Words for siblings       

ǎko  အကို  older brother   

ǎmá  အမ  older sister   

maun  မောင်  younger brother (of woman)   

nyi  ညီ  younger brother (of man)   

nyi-má  ညီမ  younger sister (see note)   

hnǎmá  နှမ  younger sister (see note)   

nyi-ǎko maun-hnǎmá or just maun-hnǎma  ညီအကိုမောင်နှမ or just မောင်နှမ  brothers and sisters   

  The following words and phrases are not practised on the tape.      

  They are noted here for reference.     

S1  Ăp’e-ǎme shí- dhé-dhǎlà?  အဖေအမေ ရှိသေးသလား။  Are your parents still alive? (see note) 

S2  Houq-kéh. Shí-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ ရှိပါတယ်။  Yes, they are. 

or  Ăme shí-ba-deh.  အမေ ရှိပါတယ်။  My mother is. 

  Ăp’e s’oùn-dhwà-ba-bi.  အဖေ ဆုံးသွားပါပြီ။  My father has died. 

or  Mǎshí-dáw-ba-bù. S’oùn-dhwà-ba-bi.  မရှိတော့ပါဘူး။ ဆုံးသွားပါပြီ။  No. They have died. 

S1  Nyi-ǎko maun-hnǎmá shí-dhǎlà?  ညီအကိုမောင်နှမ ရှိသလား။  Do you have any brothers and sisters? 

S2  Houq-kéh. Shí-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ ရှိပါတယ်။  Yes, I have. 

S1  Beh-hnǎyauq shí-dhǎlèh?  ဘယ်နှစ်ယောက် ရှိသလဲ။  How many do you have? 

S2  Ăko tǎyauq, ǎmá tǎyauq-néh nyi-má hnǎyauq shí-ba-deh.  အကို တစ်ယောက် အမတစ်ယောက်နဲ့ ညီမ နှစ်ယောက် ရှိပါတယ်။  I have an older brother, an older sister and two younger sisters. 

  S1 points to her companion     

S1  Da-gá cǎmá ǎko-ba.  ဒါက ကျမ အကိုပါ။  This is my brother. 

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

  Notes     

  Ăp’e-ǎme shí-dhè -dhǎlà ? “Are your parents still alive?” The suffix -thè/-dhè conveys the meaning “still”. Compare these two sentences:     

  Ban-daiq-hma ǎlouq louq-ne-dhǎlà?  ဘဏ်တိုက်မှာ အလုပ် လုပ်နေသလား။  Is he working at the bank? 

  Ban-daiq-hma ǎlouq louq-ne-dhè-dhǎlà?  ဘဏ်တိုက်မှာ အလုပ် လုပ်နေသေးသလား။  Is he still working at the bank? 

Mǎshí-dáw-ba-bù “They are no longer living.”. For the suffix -táw/-dáw with a negated verb see 5.6, 6.3, 11.1, 11.3. 

Nyi-má and hnǎmá “younger sister”. In earlier times nyi-má referred to the younger sister of a woman, and hnǎmá to the younger sister of a man. In contemporary Burmese, however, hnǎmá is rarely used, and nyi-má is used for the younger sisters of both men and women. 

Nyi-ǎko maun-hnǎmá “brothers and sisters”. Another word you may hear is thà-jìn, a term which includes the speaker and his/her brothers and sisters; so Thà-jìn thoùn-yauq shí-ba-deh would mean “There are three of us all told” (e.g. the speaker and two others). 

For a fuller list of words for relatives see the Topical Vocabulary for kin terms. 

Da-gá “this” can refer to a person. For suffix -gá/-ká see Lesson 10.5.