New Words       

weh-deh  ဝယ်တယ်  to buy   

ǎ lo *shí-deh  အလို ရှိတယ်  to need, to want   

lo-jin-deh  လိုချင်တယ်  to want (something)   

cí-deh  ကြည့်တယ်  to look at   

shí-deh  ရှိတယ်  to have, to be (somewhere)   

Some imported items in shops are known by their English names in Burmese: e.g. film, plaster, postcard, cigarette, sellotape, ball pen, T-shirt, and others.       

  Sentences     

S1  Ba ǎlo shí-ba-dhǎlèh?  ဘာ အလိုရှိပါသလဲ။  What do you need? 

or  Ba lo-jin-dhǎlèh?  ဘာ လိုချင်သလဲ။  What do you want? 

or  Ba weh-jin-ló-lèh?  ဘာ ဝယ်ချင်လို့လဲ။  What would you like to buy? 

S2  Pó-sǎkaq shí-là?  ပို့စကဒ် ရှိလား။  Do you have any postcards? 

S1  Shí-ba-deh. Di-hma.  ရှိပါတယ်။ ဒီမှာ။  Yes I have. Here. 

S2  Cí-meh-naw?  ကြည့်မယ်နော်။  Do you mind if I have a look at them? 

S1  Cí-ba.  ကြည့်ပါ။  Please do. 

  Yá-ba-deh.  ရပါတယ်။  That’s all right. 

Notes 

lo-jin-deh: literally: “need+want to”. Clearly the word has changed its meaning since this compound was first put together. Don’t confuse: 

[…] lo-jin-deh “to want [something]” with 

[…]-jin-deh “to want [to do something]”: e.g. 

P’ǎlin lo-jin-ba-deh. ဖလင် လိုချင်ပါတယ်။ I want a film. 

T’ain-jin-ba-deh. ထိုင်ချင်ပါတယ်။ I want to sit down. 

plaster = Band Aid in the USA. 

sellotape = Scotch tape in the USA. 

ball pen = ball point pen in the UK. 

Variant 

In place of Cí-meh-naw? you may hear: 

Cí-yá-aun. ကြည့်ရအောင်။ Can I have a look?