Grammar of the Burmese Language

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Grammar of the Burmese Language (1883)
by Adoniram Judson

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281026Grammar of the Burmese Language1883Adoniram Judson

GRAMMAR

OF THE

BURMESE LANGUAGE,

BY A. JUDSON.

RANGOON;

AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION PRESS,

F. D. Phinney, Supt.

1883.

PREFATORY NOTE.

This is the same as Appendix B in the new edition of Dr. Judson's Burmese and English Dictionary. It consists of that Grammar of the Burmese language, which was published in the quarto edition, with the addition of critical notes. Everything added in this way is carefully indicated by the letters st., which form an abbreviation for the name of the present editor,

E. O. STEVENS.

Prome, June 5th, 1883.

A GRAMMAR
OF THE
BURMESE LANGUAGE.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

§1. The Burmese language is written from left to right, and without any division of words.

§2. The pure Burmese is monosyllabic, every word consisting of one syllable only; but the introduction of the Pali language, with the Boodhistic religion, has occasioned the incorporation of many polysyllabic words of Pali origin into the pure Burmese.

§3. The form of the letters, the order of the vowels and consonants and the classification of the latter, prove that the Burmese alphabet is but one modification of the ancient Nagari; as the Pali language itself as used by the Burmese, is but a modification of the Sanscrit.

THE ALPHABET.

§4. The Burmese alphabet consists of ten vowels (သရ), and thirty-two consonants (ဗျည်း).

§5. The ten vowels are:—အ, a, အာ, a, ဣ, ee, ဤ, ee, ဥ, ဥိ, oo, ဦ, oo, ဧ, aa, [or ey in they, St.] အဲ, ai, ဩ, ဩော, au, ဪ, au,—to which may be added the diphthong, အို, o.

§6. The thirty-two consonants are:—

က, ka,	ခ, ʻka,	ဂ, ga,	ဃ, ga,	င, nga,
စ, tsa,	ဆ, ʻtsa,	ဇ, dza,	ဈ, dza,	ည, nya,
ဋ, ta,	ဌ, ʻta,	ဍ, da,	ဎ, da,	ဏ, na,
တ, ta,	ထ, ʻta,	ဒ, da,	ဓ, da,	န, na,
ပ, pa,	ဖ, ʻpa,	ဗ, ba,	ဘ, ba,	မ, ma,
ယ, ya,	ရ, ra,	လ, la,	ဝ, wa,	သ, tha,
ဟ, ha,	ဠ, la;–	to which may be added the character
(◌ံ) an.

§7. According to the foregoing arrangement, the first twenty-five consonants are distributed into five classes. The letters of the first or က class are gutturals (ကဏ္ဍဇာ^[1]); those of the second or စ class are palatals (‌တာလုဇာ); those of the third or ဋ class are cerebrals (မုဒ္ဓဇာ); those of the fourth or တ class are dentals (ဒန္တ‌ဇာ); and those of the fifth or ပ class are labials (ဩဋ္ဌဇာ).

§8. The first letter of each class is a simple articulation, smooth and soft; the third is the same, rough and hard; the second is the aspirate of the first; the fourth, according to the Nagari system, is the aspirate of the third, but according to the Burmese pronunciation, is the same; and the fifth is the corresponding nasal.

§9. The pronunciation of the cerebrals and the dentals, though different in the Nagari, is the same in the Burmese.

§10. Of the seven remaining consonants, five, viz; ယ, ရ, လ, ဝ, and ဠ are liquids; သ is properly a sibilant, but pronounced th, and ဟ is an aspirate.

§11. The cerebrals and the letter ဠ are found in words only of Pali origin.

vowels.

§12. The names and powers of the vowels are as follows:—

အ,	a or ah		as a in America.
အာ,	a or ah		as a in father.
ဣ,	ee		as i in pin, [or ee in been. St.]
ဤ,	ee		as ee in feet.
ဥ, ဥိ,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	oo	as oo in good, or u in full.
ဦ,	oo		as oo in food, or u in rule.
ဧ,	aa or ay		as a in fate.
အဲ	ai		as ai in hair.
ဩ ဩော	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	au	as o in on.
ဪ	au^[2]		as au in audience.
အို	o		as o in note.

consonants.

§13. The names and powers of the consonants are as follows:—

ကကြီး,	great ka,	k, as in king.
ခခွေ,	curved ʻka,	ʻk, k aspirated, [pron. as if written ခခွေး. St.]
ဂငယ်	small ga,	g, as in good.
ဃကြီး,	great ga,	the same.
င,	nga,	ng, as in rang, when final; when initial, not to be exemplified in English.
စလုံး,	round tsa,	ts.
ဆလိမ်,	twisted ʻtsa,	ʻts, ts aspirated.
ဇခွဲ,	divided dza,	dz.
ဈ or , ဈမြင်းဆွဲ,	bridle dza,	the same, [pron. as if written ဈမြင်ဆွဲ. St.]
ဉ or ည,	nya, [ngya, St.]	ny, [ngy, St.]
ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်,	bier-hook ta,	t, as in time.
ဌဝမ်းဘဲ,	duck ʻta,	ʻt, t aspirated.
ဍရင်ကောက်,	crooked-breast da,	d, as in done.
ဎရေမှုတ်,	water-dipper da,	the same.
ဏကြီး,	great na,	n, as in not.
တဝမ်းပူ,	abdominous ta,	t, as in time.
ထဆင်ထူး,	elephant-fetter ʻta,	ʻt, t aspirated
ဒထွေး,	confused da,	d, as in done.
ဓအောက်ချိုက်,	bottom-indented da,
(formerly written ,)		the same.
နငယ်,	small na,	n, as in not.
ပစောက်,	steep or deep pa,	p, as in part.
ဖဦးထုပ်,	capped ʻpa,	ʻp, p aspirated.
ဗထက်ချိုက်‌,	top-indented ba,	b, as in book.
ဘကုန်း,	hump-backed ba,	the same.
မ,	ma,	m, as in make.
ယပက်လက်	supine ya,	y, as in young.
ရကောက်‌,	crooked ra,	r, as in run, or y, as above.
လ,	la,	l, as in love.
ဝ,	wa,	w, as in word.
သ,	tha,	th, soft, as in thin, or th, hard, as in this.
ဟ	ha,	h, as in home.
ဠကြီး,	great la,	l, as in love.

§14. The character (ံ) called သေးသေးတင်, small thing placed above, is placed over the letter with which it is combined, and has the power of a final န, or a final မ, divested of its inherent heavy accent (see Accents); thus အံ, an, သံ, than.

compound consonants.

§15. Compound Consonants are formed by combining one or more of the letters ယ, ရ, ဝ, and ဟ, under symbolic forms with simple consonants, according to the following table, in which မ is selected as the principal, because that is the only letter which admits all the adjuncts:—

§16.

Letter.	Symbol.	Name of Symbol.	Junction with မ.	Power.
ယ	ျ	ယပင်း, ya combined,	မျ	mya.
ရ	ြ	ရရစ်, ra curved round,	မြ	mra or mya.
ဝ	ွ	ဝဆွဲ, wa suspended,	မွ	mwa.
ယ and ဝ	ျွ	ယပင်း, and ဝဆွဲ,	မျွ	mywa.
ရ and ဝ	ြွ	ရရစ် and ဝဆွဲ,	မြွ	mrwa.
ဟ	ှ	ဟထိုး, ha thrust out,	မှ	ʻma.
ယ and ဟ	ျှ	ယပင်း and ဟထိုး,	မျှ	ʻmya.
ရ and ဟ	ြှ	ရရစ် and ဟထိုး,	မြှ	ʻmra or ʻmya.
ဝ and ဟ	ွှ	ဝဆွဲ and ဟထိုး,	မွှ	ʻmwa.
ရ, ဝ and ဟ	ြွှ	ရရစ်, ဝဆွဲ and ဟထိုး,	မြွှ	ʻmrwa or ʻmywa.

§17. The letter ဟ, in the capacity of an aspirate, may be combined with the nasals, as ငှ, ညှ, ဏှ, နှ, မှ, and with the liquids လ and ဝ, as လှ, ဝှ. But when combined with ယ or ရ, the compound has the power of sh, as ရှန်, shan. လျှ, ʻlya also is frequently pronounced sha, and သျှ has the same power. ငြ is equivalent to ည, nya, and ယျ to ယ, ya.

combinations of vowels with consonants.

§18. The vowel အ is supposed to be inherent in every consonant that is not furnished with the symbol of another vowel, or marked as final.

§19. The other vowels are combined with consonants, simple or compound, under symbolic forms, according to the following table:—

§20.

Letter.	Symbol.	Name of Symbol.	Junction with က.	Power.
အာ	ာ or ါ	ချ, placed down,	ကာ	ka.
ဣ	ိ	လုံးကြီးတင်, large round placed on,	ကိ	kee.
ဤ	ီ	လုံးကြီးတင်ဆန်ခတ်, large round placed on and kernel inserted,	ကီ	kee.
ဥ	ု	တချောင်းငင်, one line drawn,	ကု	koo.
ဦ	ူ	နှစ်ချောင်းငင်, two lines drawn,	ကူ	koo.
ဧ	ေ	သဝေထိုး, tha-waa thrust out,	ကေ	kaa.
အဲ	ဲ	နောက်သို့ပြစ်, thrown back,	ကဲ	kai.
ဩော	ော	သဝေထိုးချ, as above,	ကော	kau.
ဪ	ော်	သဝေထိုးချရှေ့ထိုး, as above and thrust forward,	ကော်	kau.
အို	ို	လုံးကြီးတင်တချောင်းငင်, as above,	ကို	ko.

§21. The second symbol of the vowel အာ (ါ) is used whenever the use of the first would convert the consonant into another letter,—also with ခ and င, as ခါ, not ခာ. The latter part of the symbols of ဩော and ဪ, is similarly modified in the same circumstances, as ခေါ်, not ခော်.

§22. The symbol of any vowel may be combined with the vowel အ, in which case the compound has the power of the vowel which the symbol represents; thus အိ is equivalent to ဣ, အု to ဥ, &c.

final consonants.

§23. When a consonant is deprived of its inherent vowel အ, and not furnished with the symbol of another, it becomes final in the syllable. The absence of the inherent vowel အ, is denoted by the mark (်) called that, [th as in thin, St.] signifying killed, placed above the consonant thus, က်, or by another consonant subjoined, thus က္ခ; in which case the subjoined consonant becomes the initial of the next syllable, thus ကတ္တ, kat-ta.

§24. One consonant however is sometimes placed under another as a mere abbreviation, and does not therefore deprive the preceding consonant of its inherent vowel; thus သ္မား is equivalent to သမား, and is to be read, not thma, but tha-ma.

§25. ည has two forms, ဉ (single), and ည (double). In elementary works, therefore, the double form may be well distinguished by subjoining a double tail, thus .

§26. ဋ with ဌ subjoined is sometimes written ဌ, but frequently and more properly ဋ္ဌ. A double သ is written ဿ.

§27. Final consonants generally assume a new and peculiar power, and also modify the preceding vowel. These permutations, as they occur in words of pure Burmese origin, are exhibited in the following table:—

§28. အ	ဣ	ဥ	ဩော	အို
အက်, et.			ဩောက်, ouk.	အိုက်, aik.^[3]
အင်, en, een,^[4]			ဩောင်, oung.	အိုင်, aing.^[3]
အစ်, eet,^[5]
အည်, een, ee.
အတ်, at.	အိမ်, eing.^[6]	အုတ်, ōk.
အန်, an.	အိတ်, eik.	အုန်, ōng.
အပ်, at.	အိန်, eing.	အုပ်, ōk.
အမ်, an.	အိပ်, eik.	အုမ်, ōng.
အယ်, ai.^[7]
အံ, an.		အုံ, ōng.

§29. The final syllables, as here exhibited, are combined with any consonant simple or compound, as ကက် ket, ကျင် kyeen, &c. without any change in their pronunciation, except in two cases, viz: ဝ before တ် or ပ်, is commonly pronounce wŏt^[8] not wat, and before န်, မ်, or (ံ), wŏn or woon not wan; and consonants compounded with ဝ, as ကွ, စွ, &c. before တ် or ပ်, are commonly pronounced kooat,^[9] tsooat; and before န်, မ်, or (ံ), kooan,^[9] tsooan^[9], &c. [These final consonants are not pronounced as distinctly as in English. St.]

§30. There are also many words of Pali origin, in which consonants, final in a syllable, are subject to permutations somewhat similar to the above, and others of a peculiar character. A key to the whole is furnished in the following table:—

§31. အ			ဣ		ဥ		ဧ		ဩော
အက်	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	as above.	ဣက်,	eik.^[10]	ဥက်,	ōk.	ဧက်,	eet, [or it. St.]	ဩောက်,	ouk.
အင်			ဣင်,	eing.	ဥင်,	ōng.			ဩောင်,	oung.
အစ်			ဣစ်,	eik.	ဥစ်,	ōk.	ဧစ်,	eet.	ဩောစ်,	oot.
အည်			ဣည်,	eing.	ဥည်,	ōng.	ဧည်,	een, ee.	ဩောည်	oon.
အတ်			ဣတ်,	eik.	ဥတ်,	ōk.	ဧတ်,	eet.	ဩောတ်,	oot.
အန်			ဣန်,	eing.	ဥန်,	ōng.	ဧန်,	een.	ဩောန်,	oon.
အပ်			ဣပ်,	eik.	ဥပ်,	ōk.	ဧပ်,	eet.	ဩောပ်,	oot.
အမ်			ဣမ်,	eing.	ဥမ်,	ōng.	ဧမ်,	een. ee as in been. St.	ဩောမ်,	oon.
အယ်
အရ်,	an.						ဧရ်,	ee.
အလ်,	an.		ဣလ်,	eing.	ဥလ်,	ōng.	ဧလ်,	een.	ဩောလ်,	oon.
အသ်,	at.		ဣသ်,	eik.	ဥသ်,	ōk.	ဧသ်,	eet.	ဩောသ်,	oot.
အံ,	an.		အိံ,	eing.	အုံ,	ōng.

§32. In the preceding table, final consonants are marked (်), for the sake of simplifying the tabular view; but though there are some instances of that kind, as ဥပုသ်, oo-pōk, မထေရ်, ma-ʻtee, in almost all cases derived from the Pali, final consonants are made so by having other consonants subjoined, as ဣန္ဒြေ eing-dray, or by modification (see §23), ein-dray, ဥစ္စာ, ōk-tsa, or by modification ōt-tsa, မေတ္တာ, meet-ta,^[11] ဩောတ္တပ္ပ, oot-tap-pa.

§33. As an appendix to both the preceding tables, note:—

1st. Cerebrals, when final, are the same as dentals; thus အဋ္ဌမ is pronounced at-ta-ma, as if written အတ္ထမ.

2d. The third letter of each class is the same as the first; thus ပြဿဒ်, pronounced pyat-that, as if written ပြဿတ်.

3d. The second and fourth letters of each class never occur as finals, except in some words derived from the Pali,—when they are mute; as မိုဃ်း, from မေဃ, the sky, pronounced mo.

4th. ယ်, ရ်, ဝ်, ဟ်, and ဠ်, after အို, are mute, e.g. ကိုယ်, ko, မြင်းမိုရ်, Myeen-mo, ဗိုလ်, bo, ထိုဝ်, ʻto, ဂြိုဟ်, gyo, သီဟိုဠ်, Thee-ho.

5th. အာ before a final gives the syllable the same power as အ, thus အာရ် is pronounced, an, as if written အရ်, e.g. မာရ်နတ် man-nat.

§34. The sound of a final consonant is frequently modified by the initial consonant of the following syllable or word, as အက္ခရာ, ek-ka-ra, [ek-kha-ra, St.] not et-ka-ra, သင်္ဘော, them-bau, not then-bau. But these permutations, being dictates of nature, will be naturally acquired without rule.

§35. There is another permutation of perpetual occurrence, which may be thus stated:—when two syllables are in juxtaposition, so as to form one word, the first syllable ending in a vowel (except အ), [expressed, St.] or a nasal, and the initial letter of the second syllable being the first or second letter of either of the five classes of consonants, it frequently takes the sound of the third letter of the same class; that is, က and ခ are pronounced as ဂ; စ and ဆ, as ဇ; ဋ and ဌ, as ဎ; တ and ထ, as ဒ; ပ and ဖ, as ဗ; thus စကား, a word, is pronounced, not tsa-kah, but tsa-gah, as if written စဂါး, and အင်တန်, considerably, is pronounced, not en-tan, but en-dan, as if written အင်ဒန်.

§36. But there are so many exceptions to this general rule, that regard to the coalescence of sounds as exhibited in common practice is recommended as the only true guide.

accents.

§37. There are two accents, the short, light accent (့), and the short, heavy accent (း).

§38. The short, light accent (့), called အမြစ်, the အ stop, (formerly a small subscriptive အ,) or အောက်မြစ်, the under stop, is placed under the letter, thus ကန့်. It is used with the vowels ဧ, အဲ, ဩော, အို, and the nasal consonants.

§39. The short heavy accent (း), called ဝတ်စနှစ်လုံး, the two round woot-tsahs, or ရှေ့ပေါက်, the dots before (after), is placed after the latter, thus ကန်း. It is used with the vowels အာ, ဤ, ဦ, ဧ, အို, and the nasal consonants. This accent is considered as inherent in the vowel အဲ (unless superseded by the light accent), and in the final consonant မ်, when combined with the vowel အ. In the latter case it is frequently omitted as superfluous; and in the former case, almost uniformly, in modern usage.

abbreviations.

§40. ၏ for	. . . .	ဧည့်	မှ် for	. . . .	မည်^[12]
(ံ) "	. . . .	က်	၍ "	. . . .	ရွေ့
(when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.)			လှ် "	. . . .	လည်
(when placed over ာ, in the symbol of ဩော.)			၎င် or ၎င်္ for	. . . .	လည်းကောင်း
ငေ်း for	. . . .	ကောင်း	လုင် for	. . . .	လုလင်
ငေ့် "	. . . .	ကြောင့်	သှ် "	. . . .	သည်
ကျွန်ုပ် "	. . . .	ကျွန်နုပ်	၆ or ၆ေ for	. . . .	သော
၌ "	. . . .	နှိုက်	သွောံ "	. . . .	သွေးသောက်

§41. ယ is sometimes represented by its symbol, after က်, as ယောက်ျား for ယောက်ယား, လက်ျာ for လက်ယာ, &c.

§42. င် or င်း is frequently removed from its natural situation in the line, and placed over the following letter, as သင်္ကန်း for သင်ကန်း. [In this position it is called ကင်းစီး. St.] In the case of င်း, the accent is omitted, without affecting the pronunciation; as သင်္ဘော for သင်းဘော.

NUMERICAL FIGURES.

§43.

၁,	၂,	၃,	၄,	၅,	၆,	၇,	၈,	၉,	၁၀.
1,	2,	3,	4,	5,	6,	7,	8,	9,	10.

PUNCTUATION.

§44. The mark ။ called ပိုက် or အပုဒ်, a stop, is used to separate sentences, and the clauses of a sentence. The double mark ။ ။, ပုဒ်ကြီး, a great stop, is used to divide paragraphs.

§45. The mark ပုဒ်ကလေး, a little stop, begins to be used in printed books, as an equivalent to the English comma, (a great desideratum in Burmese writing) leaving the ။ to supply the place of the semicolon and period.

PARTS OF SPEECH.

§46. The Etymology of Burmese Grammar may be exhibited under the six classes of Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Adverbs, and Interjections.

nouns.

§47. The usual division of nouns into common and proper obtains in the Burmese, as in all other languages.

§48. Under common nouns are included three kinds of derivatives; the simple, the reduplicative, and the compound.

§49. Simple derivatives are mostly formed from verbal roots, by prefixing အ, as အလင်း, light, from လင်း to be light; but in composition the အ, is commonly dropped; thus အစာ, food, from စား, to eat, when combined with ည, evening, becomes ညစာ evening food, or supper.

§50. The same is true of all nouns, whose initial is a syllable အ; thus အရည်, liquor, when combined with ပျား, a bee, becomes ပျားရည်, honey; and sometimes even when a syllable or word is added; thus အရောင်, brightness, when followed by ခြည်, a ray, becomes ရောင်ခြည်, a ray of brightness.

§51. Reduplicative derivatives are formed from nouns of one syllable, by prefixing အ to the noun reduplicated, or from nouns of two syllables, the first being a syllabic အ, by dropping the အ in the second number of the reduplication; and such derivations imply generality or universality; thus from ပြည် a country, is formed အပြည်ပြည်တို့ (with the plural affix), many or all countries; and for အမျိုး, a race, အမျိုးမျိုးတို့ many or all races.

§52. Compound derivatives will be considered under the head of verbal nouns.

number.

§53. Nouns have two numbers, the singular and plural. The simple noun may be regarded as being in the singular number, as လူ, a man; though the noun in its simple state, without any definite adjunct, has frequently a generic meaning, as လူသေတတ်သည်, man is mortal.

§54. The plural is formed by affixing တို့ (pronounced ဒို့), do, to the singular, as လူ, a man, လူတို့ men. The adjective များ is sometimes used instead of တို့, and sometimes both are combined, as လူများ, or လူများတို့, men.

gender.

§55. The Burmese language recognizes no grammatical or artificial gender, but that only which consists in the distinction of the sexes, viz, the masculine and the feminine.

§56. The two genders are distinguished, sometimes by different words, as ယောက်ျား, a man, မိမ္မ, a woman; sometimes by regarding the simple noun as masculine, and affixing မ for feminine, as ရဟန်း, a priest (of Boodh), ရဟန်းမ, a priestess; and sometimes by affixing ထီး, or ဖ, or ဖို, for the masculine, and မ for the feminine; as ခွေးထီး, a dog, ခွေးမ, a bitch; ကြက်ဖ, a cock, ကြက်မ, a hen; ငန်းဖို, a gander, ငန်းမ, a goose.

case.

§57. The relations of nouns expressed in most languages by prepositions or inflections, are in the Burmese language expressed by particles affixed to the noun, without any inflection of the noun itself.

§58. The noun affixes may be distributed into nine classes, viz, the Nominative, the Objective, the Possessive, the Dative, the Causative, the Instrumentive, the Connective, the Locative, and the Ablative.

nominative.

§59. သည် is the most common nominative affix, denoting the agent or subject of the verb; as ထိုလူသည်ကောင်း၏, that man is good; but in simple sentences, it is most commonly omitted; as သူကောင်းသည်, he is good; also in participial clauses, ဆရာပြောသောစကား the words which the teacher speaks.

§60. ကား, သည်ကား, and မူကား (by abbreviation မူ), are also nominative affixes, denoting the agent or subject, but rather more definitive or distinctive than သည်, and from the latter quality, are much used in adversative clauses, as ငအကျင့်ကားကောင်း၏၊ သုအကျင့်ကားမကောင်း, my conduct is good; his conduct is not good. These affixes are frequently equivalent to as to, concerning, in regard to, a substantive verb being understood, as အကြောင်းမူကား, as to the reason, (it is as follows).

§61. ကား is sometimes used emphatically after another noun affix, as အရိုက်ကားခံနှိုင်ပါသလော, can you indeed bear the beating? Also repeated after successive clauses intended to be set adversatively, as မြေအပြင်၌ကားမြင်သာသည်၊ ရေထဲ၌ကားမမြင်နှိုင်, on the land it is easy to see; in the water (we) cannot see. In such cases ကား is used adverbially.

objective.

§62. ကို is the true objective affix, denoting the object on which an action terminates; as ရေကိုသောက်သည်, to drink water; sometimes, with some latitude of application, it denotes the object to which a thing is given; as ငကိုပေးပါ, give to me; or the object to which motion is directed; as အိမ်ကိုသွားတော့ go to the house! or the material out of which a thing is made; as ရွှေကိုလုပ်သောတန်ဆာ, an implement made of gold. In the first and most proper application, it is frequently understood; as ရေပေးပါ for ရေကိုပေးပါ, give water.

§63. သို့ is an objective affix, denoting the object towards which or unto which motion is directed, as အိမ်သို့သွားတော့, go to the house! though frequently, in colloquial style, it is superceded by ကို, as above. Various applications may seem to require the aid of various prepositions in English, as လက်သို့အပ်သည် to deliver into (his) hand, အလိုသို့လိုက်သည်, to follow (his) will, or according to (his) will, မြို့သို့ရောက်သည်, to arrive at the town; but in all such cases, it will be evident, on a little reflection, that the legitimate import of the affix is preserved.

POSSESSIVE.

§64. ၏ is the possessive affix denoting possession, as သူ၏အသက်, the life of man. This affix is very frequently understood; in which case the preceding syllable, if capable of taking the short, light accent, is pronounced accordingly; thus အဖေ၏အဖေ, a father's father, if written အဖေအဖေ, is pronounced as if written, အဖေ့အဖေ.

DATIVE.

§65. အား is the proper dative affix, equivalent in various applications to to or per in English, as ငအားပေးပါ, give to me. It is sometimes used for the objective affix ကို.

ငှါ, for, in order to, is used only with အလို, desire, as အစာအလိုငှါ, for food, or for the sake of food; or with verbals in ခြင်း, as စားခြင်းငှါ, or စားခြင်းအလိုငှါ, in order to eating; or with verbs used substantively, as စားအံ့သောငှါ, or စားလိုသောငှါ, in order to eat. (See under verbal nouns, §124, and verbs used substantively, §122.)

causative.

§66. ကြောင့်, because, on account of, from အကြောင်း a cause or reason, is used with simple nouns, as အပြစ်ကြောင့်, because of the fault; but its great use is in connection with verbs used substantively, as အပြစ်ရှိသော့ကြောင့်, because of the fault. (See verbs used substantively, §122.) မို့ is equivalent to ကြောင့် but seldom used in writing.

instrumentive.

§67. ဖြင့်, by, with, by means of, as လက်ဖြင့်ကိုင်သည်, to hold with the hand, is the proper instrumentive affix; but it is more frequently superceded by the connective affix နှင့်, as လက်နှင့်ကိုင်သည်, of the same import; or used in connection with the secondary noun အား, in the sense of means, literally strength. (See secondary nouns, §74.)

connective.

§68, The connective affix နှင့် signifies 1st, with, together with, as လူနှင့်လိုက်သည်, to follow with the man. In this sense it is much used with the secondary nouns အတူ, အညီ, &c. (See secondary nouns, §74.)

2d. It supplies the place of the copulative conjunction and between nouns, as ရွှေနှင့်ငွေကိုရှာသည် to seek gold and silver.

3d. It is frequently used for the instrumentive affix ဖြင့်, as stated above.

locative.

§69. တွင်, ၌, and မှာ, are locative affixes, signifying in, at, among, as အိမ်တွင်, အိမ်၌, အိမ်မှာ, in the house. They sometimes have a possessive import, as ငါ၌ဥစ္စာများသည်, the goods with me (or my goods) are many.

မှာ, like the nominative affixes ကား, မူကား, &c., frequently signifies as to, concerning, in regard to.

ဝယ် signifies in, but is commonly restricted to nouns of place and time.

ablative.

§70. The ablative affix မှ signifies from, out of, separate from, besides, as တောမှလာသည်, to come from the wood; ထိုမှတပါး, besides that, one thing more); ထိုနေ့မှစ၍, beginning from that day, that is, from that day forth, ငအိမ်မှစ၍ငဥစ္စာရှိသမျှ, all my property, beginning with my house.

§71. က is an ablative affix of the same import with မှ, but has frequently the additional power of a nominative affix, particularly to verbs of speaking or communicating in any way, when the speech or matter communicated comes between the nominative and the verb; as ဘုရားသခင်ကအလင်းဖြစ်စေဟုမိန့်တော်မူ၏။ God said, let there be light.

§72. Certain verbal affixes, as တုံ, လေ, ပေ, ပါ, and ပေါ့, when affixed to nouns, are merely expletive.

§73. The vocative is expressed by the noun in a simple state divested of all affixes. Sometimes in grave discourse, it is indicated by အို prefixed, as အိုဆရာ, O teacher.

SECONDARY NOUNS.

§74. Some relations of nouns are expressed by means of secondary nouns which take some of the preceding affixes, and are connected with the principal nouns by ၏ (dropping the formative အ) the sign of the possessive, expressed or understood, as in the following examples:—

အပေါ်,
အထက်,

\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}

an upper part;

\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}

အိမ်၏အပေါ်မှာ, or အိမ်ပေါ်မှာ,
အိမ်ထက်မှာ, above, over, or
upon the house.

အောက်, an under part; အိမ်အောက်မှာ, under the house.

ရှေ့, a fore part; အိမ်ရှေ့မှာ, before the house.

နောက်, a hind part; အိမ်နောက်မှာ, behind the house.

အပ, အပြင်,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	an outside; အိမ်ပမှါ, အိမ်ပြင်မှာ, without the house.
အထဲ, အတွင်း,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	an inside; အိမ်ထဲမှာ, အိမ်တွင်းမှာ, within the house.

အနား, a side; အိမ်နားမှာ, by the house.

အနီး, a near part, nearness; အိမ်နီးမှာ, near the house.

အထံ, presence; မင်းထံမှာ, in presence of the governor.

ဆီ, ditto; မင်းဆီမှာ, ditto.

အညာ, an upper part; မြစ်ညာသို့, up the river.

အကြေ, a lower part; မြစ်ကြေသို့, down the river.

အတွက်, account, sake; လူမျိုးအတွက်ကြောင့်, on account, or for the sake of mankind.

§75. The following secondary nouns are commonly used without an affix; and in some instances, are connected with the principal nouns by နှင့် instead of ၏.

အဖို့, a part, portion; အိမ်ဖို့ or သို့, for the house.

အထက်ဆုံး, summit, extremity; အသက်ထက်ဆုံး, through, or to the end of life.

ပတ်လည်, a circuit; အိမ်ပတ်လည်, round the house.

ဝန်းကျင်, ditto; အိမ်ဝန်းကျင်, ditto.

ထက်ဝန်းကျင်, ditto; အိမ်ထက်ဝန်းကျင်, ditto.

ပတ်လုံး, a whole circuit; ကာလပတ်လုံး, during or throughout the time.

အတူ, likeness; ထိုနည်းတူ, in like manner.

အလောက်, about so much, (obsolete); လူလောက်ကြီးသည်, to be about as large as a man.

အခန့်, about so much; တနှစ်ခန့်, about a year.

အညီ, evenness, accordance; အလိုနှင့်အညီ, or အလို၏အညီ according to (his) will.

အတိုင်း,measurement; အလိုနှင့်အတိုင်း, or အလို၏အတိုင်း, do.

အလျောက်, an agreeing with; အလိုနှင့်အလျောက်, or အလို၏အလျောက်, ditto.

အမျှ, as much as; ဆရာနှင့်အမျှတတ်သည်, to know as much as the teacher.

အစား, stead; ကိုယ်စား, instead of self.

အတူ, a being with; ဆရာနှင့်အတူ, with the teacher.

အကွ, ditto; ဆရာနှင့်အကွ, ditto.

N. B. In some instances, စ or တ, is optionally substituted for the formative အ, as ကာလစလိုက်, for ကာလအလိုက်, ဆရာနှင့်တမျှ, ဆရာနှင့်တကွ, &c.

§76. Some relations of nouns are expressed by means of verbs also, as from တိုင်သည် to arrive at, reach, may be formed,—

အိမ်တိုင်အောင် (with a continuative affix), unto, or as far as the house;

ကာလတိုင်အောင်, until the time;

ပြည်တိုင်တိုင် (the root doubled), through the country;

ကာလတိုင်တိုင်, during the time; in which cases ကို or သို့ is understood after the noun, and sometimes expressed.

PRONOUNS.

§77. ငါ, I, masculine or feminine, is used by a person in speaking to himself of himself, and in addressing inferiors.

ကျွန်နုပ်, ကျွန်ုပ်, or ကျုပ်, I, masculine or feminine, is used in addressing equals, and in addressing inferiors politely.

ကျွန်တော် a servant, ကျွန်တော်မ, ကျွန်မ, or ကျမ, a female servant, တပည့်တော်, a disciple, and တပည့်တော်မ, a female disciple, are used as first personals in addressing superiors.

အကျွန်, I, feminine, is of similar import with ကျွန်မ, but not in common use.

N. B. The plural affix တို့ is sometimes used for the plural of the first personal.

ကိုယ်တော်, thou, masculine or feminine, is used to a superior; မင်း,^[13] you, masculine, to an equal or an inferior; မောင်မင့်, you, masculine, to an inferior; မောင်မင်း you, rather imperious and disrespectful; မင်းမာ, you, masculine, to an inferior, expressive of disapprobation; ညည်း or ညဲ, you, feminine, to an equal or inferior; မယ်မင်း, you, feminine, to any woman, expressive of disrespect or anger; and နင် you, masculine or feminine, to children, or persons very inferior.

သင် thou, or you, masculine or feminine, is used chiefly in writing, and is irrespective of the relative rank of the parties. ချင်း, you, masculine or feminine, is used in judicial language.

ကွယ်, you, masculine or feminine, familiar, and ဟယ်, you, masculine or feminine, disrespectful, are used vocatively only. ကွယ် makes ကွရို့, and ဟယ်, ဟရို့, in the plural.

သူ, a person, masculine or feminine, supplies the place of the third personals, he and she.

သင်း,^[14] that (thing), neuter, may also be regarded as a third personal.

ကိုယ် and ကိုယ်ကိုယ်, one's self (i. e. myself, yourself, or himself), masculine or feminine, are of either person as the connection requires.

မိမိ, one's self, masculine or feminine, is confined to the second and third persons.

§78. The pronouns ငါ, သင်, and သူ, in the singular number, not preceded or followed by any adjective or participial adjunct, become င, သင့်, and သု, before the oblique, unaspirated affixes (except သို့), viz. ကို, အား, ကြောင့်, တွင်, and ၏ understood; but when used nominatively, or followed by သို့, or by ၏ expressed, or by an aspirated affix, ဖြင့်, နှင့်, ၌, မှာ, or မှ, they retain their proper form. Other pronouns, ending in a nasal, are similarly inflected.

ADJECTIVES.

§79. Adjectives are of three kinds, pronominal, verbal, and numeral.

§80. Adjectives of either kind are prefixed to their nouns, by means of the connective သည် or သော, if singular, and the same, or ကုန်သည်, or ကုန်သော, if plural, or directly affixed. But to this general rule there are several exceptions, particularly in the pronominals.

§81. An adjective and noun united in either way form a compound word, which admits the plural affix and the affixes of cases, the same as a simple noun.

pronominal adjectives.

§82. The following pronominals are prefixed to their nouns, in some cases with, and in some without a connective,—ရော, နင့်, or နံ့, being occasionally substituted for သော, before words of time:—

ဤ, this, as ဤလူ, this man; ဤသည်နေ့, this day.

သည်, this.

ထို, that, as ထိုသူ, that person; ထိုသောအခါ, or ထိုရောအခါ, that time.

ယင်း, that,—infrequent.

အနည်, this or that,—infrequent.

ဟို and ဟုပ်, that,—colloquial.

အဘယ်, or ဘယ်, what?—occasionally contracted to အ, before သူ, as အသူ, for အသယ်သူ, who?—and to ဘ before ဟာ, as ဘဟာ, what thing? In negative sentences, it combines with the negative particle သင်း, to signify none, as ဘယ်သူမရှိ there is no one. When combined with သင်း, that (thing), it means which; as အဘယ်သင်း, which (thing)?

အတီ, what?—infrequent.

အကြင်, whatever.

မည်, what? whatever. N. B. မည်သည်, ditto, is directly prefixed or affixed.

ဤမည်, such, referring to what has been specified. [Its most common use appears to be indefinite, such and such, such or such. St.]

§83. The following pronominals are prefixed to their nouns, with the usual connectives:—

သို့, such.

ဤသို့, သည်သို့, such, of this sort.

ထိုသို့, ယင်းသို့, such, of that sort.

အဘယ်သို့, အသို့, ဘယ်သို့, မည်သို့, of what sort.

အကြင်သို့, of whatever sort.

ကဲသို့, and its compounds, such as. §84. The following, viz. အချို့ and တချို့, some, အခြား, တခြား, and တပါး, other, ခပ်သိမ်း and အလုံးစုံ, all, are joined to their nouns according to the general rule, except that when prefixed, the connective is in some instances omitted. ခပ်သိမ်းစုံ, all is prefixed with a connective.

§85. တထူး, other, တကာ, many, အားလုံး all, and အလုံး, all, the whole, are uniformly affixed.

§86. အလုံး, when affixed to a noun or a numeral auxiliary, frequently drops the အ, or changes it to စ, as အိမ်လုံး, or အိမ်စလုံး, the whole house; အိမ်သုံးခုလုံး, or အိမ်သုံးခုစလုံး, all the three houses. When affixed to a singular noun, the compound occasionally takes the numeral တ, one, before it, without a change of meaning, as တအိမ်လုံး, or တအိမ်စလုံး, the whole house; သင်္ဘောတစင်းလုံး, the whole ship.

§87. ဘယ်နှစ်, how many? is directly prefixed to numeral auxiliaries, or words denoting a part or quantity of a thing, as သရက်သီးဘယ်နှစ်လုံး, how many mangoes? သရက်သီးဘယ်နှစ်တင်း, How many baskets of mangoes?

§88. So much, How much? &c., are expressed by combining pronominals with such nouns as အမျှ, အလောက်, &c., denoting quantity, as ဤမျှ, so much, ဘယ်လောက်, ဘယ်မျှလောက်, how much?

§89. Some pronominals are doubled to form a kind of plural, as ထိုထိုဥစ္စာ, those goods.

§90. Pronominals are frequently used substantively, and in that character admit the noun affixes.

verbal adjectives.

§91. Verbal adjectives are made by joining verbal roots to nouns, according to the general rule, as မြတ်သောလူ, or လူမြတ်, an excellent man; but as the verbal root, when prefixed, is susceptible of the accidents of verbs, it is more correct to regard that construction as participial. See under participial affixes, §114.

§92. Verbal adjectives are also formed from verbal roots by prefixing အ, as အသစ်, new, and by reduplicating the root, as ကောင်းကောင်း, good. Such adjectives are commonly affixed to their nouns ; but အများ, from များ to be many, follows the general rule, as အများသောဆရာ, or ဆရာအများ, many teachers.

§93. The imperfect degree of comparison is sometimes made by shortening and reduplicating the verbal root, as ချို့ချို့, sweetish, from ချို, to be sweet, ခခ, bitterish, from ခါး, to be bitter; sometimes, by affixing ခပ်, to the root reduplicated, or reduplicated and shortened, as ခပ်ဆိုးဆိုး, rather bad; and sometimes by affixing reduplicated chiming increments, having တ for an initial to the root in its natural state or shortened, to express a slight degree of the quality, as ချိုတိုတို, or ချို့တို့တို့, slightly sweetish.

§94. The comparative degree is made, by means of the secondary noun အထက်, or အောက်, and verb, as အိမ်ထက်ကြီးသည်, to be greater than the house, or by a circumlocution of verbs, as သာ၍ကြီးသည်, to exceed in greatness, or be greater.

§95. The superlative degree is made, by prefixing အ, and affixing ဆုံး to the verbal root, as အမြတ်ဆုံး, most excellent; and is joined to nouns according to the general rule, as အမြတ်ဆုံးသာလူ, or လူအမြတ်ဆုံး, the most excellent man.

numeral adjectives.

§96. Numerals are generally combined with a word descriptive of some quality in the noun to which they belong, and in that state are joined to nouns according to the general rule.

§97. If the numeral is less than ten, the auxiliary word is affixed to it (the formative အ, whenever it occurs, being dropped), as ခွက်နှစ်လုံး, or နှစ်လုံးသောခွက်, two cups, from ခွက်, a cup, နှစ်, two, and အလုံး, round; if it is a capital number, as ten, twenty, thirty, two hundred, three hundred, &c., the auxiliary is prefixed to it, as ခွက်အလုံးနှစ်ဆယ်, or အလုံးနှစ်ဆယ်သောခွက်, twenty cups; and if it is a numeral, intervening between the capitals, the auxiliary is both prefixed and affixed, as ခွက်အလုံးနှစ်ဆယ်နှစ်လုံး, or အလုံးနှစ်ဆယ်နှစ်လုံးသောခွက်, twenty-two cups. But in any case in which the auxiliary is prefixed, it may be omitted, as ဆရာအပါးနှစ်ဆယ်, or အပါးနှစ်ဆယ်သောဆရာ, twenty teachers, may be written ဆရာနှစ်ဆယ်, or နှစ်ဆယ်သောဆရာ, and ဆရာအပါးနှစ်ဆယ်နှစ်ပါး, or အပါးနှစ်ဆယ်နှင့်ပါးသောဆရာ, twenty-two teachers, may be written ဆရာနှစ်ဆယ်နှစ်ပါး, or နှစ်ဆယ်နှစ်ပါးသောဆရာ.

§98. The following is a list of the most common numeral auxiliaries, arranged alphabetically, with the classes of things to which they are applied:—

Numeral Auxiliaries.	Classes of Things.
အဦး, a chief.	Rational beings, considered as chief or having subordinates, as ကုန်သည်တဦး, one merchant.
အကောင်, a brute animal.	Brute animals, as မျောက်နှစ်ကောင်, two monkeys.
အကြောင်း, a line.	Things extended in a line, as ခရီးသုံးကြောင်း, three roads.
အကွင်း, a circle, or ring.	Rings, nooses, and such like, as လက်စွပ်လေးကွင်း, four rings.
အခု, an individual thing.	Things which admit no other word more descriptive, as ခုတင်ငါးခု, five bedsteads, ကုလားထိုင်ငါးခု, five chairs,—frequently used also instead of a more appropriate numeral auxiliary.
အချပ်, what is flat.	Things flat and thin, as ဖျာခြောက်ချပ်, six mats.
အချောင်း, a bar, or long piece.	Things long and straight, or nearly so, as အပ်ခုနှစ်ချောင်း, seven needles.
အခွန်း, voice.	Words, speech, as စကားရှစ်ခွန်း, eight words.
အစင်း, an extended line.	Things long and straight, or nearly so, as လှံကိုးစင်း, nine spears, သင်္ဘောဆယ်စင်း, ten ships.
အစီး, what is ridden upon.	Beasts of burden, vehicles of conveyance, as မြင်းတစီး, one horse; လှည်းနှစ်စီး, two carts.
အစောင် (uncertain).	Writings, as စာသုံးစောင်, three books, or writings.
အဆူ (uncertain).	Deities, as ဘုရားလေးဆူ four gods; also [gardens, St.] pagodas, and some other articles.
အဆောင်, a building.	Buildings, as အိမ်ငါးဆောင်, five houses.
အတန်, intervening space.	Whatever occurs at intervals of time or place, as အကျိုးခြောက်တန်, six rewards.
အထည်, a piece of cloth.	Wearing apparel, as အင်္ကျီခုနှစ်ထည်, seven coats.
အပင်, a tree or plant.	Trees, plants, as သရက်ပင်ရှစ်ပင်, eight mango trees; also thread, hair, &c.
အပါး (uncertain).	Deities, ecclesiatics, persons in power, any respectable characters, things immaterial, as ဆရာကိုးပါး, nine teachers, သီလဆယ်ပါး, ten duties.
အပြား, what is flat.	Things which are flat, as ပျည်တပြား, one board.
အဖက်, one of a pair.	Things which are naturally joined in pairs, as လက်နှစ်ဖက်, two hands.
အလက်, an arm, or hand.	Weapons, tools, whatever is used by the hand, as သေနတ်သုံးလက်, three guns.
အလုံး, what is round.	Things round or cubical, or approaching those forms, as အိုးလေးလုံး, four pots, သစ်တာငါးလုံး, five boxes.
အသွယ်, what is slender.	Things small in bulk, compared to the length, as မြစ်ခြောက်သွယ် six rivers, လမ်းခုနှစ်သွယ်, seven paths.
ယောက်, (uncertain.)	Rational beings,—generally mankind, or superior beings, as လူရှစ်ယောက်, eight men.

§99. Sometimes the noun itself becomes the numeral auxiliary, or is substituted for a descriptive word, as ရွာကိုးရွာ, nine villages, မင်းဆယ်မင်း, ten governors.

§100. Words denoting some part or quantity of a thing are combined with numerals in the same manner as words descriptive of a quality, there being no other difference in the cases, excepting that in the latter the number of individual things merely is expressed; in the former, the number of the parts or quantities of the thing, as ရေနှစ်ခွက်, or နှစ်ခွက်သောရေ, two cups of water; စက္ကူအထုပ်နှစ်ဆယ်, or အထုပ်နှစ်ဆယ်သောစက္ကူ, twenty bundles of paper; နှစ်ရက်, two days (ကာလ, time, being understood), literally, two days of time.

§101. The numeral တ, one, combined with a numeral auxiliary reduplicated, as တခုခု, တယောက်ယောက်, denotes any one, some one (out of several); when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and the combination reduplicated, as တခုတခု, တယောက်တယောက်, it denotes one after another (whether every one or several); when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and followed by the same numeral combined with လေ, as တခုတလေ, တယောက်တလေ (sometimes reversed), it denotes a few, now and then one, here and there one; when combined with a numeral auxiliary, and preceded by the same numeral, combined with စုံ, as တစုံတခု, တစုံတယောက်, it denotes some one, indefinite. Such combinations may be regarded as pronominal adjectives. They are joined to their nouns, according to the general rule.

§102. Ordinal numerals are of Pali origin, and are prefixed to their nouns, as ဒုတိယခဏ်း, the second section. Ordinals are also made by affixing မြောက်, to raise, to cardinal numerals, modified as above, as နှစ်ယောက်မြောက်သောသား, the second son; နှစ်ရက်မြောက်သောနေ့, the second day.

§103. There are a few adjectives which, on account of some peculiarity, cannot be placed in either of the foregoing classes. Some of them are prefixed to their nouns, as မဟာ, great, အာကာ,extraordinary; some are either prefixed or affixed, as အနန္တ, infinite, သာမည, ordinary; and some are affixed, as ကလေး, small; တော်, honorific, မ, principal, chief among many; ချင်း, single one, only, as တနေ့ချင်းတွင်, in a single day; တည်း only, no more, used with numerals, as တခုတည်း, one only.

§104. Nouns used adjectively may be distributed into three classes, viz:—

1st. Names of races of men, of countries, towns, &c. when used to qualify a following noun, as အင်္ဂလိတ်, an Englishman, အင်္ဂလိတ်လူ, ditto, အင်္ဂလိတ်ပြည်, England, the country of the English; မြမ္မာ, a Burmese, မြမ္မာစကား, the Burmese language; ရန်ကုန်, Rangoon, the town of Rangoon, ရန်ကုန်မြို့, ditto ရန်ကုန်သား, or ရန်ကုန်မြို့သား, a son, or native of Rangoon.

2nd. Common nouns used to qualify a following noun, as ရွှေ,gold, ရွှေဖလား, a golden cup; မြောက်, the north, မြောက်လမ်း, the northern path; အညာ, the upper part (of a country), အညာသား, an up-conntry person.

3rd. Names of trees, plants, and their parts, which are only used in combination with a following noun; thus from သံလွင်, the olive, are formed သံလွင်ပင်, an olive tree, သံလွင်ပွင့်, an olive blossom, သံလွင်သီး, an olive (fruit), သံလွင်ရွက်, an olive leaf.

VERBS.

§105. Verbs are of two kinds, transitive, which express actions that pass from the agent to the object, as ရိုက်သည်, to strike, ချစ်သည်, to love; and intransitive, which express being, or some state of being, or an action which is confined to the agent, as ဖြစ်သည်, to be, နေသည်, to remain, ကောင်းသည်, to be good, ပျက်သည်, to be ruined, or in a state of ruin.

§106. Many transitive verbs are formed from intransitive ones, by aspirating the initial letter. If the initial is the first letter of the first or fifth class of consonants, it is changed for its corresponding aspirate, the second letter of the class, as ကျသည်, to fall, ချသည် to throw down, or cause to fall; ပျက်သည်, to be ruined, ဖျက်သည်, to ruin. If the initial is a nasal, or an unclassed letter, it is combined with the letter ဟ, as ညွတ်သည်, to be bent down, ညွှတ်သည်, to bend down; လွတ်သည်, to be free, လွှတ်သည်, to make free.

accidents of verbs.

§107. The accidents of verbs, expressed in most languages by inflections or auxiliary verbs, are here expressed by particles affixed to the verb, without any inflection of the verb itself. The verbal affixes are as follows:—

§108. assertive affixes.

သည်, simply assertive, as သွားသည်, he goes; in certain combinations, written သော။

၏, same as သည်။

ဘူး, simply assertive, in negative sentences, as မသွားဘူး, he goes not,—chiefly colloquial.

ဆဲ, present, but scarcely used except substantively, as သွားဆဲဖြင်သည်, he is going (see Verbs used substantively, §122), or in a participial clause, according to the note below, as ယခုဖြစ်ဆဲသောအမှု, the business that now is, or the present business. In the substantive construction, it may be combined with a preceding future affix, as သွားလုဆဲ, or reduplicated, as သွားမည်ဆဲဆဲတွင်, when he was just about going.

ပြီ, past, as သွားပြီ, he went, or has gone; sometimes future.

အံ့, future, as သွားအံ့, he will go; sometimes equivalent to the continuative affix လျှင်, which see.

မည်, future.

လတံ့, or လတ္တန့် future.

N. B. The assertive affixes of tense, ဆဲ, ပြီ, အံ့, မည်, and လတံ့ occasionally lose their assertive power, and become auxiliary to a continuative, participial, or simply asertive affix, in which case ပြီ becomes ပြီး.

§109. continuative affixes.

လျက်, denoting the continuance of an action, or state of being during another, as သွားလျက်စားသည်, he eats as he goes; sometimes equivalent to လျှင်.

ကာ, equivalent to လျက်, but commonly repeated after the same or another verb, as ဆက်ကာဆက်ကာ, joining one with another; စုန်ကာဆန်ကာ, going up and down,—used also as a verbal formative.

လျက်နှင့်, denoting the continuance of an action, or state of being during another, but somewhat inconsistent with it, as သွားလျက်နှင့်စားသည်, though going he eats.

လျှင်, denoting first, the completion of an action or state of being prior to another, as သွားလျှင်သေသည်, having gone, he died; second, supposition or conditionality, as သွားလျှင်သေမည်, if he go, he will die.

သော်, same as လျှင်.

မူ, မူကား, ရကား, တမူကား, and တပြီးကား, in some combinations equivalent to လျှင်.

မှ, denoting the completion of an action prior to another.

ကတည်းက, from the first of, as သွားကတည်းက, from the first of his going.

သော်လည်း, though, notwithstanding, as သွားသော်လည်းမသေ, though he go, he will not die.

ကစား, or လင့်ကစား, လှည့်ကာ, ditto,—infrequent.

မချည်း, ကတည်း ditto,—colloquial.

အောင်, first, that, noting a consequence, so that, so as to, as သေအောင်သွားသည်, he went, so that he died; second, that, noting a final end, in order to, as သေအောင်သွားသည်, he went, that he might die.

၍ and, as သွား၍သေသည်, he went and died; (sometimes pronounced လို့;) sometimes equivalent to လျှင်.

§110. interrogative affixes.

(Connected with the verbal root by the assertive affix သည်, being commonly abbreviated to သ.)

လော,—formal, လား,—familiar,			$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	as သွားသည်လော, does he go?
နည်း,—formal,			$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	Used in connection with an interrogative pronominal, as ဘယ်ကိုသွားသနည်း, whither does he go?
လည်း, လဲ,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	—familiar,
တုံး,—colloquial,

စင့်, or စံ့, affixed to the root without an intervening affix, as သွားစင့်, does he go?—rather infrequent.

§111. imperative affixes.

စို့, or စို့၏, first person plural, as သွားစို့, let us go.

ကြကုန်အံ့, [—formal, St.] ditto, preceded by the first personal, as ငါတို့သည်သွားကြကုန်အံ့, let us go, or we will go.

လော့ [formal, St.] imperative proper, as သွားလော့, go.

လည့်, ditto,—infrequent.

နှင့်, prohibitory, မ being prefixed to the verb, as မသွားနှင့် go not.

လင့်, ditto.

§112. The simple root also is imperative, as well as when combined with certain of the euphonic or qualifying affixes, as ပါ, တော့, ပေ, လေ, ချေ, ခဲ့, ဘိ, လိုက်, စေ, ရော့, ဦး, ရစ်, စမ်း, &c. Some of these affixes are also variously combined with one another, and with the imperative affixes, to convey the ideas of entreaty, authority, &c.

§113. precative affixes.

စေသော, may, as သွားစေသော, may he go. [It is commonly combined with ပါ, as သွားပါစေသော။ St.]

စေသတည်း, ditto, authoritatively, as ဖြစ်စေသတည်း, be it so.

စေခလို, ditto,—infrequent.

§114. participial affixes.

သော, connecting the verb with a subsequent noun, being equivalent to the relative pronoun in most languages, as မြတ်သောလူ, the excelling man or the man who excels; ပြေးသောမြင်း, the running horse, or the horse which runs; ရောက်သောသင်္ဘော, the arriving ship, or the ship which arrives; sometimes contracted to သ, as ရှိသမျှ, as much as there is; sometimes dispensing with the verb altogether, as တတ်အားသမျှ, for တတ်အားရှိသမျှ, (do) as much as possible commonly omitted after the assertive future affix မည်.

သည်, ditto.

§115. auxiliary affixes of tense.

သေး, denoting present continuance, as သွားသေးသည်, he is still going; မသွားသေး, he is still not gone, or he is not yet gone; sometimes denoting beside, more than, in addition, as ငစကားသာမဟုတ်၊ စာရှိသေးသည်, there is not only my word, but there is scripture also.

ခဲ့, just past, as သွားခဲ့သည်, he has just gone; frequently written ကဲ့; very frequently euphonic.

ဘူး, past indefinite, as သွားဘူးသည်, he went. In negative sentences, prefixed by စ, it becomes ဖူး, and signifies (not) ever, as မသွားစဖူး, he never went. စသီး and စတောင်း are of similar import, but infrequent.

နှင့်, prior-past, or prior-future, according to the connection, as သွားနှင့်ပြီ, he had gone, သွားနှင့်မည်, he will go (before another goes).

လင့်, prior-past or prior-future,—infrequent.

ခင်, ditto,—rather infrequent.

လု, near future, about to, on the point of, retaining its meaning, whatever affixes of tense are superadded, as သွားလုသည်, သွားလုပြီ, or သွားလုမည်, he is about to go, or is near going; sometimes used substantively, though not an assertive affix, as သွားလုနီးပြီ, ditto.

§116. affixes of number.

ကြ, ကုန်, ကြကုန်, denoting the plural, as သွားကြသည်, they go;—frequently omitted, and the idea of plurality left to be conveyed by the noun affix of number, or gathered from the connection.

§117. qualifying affixes.
(arranged alphabetically.)

ဦး (pron. အုံး,) more or again, commonly used with an assertive future affix, as သောက်ဦးမည်, he will drink more, or again; in prohibitive sentences, (not) yet, as မသောက်နှင့်ဦး, do not drink yet.

ကုန်, entirely, wholly, (from ကုန်, to come to an end), as သေကုန်ပြီ, they are all dead.

ကောင်း, with the verb repeated, probably, as သေကောင်းသေမည်, he will probably die.

ခင်, see မှီ.

ခဲ့ (see Dictionary).

ချင်, optative, to wish, desire, as ပြုချင်သည်, to wish to do; also, to have a tendency to, as ဖျားချင်ထည်, to be disposed to fever.

ချင်း, with မ prefixed to the root and to itself, and a continuative affix or clause, commonly တိုင်အောင်, expressed or understood, until, as မသွားမချင်းတိုင်အောင်လုပ်လျက်နေသည်, he continued working until he went.

စေ causal (from စေ to send, order), as ပြုစေသည် he makes (him) do, ဖြစ်စေ let it be; when affixed to intransitive verbs, equivalent to the aspirated initial; as လွတ်စေသည်, equivalent to လွှတ်သည်, to make free, from လွတ်သည်, to be free.

When used as an imperative or precative, the shade of meaning is frequently determinded by an intervening euphonic affix, as ဖြစ်ပါလေစေ, may it be, ပြေးပါလေစေ, let it run. Combined with အုံ it makes စိမ့်.

စောက် with မ prefixed to the root, and followed by တော့ or သကဲ့သို့, not proper, or desirable, as မသွားစောက်တော့, or မသွားစောက်သကဲ့သို့ဖြစ်သည်, it was not well to go, (on account of some evil that has just befallen).

စွ slightly intensive or emphatic, – commonly connected with the verb by a euphonic affix, and sometimes superseding the assertive affix, as ကြီးလေစွ, it is great, indeed.

စွာ intensive, – mostly used before the participial affix သော, as ဖြတ်စွာသောသူ, a very excellent person.

ဆန်း, with the verb repeated, just that and no more, merely, nothing more, as ကြီးဆန်းကြီးသည်, to be large merely.

ဆိတ် (from ဆိတ်, to be quiet), to be quiet, unmoved (though the occasion calls for exertion); as နေဆိတ်အည်, to remain unmoved.

ဆဲ, though put down by Pali grammarians as denoting the present tense, denotes in common usage the immediate future, as ရောက်ဆဲရှိသည်, to be about to arrive, or on the point of arriving, equivalent to ရောက်လုပြီ; and when repeated, and especially when prefixed by a future affix, is more directly future, as ရောက်ဆဲဆဲ, or ရောက်မည်ဆဲဆဲ, to be about arriving before long.

တုံ, sometimes euphonic, but when repeated after a following verb, partaking of the nature of a continuative, and denoting alternation; as ငုတ်တုံပေါ်တုံရှိသည်, to be sinking and appearing by turns.

တော့, denoting a slight necessity.

တည့်, directly, at once, as သွားတည့်သည်, to go directly, at once.

နှိုင်, sometimes in converation နိုင်, potential, to be able (from နိုင်, to prevail, overcome), as သွားနှိုင်သည်, to be able to go.

ပြန်, again (from ပြန်, to return), as ပြုပြန်သည်, to do again:

ဘဲ, with မ prefixed to the root, and a continuative affix expressed or understood, without, as မစားဘဲသွားသည်, he went without eating.

မိ, implying carelessness or fault, as ပြောမိပြီ he has said it (and therefore committed himself); sometimes euphonic.

မှီ, with မ prefixed to the root, and a continuative affix expressed or understood, before, as မသွားမှီစားသည်, he ate before going; combined with တိုင်အောင်, until, as မသွားမှီတိုင်အောင် nutil he went;—sometimes taking a noun affix, as မသွားမှီ၌, before going.

ရ, must, as သွားရမည် he must go; frequently euphonic.

ရက်, to be capable, (in regard to feeling), as သတ်ရက်သည်, to be unfeeling enough to kill; မကွာရက်, he cannot bear to part.

ရစ်, remaining behind, as ပြုရစ်သည်, to do (it), remaining behind, နေရစ်သည်, to stay behind.

ရော့, denoting disapprobation or regret; sometimes euphonic, particularly when used imperatively.

ရှာ, denoting affection or sympathy in the speaker, as သွားရှာသည်, he goes, alas!

လွန်း, denoting excess, (from လွန်, to exceed), as ကောင်းလွန်းသည်, to be too good.

လှ, very, as ကြီးလှသည်, to be very great.

To these may be added a number of verbs, which are occasionally used to qualify a principal verb, as,—

အပ်, to be right, proper, as သွားအပ်သည်, it is right to go; sometimes passive, in translation from the Pali, particularly when used as an adversative to တတ်; frequently euphonic.

အား to be at leisure, as သွားအားသည်, to be at leisure to go.

ကောင်း, to be good, as သွားကောင်းသည်, it is good to go.

ခဲ, to be hard, difficult, as ရခဲသည်, it is difficult to obtain.

စမ်း, to try, make trial, as ပြုစမ်းသည်, to do by way of trial; sometimes but little more than euphonic.

တတ်, to know how, be skilled in, as ပြုတတ်သည်, to know how to do; sometimes denoting the way, custom, usual course, as လူသေတတ်သည်, man is mortal.

တန်, to be suitable, as ပြုတန်သည်, it is suitable to be done.

ထိုက်, to be worthy, deserving of, as သေထိုက်သည်, to deserve to die.

နေ, to remain, continue, as ပြုနေသည်, to continue doing.

ပျင်း, to be reluctant, averse to, as မြင်ပျင်းသည်, to hate to see.

ဖြစ်, to be practicable, as မသွားဖြစ်, it is not practicable to go.

ဖွယ်, to be most suitable, fit for, as အံ့ဖွယ်သောအမှု, a wonderful affair.

ရာ, similar to အပ်; frequently euphonic.

လောက်, to be enough, as စားလောက်အောင်ရှိသည်, there is enough to eat.

လို, to desire, as ပြုလိုသည်, equivalent to ပြုချင်သည်.

လွယ်, to be easy, as ပြုလွယ်သည်, it is easy to do.

ဝံ့, to dare, as ပြုဝံ့သည်, to dare to do.

သင့်, to be suitable, proper, becoming, as ပြောသင့်သည်, it is suitable to say.

သာ, to be easy, pleasant, as ပြောသာသည်, it is pleasant to say; with the imperative affix ပါ, and the verb repeated, as စားသာစားပါ, eat freely, or without hesitation.

N. B. The idea of progress is conveyed by လာ or သွား connected with the principal verb by ၍, expressed or understood, as မှည့်၍လာသည် it ripens, ဆိုး၍သွားသည်, it grows worse.

§118. euphonic affixes.

ချေ, when combined with အံ့, ချိမ့်; when repeated after a following verb, similar to တုံ, which see under Qualifying Affixes.

ငြား, mostly need before the continuative affix သော်ထည်း, and the assertive future affix အံ့, when used for လျှင်.

စ, in certain combinations, noticed in their places.

ခေ, mostly used before the participial affixes, when several successive participial clauses precede a noun, in commendatory discourse.

ပါ, conciliatory – polite – respectful.

ပေ, when combined with အံ့, ပိမ့်.

ဘိ‚ mostly used before the assertive affix သည်, abbreviated to သ, in connection with the noun affix ကဲ့သို့, as သွားဘိသကဲ့သို့, like as he went; also, before the closing affix ချင်း, in which case it is rather intensive, as များဘိချင်း, there are very many.

လင့်, mostly used in the invitation to listen, နာလင့်ကုန်, listen ye!

လတ်, mostly used before the continuative affix သော်.

လေ‚ when combined with အံ့, လိမ့်, which combination is mostly used before the future affix မည်; when repeated after a following verb, it denotes correspondence or reciprocity, as လိုက်လေပြေးလေ, as (one) pursues, (the other) runs.

လိုက်, mostly used with transitive verbs; sometimes giving a transitive meaning to an intransitive verb.

လှာ, mostly used with arriving, coming, &c.

§119. closing affixes.

ဟု, that, noting indication, viz, namely (from ဟူ, to say, declare, mean), – used at the close of a sentence, which is the subject of a subsequent assertion, as သိသည်ဟုပြောသည်, he says that he knows, – also, after a word which is explanatory of a subsequent word, as မင်းရှင်စောဟုဘွဲ့ကိုပေးသည်, he gave (him) the title of Menshen zau; – sometimes it takes a verbal affix, but ought then to be written ဟူ, and parsed as a verb.

တည်း, used at the close of a simple sentence, equivalent to the substantive verb ရှိလည်, to be, the nominative being generally made by ကား, as အမည်ကားမောင်လောက်တည်း, his name is Moung Louk,—sometimes taking ပေ, or ပေလျှင်, immediately before it; also, at the close of a parenthetic sentence, or a distinct paragraph, closing in သည်, commonly abbreviated to သ, as သွားသတည်း, he went,—sometimes taking လျှင်, or က, or လျှင်က, immediately before it.

တတ်, ditto, at the close of a parenthesis or paragraph.

တကား, emphatic, or indicative of some emotion, as သေားကလေးသေပြီတကား, my little son is dead, alas! မသွားပါတကား, he goes not, indeed.

ရကား, sometimes equivalent to တကား.

ချင်း, ditto, commonly expressive of regret, as ဖြစ်ရလေချင်း, it is so, alas!

စွ, see under Qualifying affixes.

တောင်း, intensive,—commonly connected with the verb by another affix, as ကြီးပေတောင်း, it is great, indeed!

တမုံ့, or တမူ, expletive, after an assertive or precative affix, သွားသည်တမုံ့, (obsolete).

The following are colloquial only:—

နော်, soliciting acquiescence, as သွားတော့မည်နော်, I will go, shall I? သွားတော့နော်, go, will you?

လေ, or လားလေ, slightly emphatic or persistive, is used after the assertive affixes, as ရှိသည်လားလေ, it is certainly, or I assure you.

ပ, or ပေါ့, familiar,—without or after the assertive affix.

ကော, or ကောလေ, ditto, sometimes superseding the assertive affix.

တည့်, (pron. ဒဲ့), denoting that the words to which it is affixed, are repeated from the mouth of another person, as ရှိသည်တည့်, it is, he says.

negation.

§120. The negative is made by prefixing မ to the verb, which, beside its negative power, has the privilege of occasionally dispensing with the assertive affixes, or of conveying an assertive power to the root, or to the qualifying and euphonic affixes of number, and the auxiliary affixes of tense, all of which, in affirmative sentences, require an assertive affix, thus သွားသည်, he goes, မသွား, or မသွားဘူး, he goes not; သွားသေးသည်, he is still going, သွားသေး, he is not yet gone; သွားနှိုင်သည်, he can go, မသွားနှိုင်, he cannot go.

§121. In colloquial discourse, a strong negative is sometimes made by affixing ရိုးလား, to the root, or မို့တုံး, a contraction of မတုတ်တုံး, to an assertive affix, as သွားရိုးလား, or သွားသည်မို့တုံး, he goes not.

verbs used substantively.

§122. Verbs terminating in the assertive affix သည် (occasionally changed to သ, သော or သော့), are frequently used substantively, and in that character, admit the noun affixes. Verbs terminating in an assertive affix of tense, are capable of being used in the same manner, but the termination သည် or သော is, in some cases, superadded to qualify them for the substantive construction.

§123. examples.

သွားသည်မှန်သည်, or သွားသည်ကားမှန်သည်, it is right, or true, that he goes.

သွားသည်နောက်မှ (နောက် being a verb,) or သွားသည်နောက်, after he goes.

သွားသည်ကိုသိသည်, he knows that he goes.

သွားသည်တိုင်အောင် (ကို or သို့ understood,) until he goes.

သွားသည်၏အတိုင်း or သွားသည်အတိုင်း, according as he goes.

N. B. When verbs are constructed with a following noun, the possessive affix ၏ is commonly omitted, as သွားသည်အရပ်, the place of going, or where he goes; သွားသည်အခါ, the time of going, or when he goes; သွားသည်အစည်, while he goes; သွားသည်အကြောင်း, the reason of going; သွားသည်နည်းတူ, in the same manner as he goes; သွားသည်အားဖြင့်, by means of going, &c.

သွားအံ့သောငှါ (with the assertive future affix), in order to go.

သွားသော့ကြောင့်, because he goes.

သွားသည်မို့, ditto,—colloquial.

သွားသဖြင့်, by means of going, when he goes.

သွားသည်နှင့်, with going, when he goes.

သွားသည်နှင့်အညီ, in accordance with the going.

သွားသည်တွန်, ၌, or မှာ, going, while he goes.

သွားသည်က, or မှ, from going.

သွားသကဲ့သို့, like as he goes.

သွားသောသဖွယ်, ditto.

သွားသည်လို, ditto.

သွားသည်လိုလို, a little like, &c.

§124. When a verb used substantively, and connected by the affix ၏ with a following noun, whose initial is a syllabic အ, drops both the noun affix and the verbal, and takes the noun into union with itself, by rejecting or modifying the initial letter, the abbreviated compound becomes a verbal noun of the same import as the original clause, thus သွားသည်၏အခါ becomes သွားခါ, the time of going; နေသည်၏အစည်, နေစည်, while remaining; ပြောသည်၏အစ, ပြောစ, the beginning of speaking.

§125. Several cases of verbal nouns, on account of their frequent occurrence, deserve particular mention.

1st. The verbal in ခြင်း, from အခြင်း, an act, deed denotes action or being, in the abstract, as သွားခြင်း, a going, or the act of going, ကောင်းခြင်း, being good, or the state of being good.

2nd. The verbal in ရာ, from အရာ, a thing, subject, matter, denotes the object of an action, or the place where a thing is, or is done, as နှစ်သက်ရာ, an object of love; နေရာ, a remaining place; စွန့်ပြစ်ရာ, a place of throwing away.

3rd. The verbal in ရာ, from အလျာ or အလျှာ, what is for, commonly written စရာ, the verbal in ဖို့, or ဘို့, from အဖို့, a portion, and the verbal in ရန် (from ရန်သည်, to appropriate), denote what is for some purpose, as စားစရာ, what is for eating, or to be eaten; ကြည့်ဘို့ what is to be looked at; ပြုရန်, what is to be done.

4th. The verbal in ဖွယ် or ဘွယ်, sometimes စချင်ဘွယ်, from ဘဖွယ်, what is suitable, denotes what is fit for, adapted to, or worthy of some use or purpose, as စားဘွယ်, what is good to eat, an eatable; အံ့ဘွယ် what is wonderful; ချစ်စချင်ဘွယ်, what is lovely. But this verbal seems frequently to partake of the nature of an adjective.

N. B. The terminations ခမန်း, or ဂမန်း (according to one acceptation), လိ and လိလိ, are of similar import with the termination ဖွယ် but used in a bad sense only. Several of these are sometimes combined, as ရွံစလိ (စ euphonic), ရွံစဖွယ်လိ, ရွံဖွယ်လိခမန်း, what is disgusting.

The terminations ခမန်း (according to another acceptation), ဘိနန်း, or ဘနန်း and မတတ်, form verbals denoting nearness of accomplishment, occasionally taking လု before them, as လောင်ခမန်း or လောင်လုခမန်း, what is near burning; မြုပ်လုမတတ်, what is near sinking; ကုန်မတတ်, nearly the whole.

The termination နိုး, နိုးနိုး, or စနိုး, followed by a verb expressive of opinion, denotes, what is likely to be or to take place, sometimes admitting an affix of tense between itself and the root, as သင်္ဘောရောက်နိုးနိုးထင်သည်, or ရောက်မည်နိုးနိုးထင်သည်, he thinks that the ship will probably arrive.

5th. There are several other verbals, formed from nouns, which being obsolete, or never occurring in their full form, or in any other connection, connot be so satisfactorily analyzed, as most of the preceding; thus the verbal in တုန်း, perhaps from အထုန်း, time being, denotes the time of action or being, as သွားတုန်းတွင်, or သွားတုန်းခါ, equivalent to သွားစည်တွင်, or သွားစည်အခါ, the time of going, while going.

The verbal in ရုံ, perhaps from အရုံ, just so much and no more, confines the action or being to what is expressed by the root, as ပြောရုံပြုသည်, or ပြောရုံမျှပြုသည်, he just speaks, i. e. does no more than speaking.

The particle ကာ is of somewhat similar import with ရို, as ရိပ်လာပြောသည်, he speaks illusively merely; ပြောကာမျှအားဖြင့်, by means of speaking merely.

The particle ချင်း, single one only, limits the time to the continuance of the action expressed, as စားစားချင်းသေသည်, (fully) စားလျှင်စားချင်းတွင်သေသည်, he died as soon as he ate it, i. e. instantly, without an interval.

The verbal formative မှန်း, from မှန် to be right, true, is used chiefly in negative sentences, as ရောက်မှန်းကိုမသိ, or ရောက်မှန်းမသိ, (he) knows not the fact of the arrival. It is sometimes used without a verbal root, as ဘူရားမှန်းမသိ။ တရားမှန်းမသိ, (he) knows nothing about God or religion.

မိ—ရာ, affixed to the root repeated, as in the phrase, နေမိနေရာနေသည်, denotes inadvertence or inconsideration.

6th. Beside verbal nouns formed from verbs used substantively, there is another kind which may be termed the honorific verbal, formed by combining the verbal root with the adjective တော်. This verbal, followed by the verb မူသည်, to do, perform, is always used instead of the simple verb, in speaking becomingly of deities, kings, or any exalted personage, as မိန့်တော်မူသည်, (the deity or king) speaks, literally, does divine or royal speaking, မိန့်တော်မမူ, he speaks not; followed by a noun, it may be regarded as a noun in the possessive, as စားတော်ကွမ်း, betel eaten by the king, ပန်တော်ပန်း, flowers used in royal adornment.

Most verbal nouns retain the same power of government as their verbs, that is, cause the preceding noun to take the same affix as their verbs do, as ဇာတ်ကိုဟောစပြုသည်, he makes a beginning of rehearsing the zat; ဇာတ်ကိုဟောတော်မူသည်, he rehearses the zat, or he does rehearsing the zat; but some, particularly the verbal in ခြင်း, govern the preceding noun in the possessive, as ဇာတ်၏ဟောခြင်း, the rehearsing of the zat.

ADVERBS.

§126. Adverbs are of nine kinds, viz:—

1. Adverbs proper, as ဧကန်, certainly, အလကား, in vain, လားလား, an intensive before a negative, as လားလားမပြော, he says nothing at all, ခပ်, rather, prefixed to adjectives, formed from verbal roots by reduplication.

2. Pronominal adjectives used to modify a following verb, as အဘယ်သို့နေသနည်း, how does (he) remain? ထိုသို့နေသည်, (he) remains thus; or combined with a secondary noun and similarly applied, as ဘယ်လောက်ကြီးသနည်း, how large is (it)? သည်ကလောက်, properly သည်ခန့်လောက်ကြီးသည်, (it) is so large. How? in what manner? and thus, in this manner, are also expressed by combining pronominals, lightly accented with နှယ်, manner, as ဘဲ့နှယ်, how? သည့်နှယ်, thus.

3. Adverbs formed from simple or compound verbs:—

(a.) from simple verbs—by prefixing အ or တ, as အလွှန်ကြီးသည်, to be very great, အလျှင်သွား, go quick; တစောင်းကြည့်သည်, to look sideways;—by affixing စွာ, as ကောင်းစွာ, well;—by reduplication, as ကောင်းကောင်း, well;—by reduplication with အ prefixed, as အပြားပြား, variously;—by reduplication with တ prefixed, implying repetition or continuance, as တလဲလဲ, by turns, တမတ်မတ် in a standing posture; by reduplication, with အ prefixed to each member, as အသီးအသီး, separately;—

(b.) from compound verbs—by affixing စွာ, as ကောင်းမြတ်စွာ, excellently;—by prefixing အ to each member, as အကွပ်အညပ်, penally, by way of punishment;—by prefixing အ to the first member, and တ to the latter, as အဆောတလျင်, quickly, အငြတ်တနိုး, affectionately;—by prefixing အ or တ to the first, and reduplicating the latter, as အလျင်မြန်မြန်, fast, တစိုးရိမ်ရိမ်, anxiously;—by prefixing အ to the first, and တ to the latter reduplicated, as အမွှေးတကြိုင်ကြိုင် fragrantly;—by reduplicating the second member, in which case the adverb is a diminutive, as နက်ကျုတ်ကျုတ်, rather black;—by reduplicating both members, as ထူးထူးဆန်းဆန်း extraordinarily;—by prefixing အ or တ to each member reduplicated, as အထူးထူးအဆန်းဆန်း, ditto; တလည်လည်တဝိုက်ဝိုက်, circuitously;—by prefixing က or ပ (pronounced ဂ and ဗ) to each member, as ကရောက်ကရက်, disorderly, ပရုန်းပရင်း, tumultuously.

Under this head may be classed a few of anomalous construction, made up in imitation of some of the above forms, as အမှတ်တမဲ့, without notice, အစိုးတရ, as having power, ကြောက်လန့်တကြား, frightedly, အတျွေးအငမ်း, in expectance of payment; also a few formed from negatives, by affixing chiming increments, as မကောင်းတရောင်း, not well, မလှတမ, not handsome, not agreeable.

4. Adverbs formed from verbal roots, by reduplication, prefixing the negative မ to the first member, and တ to the second, thus intending to convey both the ideas of affirming, and denying, as မလောက်တလောက်, just enough, and hardly that, မမှီတမှီ, just reaching, and yet not quite reaching.

5. Adverbs formed from nouns by reduplication, dropping the syllabic အ, in the latter member, if it is the initial of the noun, and prefixing it to the former member, if the noun begins with a consonant, as အခါခါ, repeatedly, from အခါ, a time; အလိုလို, of one's own accord, from အလို, will, pleasure; အသောင်းသောင်း, thousands, from အသောင်း, ten thousand; အပြည်ပြည် of various countries, or from country to country, from ပြည်, a country.

N. B. Adverbs formed from verbs or nouns are sometimes used adjectively, as အပြားပြားသောအကြောင်းတို့, various reasons, အပြည်ပြည်သောမင်းတို့, kings of sundry or all countries.

6. Adverbs formed from nouns, beginning with a syllabic အ, by dropping the အ, prefixing တ, one, and affixing တည်း, only, as တညီတညီ, even, all together, from အညီ, evenness, uniformity.

7. Incomplete clauses, as အကယ်၍, certainly, for အကယ်ဖြစ်၍; အထူးသဖြင့်, exceedingly, for အထူးဖြစ်သဖြင့်.

8. Adverbial affixes, as follows:—

ကဲ့သို့, as, like as.

ချည်း, only, merely, nothing but, as လူတို့ချည်း, men only, nothing but men, သွားသည်ချည်း; he only goes, does nothing but go.

စင်, even, slightly emphatic.

စီ, each, as တယောက်စီ, each one, ကိုယ်စီ, ditto; apiece, as တခုစီ one a piece.

တစေ, same as ချည်း.

တည်း, used to designate an object with some particularity, as မိမိသားငယ်ကိုတည်းပေးသည်, he gives to his youngest son,—particularly—or in distinction from the other;—in this sense, used frequently in connection with ဟူသော, or ဟု, after a word explanatory of a subsequent word, as ကောင်းမှုတည်းဟူသောမျိုးစေ့ seed-grain, which means merit; မောင်လောက်တည်းဟုအမည်ရှိသည်, he has the name of Monng Louk;—used also, in asking questions, to designate the point on which the question turns, and frequently repeated after those words or clauses, in successive questions, which are intended to be set adversatively, as အသီးဧကိုတည်းစားလိုသလော၊ အသီးပူကိုတည်းစားလိုသလော, do you wish to eat cold fruit or hot? ငါ၌အပြစ်ရှိ၍တည်းနှစ်လုံးမသာရှိတော်မူသလော၊ ကိုယ်တော်၌တစုံတခုစိုးရိမ်ဘွယ်ရှိ၍တည်းနှစ်လုံးမသာရှိတော်မူသလော, is thy mind distressed because there is some fault in me, or because there is some cause of concern in thee?

ပင်, even, slightly emphatic.

ဖြစ်စေ, see သော်၎င်.

ဘက်, ditto,—colloquial.

မျှ (from အမျှ, as much as), frequently pronounced မှ, used as an intensive in negative sentences, as ဘယ်သူမျှမရှိ, there is not so much as one person, or there is not even one person; ဘဟာကိုမျှမရ, or briefly ဘာမှမရ, (he) obtains nothing at all; ရောက်သည်ကိုမျှမသိ, (he) knows not even of the arrival; sometimes expletive, as ရုန်းရင်းခတ်မျှပြုသည်, to make a disturbance.

လည်း, also; sometimes used familiarly for the continuative affix လျှင်.

လည်းကောင်း, both—and, placed after other affixes, and repeated at the close of successive clauses, as ငကို၎င်သေားကို၎င်မြင်သည်, he sees both me and my son; in modern style, equivalent to the pronominal adjective လို, that, as ၎င်နေ့ that day, ၎င်နည်း, in the same manner.

လျှင်, distributive, as တလလျှင်တတင်း, a basket a month; sometimes definitive or emphatic.

သော်၎င်, either—or, placed after other affixes, and repeated at the close of successive clauses, as ရွှေနှင့်သော်၎င်ငွေနှင့်သော်၎င်, either with gold or with silver.

သာ, only.

9. Verbal affixes are used adverbially, when placed after an adverbial or noun affix. The same is true of noun affixes, when placed after a verbal or adverbial affix (see under Nouns, §61).

INTERJECTIONS.

§127. A few of the most common are as follows:—

အစာ, အစာစာ, fie!

အည်း, eh! expressive of pain.

အမယ်, အမယ်လေး, အမယ်ကြီးလေး, mother! denoting surprise or distress.

အလယ်, အလယ်လေး oh! expressive of pain.

အလို, အလိုလေး, oh! expressive of pain.

အိမ်း, pronounced eh, yes! expressive of assent.

အေ, don't, disapprobatory—prohibitive.

အေ့ဟေ, aa haa! aha! contemptuous.

အေး, အေးအေး, yes!

အဲ, အဲအဲ, that's right.

အော, O! of various applications.

အောအော, O! expressive of satisfaction.

အော်, ah! oh!

အို, O! vocative, or indicative of pain.

ဖြစ်လေချင်း, ဖြစ်ရလေချင်း alas! expressive of sorrow.

လော there now! expressive of disapprobation.

လော့, here! take it!

လားလား, threatening.

သယ်, wonderful! rather ironical or disapprobatory.

သာမု, well done!

ဟေ့, haa! a familiar vocative, rather disrespectful.

ဟဲ့, heh! censuring, threatening.

ဟော, there! pointing to an object.

APPENDIX.

§128. numerals.

Cardinal.	Ordinal.
တစ်, or တ, ၁, one,	ပဌမ, first,
နှစ်, ၂, two,	ဒုတိယ, second,
သုံး, ၃, three,	တတိယ, third,
လေး, ၄, four,	စတုတ္ထ, fourth,
ငါး, ၅, five,	ပည္စမ, fifth,
ခြောက်, ၆, six,	ဆဌမ, sixth
ခုနစ်, ၇, seven,	သတ္တမ, seventh,
ရှစ်, ၈, eight,	အဌမ, eighth,
ကိုး, ၉, nine,	နဝမ, ninth,
တဆယ်, ၁၀, ten,	ဒသမ, tenth,
တဆယ်တစ်, ၁၁, eleven,	ဧကာဒသမ, eleventh,
တဆယ်နှစ်, ၁၂, twelve, &c.	ဒွါဒသမ twelfth,
နှစ်ဆယ်, ၂၀, twenty,	ဝီသတိမ, twentieth,
သုံးဆယ်, ၃၀, thirty, &c.	တိံသမ, thirtieth.

တရာ, ၁၀၀, one hundred,

တထောင်, ၁၀၀၀, one thousand,

တသောင်း, ၁၀၀၀၀, ten thousand,

တသိန်း, ၁၀၀၀၀၀, one hundred thousand,

တသန်း, ၁၀၀၀၀၀၀, one million,

တကုဋေ, ၁၀၀၀၀၀၀၀, ten millions.

§129. One half is expressed by တဝက်, or ဝက်, placed after the noun of dimension or quantity, as ယူဇနာတဝက်, or ယူဇနာဝက်, half a yoozana; one and a half, two and a half, &c. by တ, နှစ်, &c. placed before, and ခွဲ after, as တယူဇနာခွဲ, one yoozana and a half, နှစ်ယူဇနာခွဲ two yoozanas and a half, &c. One and a quarter, &c. is expressed by prefixing တ, &c. and affixing တစိတ်, connected to the noun by နှင့်, as တယူဇနာနှင့်တစိတ် one yoozana and a quarter, &c. All fractions, except one half, are commonly expressed by the help of အစု, a collection; thus သုံးစုတွင်တစု, one third, လေးစုတွင်တစု, one quarter, ငါးစုတွင်သုံးစု, three fifths.

time.

§130. The true epoch of Burman time is the annihilation of Gaudama, the last Boodh or deity, which is placed five hundred and fourty-four years before Christ; but the vulgar epoch is placed eleven hundred and eighty-two years later, or six hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ.

§131. Time is measured by lunar months, consisting of twenty-nine, and thirty days alternately.

Twelve lunar months make a common year, and seven years out of nineteen admit an intercalar month of thirty days each. The names of the months are as follows:—

တံကူး, April (nearly),	သတင်းကျွတ်, October,
ကဆုန်, May,	တန်ဆောင်မုန်း, November,
နယုန်, June,	နတ်တော်, December,
ဝါဆို, July,	ပြာသို, January,
ဝါခေါင်, August,	တပို့တွဲ, February,
တော်သလင်း, September,	တပေါင်း, March.

§132. တံကူး consists of twenty-nine days, ကဆုန် of thirty, and so on. In leap-year, the month ဝါဆို is repeated, under the name of ဒုတိယ, second July.

§133. A month is distinguished into two parts, the waxing, လဆန်း, and the wane, လပြည့်ကျော် [or လဆုတ်, St.] The full moon, လပြည့်, falls on the fifteenth of the waxing, after which a new count of days begins, and the change or disappearing of the moon, လကွယ်, falls on the fourteenth or fifteenth of the wane.

§134. The days of worship are the eighth of the waxing, the full, the eighth of the wane, and the change.

§135. Time is also divided into weeks, or periods of seven days, which are, of course, independent of the lunar arrangement, and follow the same order that obtains in all other parts of the world, viz:—

တနင်္ဂနွေ, Sunday,	ကြာသပတေး, Thursday,
တနင်္လာ, Monday,	သောက်ကြာ, Friday,
အင်္ဂါ, Tuesday,	စနေ, Saturday.
ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး, Wednesday,

§136. The day and the night are each divided into four periods, which as they terminate, are designated by their appropriate beat of drum. The single beat, တချက်တီး, accords with 9 o'clock, morning or evening; the double beat, နှစ်ချက်တီး, accords with 12 o'clock; the triple beat, သုံးချက်တီး, with 3 o'clock; and the quadruple beat, လေးချက်တီး, with 6 o'clock.

§137. A natural day is also divided into sixty equal parts, called နာရီ, which are again subject to various subdivisions seldom used but in astrological works.

weights.

§138. ချင်ရွေး, the seed of the abrus precatorius, marked (ွေ), as ၁ွေ, တရွေး.

ရွေးကြီး, the seed of the adenanthera pavonina, double the weight of the above, marked the same.

Notes

↑ The Sanscrit authorities, it is true, give the second letter of the class as the adjunct to the nasal ဏ; but the Pali authorities give the third, which is here adopted.
↑ Pronounced with the rising inflection of the voice, St.
↑ ^3.0 ^3.1 Ai, as in aisle. St.
↑ The latter sound especially obtains, when the initial letter is ည, ယ, ရ, or a consonant compounded with the symbol ယ or ရ [ee, as in been. St.]
↑ Or it. St.
↑ Ei, as in vein, skein, St.
↑ Ai, as in air. St.
↑ Ŏ, as oo in foot. St.
↑ ^9.0 ^9.1 ^9.2 Ooa, as oo in foot, or soon. St.
↑ Ei as in vein, skein, St.
↑ Pron. myit-ta. St.
↑ Pron. မျည် St.
↑ မင်း is also feminine. St.
↑ သ like th in the. St.

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

[1] The Sanscrit authorities, it is true, give the second letter of the class as the adjunct to the nasal ဏ; but the Pali authorities give the third, which is here adopted.

[2] Pronounced with the rising inflection of the voice, St.

[aisle-3] 3.0 ^3.1 Ai, as in aisle. St.

[4] The latter sound especially obtains, when the initial letter is ည, ယ, ရ, or a consonant compounded with the symbol ယ or ရ [ee, as in been. St.]

[5] Or it. St.

[6] Ei, as in vein, skein, St.

[7] Ai, as in air. St.

[8] Ŏ, as oo in foot. St.

[ooa-9] 9.0 ^9.1 ^9.2 Ooa, as oo in foot, or soon. St.

[10] Ei as in vein, skein, St.

[11] Pron. myit-ta. St.

[12] Pron. မျည် St.

[13] မင်း is also feminine. St.

[14] သ like th in the. St.

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