New Words       

cǎnaw  ကျွန်တော် often written ကျနော်  I (man speaking)   

cǎnáw  ကျွန်တော့် often written ကျနော့်  my (man speaking)   

cǎmá  ကျွန်မ often written ကျမ  I, my (woman speaking)   

twé-deh  တွေ့တယ်  to meet   

twé-yá-da  တွေ့ရတာ  being able to meet, having the opportunity to meet   

wùn-tha-deh  ဝမ်းသာတယ်  to be happy   

-lèh  -လဲ  also   

  Sentences     

S2  Twé-yá-da wùn-tha-ba-deh.  တွေ့ရတာ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ်။  I am happy to have met you. 

S1  Cǎnaw-lèh wùn-tha-ba-deh.  ကျနော်လဲ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ်။  I am happy too (man speaking). 

or  Cǎmá-lèh wùn-tha-ba-deh.  ကျမလဲ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ်။  I am happy too (woman speaking). 

  Notes     

  cǎnaw “I (male speaker)” and cǎmá “I (female speaker)”. The commonest terms for “I”. As you have seen, Burmese normally omits words for “you” and “I”, but when there is a change of subject, as here (“I’m happy too - as well as you”), you need to put one in to show who you are talking about. Careful speakers say cun-daw and cun-má, but the slightly shortened forms used above are more common. Originally the words meant “your honoured servant” and “your female servant” respectively.     

  twé-yá-da “being able to meet, having the opportunity to meet” from twé-deh “to meet”. Compare yauq-ne-da “arriving” in 9.3, tèh-yá-da “staying” 9.6, ne-yá-da “staying, living, the stay” 9.9.     

  wùn-tha-ba-deh “I am happy.” Literally “my stomach (wùn) is pleasant.”     

  Twé-yá-da wùn-tha-ba-deh “I am happy to have met you.” Literally “At meeting I am happy.”     

  Cǎnaw-lèh wùn-tha-ba-deh. “I am happy too.” Literally “I-too-be-happy” The suffix -lèh means “also, too, as well”; e.g.     

S1  Di-né à-dehnaw?  ဒီနေ့ အားတယ်နော်။  You are free today, aren’t you? 

S2  Houq-kéh. Neq-p’an-lèh à-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ နက်ဖန်လဲ အားပါတယ်။  Yes. And I’m free tomorrow as well.