New Words       

lá  လ  month   

hniq  နှစ်  year   

  Sentences     

S1  (Bǎma-pye) yauq-ne-da ca-bi-là?  (ဗမာပြည်) ရောက်နေတာ ကြာပြီလား။  Is it long since you came (to Burma)? 

S2  Ca-bi. S’eh-lá-lauq shí-bi.  ကြာပြီ။ ဆယ်လလောက် ရှိပြီ။  Yes: it’s been about ten months. 

  Notes     

  Bǎma and Myan-ma. For the two forms of the name of the country see 3.4.     

  Mǎca-dhè-ba-bù “not long yet, not long so far”. For -thè/-dhè with negated verbs see Lesson 9.1.     

  -lauq: a suffix added to quantities with the meaning “about, approximately”:     

  bi-ya thoùn-loùn  ဘီယာ သုံးလုံး  three cans of beer 

  bi-ya thoùn-loùn-lauq  ဘီယာ သုံးလုံးလောက်  about three cans of beer 

  ngà-hniq  ငါးနှစ်  five years 

  ngà-hniq-lauq  ငါးနှစ်လောက်  about five years 

  S’eh-yeq-lauq shí-bi “It’s been about ten days”. A common variant is:     

  S’eh-yeq-lauq-bèh shí-ba-dhè-deh.  ဆယ်ရက်လောက်ပဲ ရှိပါသေးတယ်။  It’s been only about ten days so far. 

  The suffix -p’èh/-bèh means “only”, and the suffix -thè/-dhè means “so far, as yet”. Compare the similar variant in 9.1.