Sentences     

S1  Pu-deh-naw?  ပူတယ်နော်။  It’s hot, isn’t it? 

S2  Houq-kéh. Pu-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ ပူပါတယ်။  Yes, it is. 

S1  È-deh-naw?  အေးတယ်နော်။  It’s cold, isn’t it? 

S2  Houq-kéh. È-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ အေးပါတယ်။  Yes, it is. 

S1  Kaùn-deh-naw?  ကောင်းတယ်နော်။  It’s good, isn’t it? 

S2  Houq-kéh. Kaùn-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ ကောင်းပါတယ်။  Yes, it is. 

S1  Yá-deh-naw?  ရတယ်နော်။  It’s all right, isn’t it? 

S2  Houq-kéh. Yá-ba-deh.  ဟုတ်ကဲ့။ ရပါတယ်။   Yes, it is. 

Notes 

Houq-kéh. Literally “It is so.” Used like “Yes” in English to show you agree with what someone has said. Also to show you are following what they say - you hear it a lot when someone is listening to a caller on the phone. 

-ba (in pu-ba-deh etc) is a suffix people add in to show they are being polite. So both Pu-ba-deh and Pu-deh mean “It’s hot”, but the first is a little more polite and courteous, the second a little more casual, even brusque. For practice on the tape we use the politer option […]-ba-deh throughout. Note that -ba is not needed in questions: it is perfectly polite to ask Pu-dehnaw? (rather than Pu-ba-deh-naw?)