Burmese By Ear/Essential Myanmar Introduction to the Burmese Language John Okell

1.6. Very, a little, not very.

3. numbers

Numbers 

Numbers between the round tens are made in the same way as in English; examples: 

    c’auq-s’éh-lè   ခြောက်ဆယ့်လေး   64 

    shiq-s'e hniq   ရှစ်ဆယ် နှစ်   82 

    ngà-zéh-kò   ငါးဆယ့်ကိုး   59 

Notice that the syllable s’eh (or zeh) “ten” is normally changed to s’éh (or zéh) (low tone is changed to creaky tone) when followed by another number. 

The numbers 11 to 19 inclusive often lose the first syllable. In place of - 

The numbers 11 to 19 inclusive often lose the first syllable. In place of - 

    tăs’éh-tiq   တစ်ဆယ့်တစ်၊   11 

    tăs’éh-hniq   တစ်ဆယ့်နှစ်၊ စသည်   12 

you often hear - 

    s’éh-tiq   ဆယ့်တစ်၊   11 

    s’éh-hniq   ဆယ့်နှစ်၊ စသည်   12 

Variant. 

In place of c’auq-s’éh-lè etc you may sometimes hear c’auq-s’eh néh lè, literally “sixty and four”. More examples: 

    ngà-zéh-kò   ငါးဆယ့်ကိုး   59 

    or ngà-zeh-néh ko   ငါးဆယ်နဲ့ ကိုး   59 

    thoùn-zéh-c’auq   သုံးဆယ့်ခြောက်   36 

    or thoùn-zeh-néh c’auq   သုံးဆယ်နဲ့ ခြောက်   36 

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