Closed Questions in Burmese
For my first post about the Myanmar Language, I will start with interrogations for closed questions.
Closed questions, looking for an answer which is either “yes” or “no” have the လား added at the end of the sentence. For instance:
- “Is it the moon?” becomes လလား။ (literally “moon + question marker”)
- “Is it an umbrella?” becomes ထီးလား။ (literally “umbrella + question marker”)
- “Do you like spicy things?” becomes အစပ်ကြိုက်လား (literally “spicy thing + to like + Question marker”)
Often times, for questions with a verb different from “to be”, the affirmative ending တယ် will be replace with only သ.
- “Can you swim?” becomes ရေကူးတတ်သလား။ (literally “to swim + Capacity marker + သ + question marker”)
- “Can I stay here a bit longer?” becomes ဒီမှာ ခဏ ဆက်နေလို့ ရပါသလား။ (literally “in here + a bit (of time) + continue just like this + to be (in the sense of “be somewhere”) + သ + question marker”)
- “Do you go to Yangon?” becomes “ရန်ကုန် ကို သွား သလား။” (literally “Yangon + to + to go + သ + question marker”)
Careful: Using သလား can mean both the present or past.
If the context, like in the last example above, is not clear, the sentence could be said in the past sense. In the last example, it could also mean “Did you go to Yangon?”.
In such cases, to make sure you mean it in the future even without context, you can change သ for မ.
You can see this မ as a shortened from မယ် which describe the future in general (for example, သွားမယ် means “will go”).
We will see in the next article how to create open questions.
Please let me know if you have any advice or remarks on the article’s construction or the explanation itself of course!
