Language/Burmese/Grammar/Expressing-Manner-and-Frequency
Burmese is a language with a rich and diverse vocabulary. Adjectives and adverbs play a crucial role in making the sentences more descriptive and vivid. Understanding how to use adverbs in Burmese is essential for effectively communicating how something is done and how often it is done. In this lesson, we will explore Burmese grammar related to expressing manner and frequency using adverbs.
Adverbs in Burmese
Adverbs are words that modify or describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. They can be used to provide more information about the action described in the sentence, including how it was done or how often it happened. Adverbs in Burmese are generally placed after the word they modify.
Burmese adverbs typically end in "-mya", "-thar", or "-thway". Some examples of commonly seen adverbs in Burmese are:
- ကြီးတိုင် (-kyi toang) - carefully
- မှန်တခိုး (-hna t'khu) - slowly
- စင်္ကာပူ (-sing-ga-pu) - quickly
- လှုပ်ရှား (-lwhpa-shar) - frequently
- အသီးသီး (-ahti ahti) - beautifully
Expressing Manner and Degree
In Burmese, adverbs are added to verbs to describe the way in which the action is performed. The verb goes first, followed by the adverb. For example:
- ကျွန်တော့်ပြီး ကြီးမှာလား။ (Kywan-daw pi: kyi-mha-lar) - Did you walk carefully?
In this sentence, "Kywan-daw p:" (walk) is the verb and "kyi-mha-lar" (carefully) is the adverb that describes how the action was performed.
When comparing the degree of two actions, Burmese uses the intensifier “နှုတ်တည်း” (nhut tay) which can be translated as "more and more." It is used in the following structure:
[verb] + [နှုတ်တည်း] + [adverb]
For example:
- ချင်းသောလူလိုသည့် အလွန်နှုတ်တည်း ပြုလုပ်ရန် ရှိသည်။ (Chin-thaw-lu-lothane a-law-nhut-tay pyu-lut-lone-shi-than) - He is getting more and more careful when working with good people.
Expressing Frequency
Adverbs are also used to describe the frequency of an action. Burmese adverbs generally go after the verb, but before the object in the sentence. For example:
- ကြီးခဲ့သည်။ (Kyi-gai-than) - I walk frequently.
In this sentence, "kyi-gai" (walk) is the verb and "than" (frequently) is the adverb that describes how often the action is performed.
Here are some commonly used adverbs to describe frequency in Burmese:
- အခန်းတွေ (akh-nhwe-twe) - often
- နံ့နံ့သည် (nam-nam-than) - daily
- နှစ်နှစ်လောက် (nhit-nhit-law-kat) - weekly
- လေးလေးထက် (lei-lei-htok) - monthly
- တစ်ဆင့်တွေ (t'za-sin-twe) - sometimes
It is important to note that in Burmese, the word order is flexible, and the adverb can be placed at the beginning or end of the sentence. When an adverb is placed at the beginning of the sentence, it adds emphasis. For example:
- အခန်းတွေ ကြီးခဲ့ကြသည်။ (Akh-nhwe-twe kyi-gai-kya-than) - I often walk.
In this sentence, the adverb "akh-nhwe-twe" (often) is placed at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis.
Practice
Let's practice using adverbs to describe the manner and frequency of an action in Burmese. Translate the following sentences into Burmese:
1. She is singing beautifully. 2. He is working quickly. 3. They are walking slowly. 4. We go to the beach often. 5. I like to swim daily. 6. He reads books carefully.
Here are the answers:
| Burmese | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| အသက်တာလေးကြီးသို့သာ စိတ်ခဲ့သည်။ | A-tha-ta-lwei kyi-toai-tha siht-gai-than | She sings beautifully. |
| သူကြီးမြင်ရဲ့ အလုပ်ကြီးများ အရာရှိနိုင်ပါသည်။ | Thu kyi-mryin-re a-loak kyi-mhar a-ya-lone-thi-nyo-nhpay-tsa | He is working quickly. |
| သူတို့ရှိတော့ စိတ်ခဲ့ပေနေသည်။ | Thu-toang-sha-toe siht-gai-pa-nay-than | They are walking slowly. |
| ကျောင်းသွားမှာကြီးမော်လိုလား။ | Kyawng-swa-mha kyi-mor-lu-la | We go to the beach often. |
| နှစ်ရစ်မြင်ရမယ့် စက်မှုတစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါသည်။ | Nhit-yit-myin-re sait-mhut-ta-khu pyit-pyet-pay-tsa | I like to swim daily. |
| သူက စာအုပ်များကို ကျွန်သလိုလား။ | Thu kya-thi-lo cha-u-pa-mhar-kya-ko kywan-tha-lo-shi-la | He reads books carefully. |
Conclusion
In this lesson, we learned how to use adverbs in Burmese to describe the manner and frequency of an action. We also practiced using adverbs to make detailed and informative sentences. Adverbs are essential when it comes to making your sentences more descriptive and vivid. Keep practicing and using adverbs in your daily conversations to get a better grip on the language.