New Words       

la-deh  လာတယ်  to come   

saún-ne-deh  စောင့်နေတယ်  to wait   

  Sentences     

S1  Beh ǎc’ein la-yá-mǎlèh?  ဘယ်အချိန် လာရမလဲ။  What time should I come? 

S2  Shiq-na-yi-gwèh-hma la-ba.  ၈-နာရီခွဲမှာ လာပါ။  Please come at half past eight. 

or  Shiq-na-yi-gwèh la-ba.  ၈-နာရီခွဲ လာပါ။  Please come at half past eight. 

S1  Yá-ba-deh.  ရပါတယ်။  Fine. 

S2  Shiq-na-yi-gwèh-hma di-hma saún-ne-meh.  ၈-နာရီခွဲမှာ ဒီမှာ စောင့်နေမယ်။  I’ll wait here at half past eight. 

S1  Kaùn-ba-bi.  ကောင်းပါပြီ။  Very well. 

Notes 

Beh ǎc’ein la-yá-mǎlèh? Another occurrence of the suffix -yá - “have to, should, ought to”. For earlier examples see Lesson 5.3 Beh-lauq pè-yá-mǎlèh? “How much should I pay?”, and Lesson 5.7 Beh-hma yaq-yá-mǎlèh? “Where should I stop?”. 

Beh ǎc’ein la-yá-mǎlèh? There are a couple of common variants for la- “to come” in this context. You may hear la-géh- “to come round” or “to come back” or “to come over”; or la-k’aw- “to come and fetch”; e.g. 

S1 Beh ǎc’ein la-géh-yá-mǎlèh? ဘယ်အချိန် လာခဲ့ရမလဲ။ What time should I come round? 

S2 Shiq-na-yi-gwèh la-géh-ba. ၈-နာရီခွဲ လာခဲ့ပါ။ Please come round at half past eight. 

You may also hear la-ze-jin-deh “to want (someone) to come”, and the variants la-géh-ze-jin-deh and la-k’aw-ze-jin-deh. 

Example: 

S1 Beh ǎc’ein la-géh-ze-jin-dhǎlèh? ဘယ်အချိန် လာခဲ့စေချင်သလဲ။ What time would you like me to come round? 

S2 Shiq-na-yi-gwèh la-géh-ba. ၈-နာရီခွဲ လာခဲ့ပါ။ Please come round at half past eight. 

Shiq-na-yi-gwèh-hma: the suffix -hma “at, on, in” is optional with times. For examples of both options see the sentences above.