New Words       

pè-yá-deh  ပေးရတယ်  to have to give, to pay   

houq-teh  ဟုတ်တယ်။  to be right, true   

  Before getting into the taxi     

S1  Beh-lauq pè-yá-mǎlèh?  ဘယ်လောက် ပေးရမလဲ။  How much shall I have to pay? 

S2  Hnǎya pè-ba.  ၂၀၀/- ပေးပါ။  Give me 200 kyats. 

S1  Kaùn-ba-bi.  ကောင်းပါပြီ။  OK 

  Thwà-meh.  သွားမယ်။  Let’s go. (Literally “We’ll go”) 

  At the end of the journey     

S1  Hnǎya-naw?  ၂၀၀/-နော်။  It was 200 kyats, wasn’t it? 

S2  Houq-pa-deh.  ဟုတ်ပါတယ်။  Yes, that’s right. 

Notes 

pè-yá-deh: pè-deh means “to give” Inserting -yá- into pè-deh (or other verbs) adds the sense of “have to, must”: e.g. 

Di-hma t’ain-deh. ဒီမှာ ထိုင်တယ်။ He sat here. 

Di-hma t’ain-yá-deh. ဒီမှာ ထိုင်ရတယ်။ He had to sit here. 

Ngà-daw-la pè-meh. ငါးဒေါ်လာ ပေးမယ်။ I’ll give them $5. 

Ngà-daw-la pè-yá-meh. ငါးဒေါ်လာ ပေးရမယ်။ I’ll have to give them $5. 

Fares. Prices in Burma are subject to serious inflation. The taxi fares used here were normal in 1997 when the course was recorded. By 2008 (the date of some minor revisions) the lowest fares around town were 2000-3000 kyats.