဴ atom; nuclear

anook myu bownn N အဏုျမဴဗုံး nuclear bomb

ant arr thint V အံ့အားသင့္ be surprised; be astonished

ant aww V အ့ံၾသ be amazed

an thwarr N အံသြား molar

anyar tharr N အညာသား person from upcountry

anyeainn zarr ADJ အၿငိမ္းစား retired

anyeaint N အၿငိမ့္ traditional performance with singing, dancing and comedy

anyi ADV အညီ equally; in line with; in accordance with

anyinn akhown N အျငင္းအခုန္ argument; dispute

anyinn than ADJ အျငင္းသန္ argumentative

anyo amell N အညိဳအမည္း black and blue bruises

anyont N အညြန္ ့ sprout; tendril

anyont khoo V အညြန္ ့ခူး exploit others

an zwell N အံဆြဲ (furniture) drawer

ar baungg aryinn than V အာေပါင္အာရင္းသန္ speak assertively and stridently

areet yar N အရိယာ (Buddhism) person on the Right Path to Nirvana; saintly person

ar gaung N အာေခါင္ palate

ar kar tha N အာကာသ space

ar kar tha yin N အာကာသယဥ္ space ship

ar loo N အာလူး potato

ar ma gan N အာမခံ insurance

ar nar N အာဏာ power

ar nar bai N အာဏာပိုင္ authority

ar nar par na N အာနာပါန meditation that focuses on breathing in and out

ar nar shin N အာဏာရွင္ dictator

ar nar shin sanit N အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ dictatorship

ar nar theainn V အာဏာသိမ္း seize state power

ar neet thin N အာနိသင္ result; effect

ar pout V အာေပါက္ be tired of saying the same thing again and again

arr N အား strength; force; power

arr gazarr N အားကစား sports

arr kohh V အားကိုး depend on

arr kya V အားက် 1 emulate; envy 2 admire

arr lownn PRON အားလုံး all; everything

arr nar ADJ အားနာ 1 slightly embarrassed for accidentally doing sth that might trouble sb 2 slightly embarrassed for not being able to help sb 3 slightly embarrassed to accept presents or help from sb

arr nell ADJ အားနည္း weak

arr nell gyet N အားနည္းခ်က္ weakness

arr payy V အားေပး encourage; support

arr thon khon site ADV အားသြန္ခြန္စိုက္ with much effort or physical strength

arr thwinn gyohh N အားသြင္းႀကိဳး charger (for phone, computer)

arr ya V အားရ be satisfied

arr ya wann thar ADV အားရ၀မ္းသာ gladly; heartily

ar tate N အာတိတ္ the Arctic

aryown N အာရုံ sense

aryown gyaww N အာရုံေၾကာ nerve

aryown pyook V အာရုံျပဳ concentrate; visualize

aryown site V အာရုံစိုက္ concentrate

arzarni N အာဇာနည္ martyr

asa N အစ 1 bit; fragment; piece; part 2 the beginning

asann N အစမ္း rehearsal

asann khant karla N အစမ္းခန္ ့ကာလ probationary period

asa phaw V အစေဖာ္ give a clue or hint to help remember

asa pyohh V အစပ်ိဳး initiate

asa pyout V အစေပ်ာက္ disappear; banish

asar N အစာ food (especially for animals)

asar kyay V အစာေၾက digest

asar ngat khan V အစာငတ္ခံ starve oneself

asarr N အစား 1 food; eating 2 (math) division

asarr asar N အစားအစာ food

asarr htohh V အစားထိုး replace; substitute

asarr payy V အစားေပး compensate

asasa ayaryar PRON အစစအရာရာ everything

asat N အစပ္ spiciness; hot food

asate N အစိတ္ 1 a quarter; one-fourth; twenty five 2 poison

asate thint V အဆိပ္သင့္ be poisoned

asaung N အေဆာင္ hostel

asaungt N အေစာင့္ 1 security guard 2 guardian spirit

asay gan N အေစခံ slave

asayt N အေစ့ seed

aseainn N အစိမ္း raw meat or vegetables

asee away N အစည္းအေ၀း meeting

asee ayownn N အစည္းအရုံး association; organization

aset N အစက္ 1 spot; dot 2 link; joint

aset asat N အဆက္အစပ္ connection; relevancy; interrelationship

aset athwae N အဆက္အသြယ္ communication; contact

aset mapyat ADV အဆက္မျပတ္ continuously

aset pyat V အဆက္ျပတ္ be disconnected; lose contact

ashawt payy V အေလွ်ာ့ေပး give in; agree to

ashay N အရွည္ length

ashayt N အေရွ ႔ the East; the front

ashayt myout N အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ northeast

ashayt taii ADJ အေရွ႕တိုင္း oriental

ashayt taung N အေရွ႕ေတာင္ southeast

asheain N အရွိန္ speed; force; momentum

asheain lon V အရွိန္လြန္ overshoot; get out of hand

asheain pyet V အရွိန္ပ်က္ lose momentum; get distracted

asheain ya V အရွိန္ရ gain momentum

ashet N အရွက္ shame; shyness

ashet masheet V အရွက္မရွိ be shameless

ashin N အရွင္ master; lord; noble; powerful person

ashoat ahtwayy N အရႈပ္အေထြး confusion; tangle; problem

ashownn N အရွဳံး loss

asi N အဆီ fat

asi azin N အစီအစဥ္ agenda; program

asin N အဆင္ pattern; design

asin alar N အစဥ္အလာ custom; tradition

asinn gyaungg N အစင္းေၾကာင္း scratch

asin pyay V အဆင္ေျပ 1 be convenient 2 get along with sb

asint N အဆင့္ ranking; position;