New Words       

di-nà-hma  ဒီနားမှာ  near here (“this + area + in”)   

yá-deh  ရတယ်  to get, to obtain   

thí-deh  သိတယ်  to know   

di-beq  ဒီဘက်  this way   

ho-beq-hma  ဟိုဘက်မှာ  over there   

  The question     

S1  Ouq-t’ouq weh-jin-ba-deh.  ဦးထုပ် ဝယ်ချင်ပါတယ်။  I’d like to buy a hat. 

  Di-nà-hma beh-hma yá-mǎlèh thí-(dhǎ)là?  ဒီနားမှာ ဘယ်မှာ ရမလဲ သိ(သ)လား။  Do you know where I could get one near here? 

  Answer 1     

S2  Shí-ba-deh.  ရှိပါတယ်။  There are some. 

or  Yá-ba-deh.  ရပါတယ်။  You can get one. 

S2  Di-beq thwà-ba.  ဒီဘက် သွားပါ။  Go this way. 

Answer 2       

S2  Di-nà-hma mǎshí-ba-bù.  ဒီနားမှာ မရှိပါဘူး။  There aren’t any around here. 

  Ho-beq-hma yá-meh.  ဟိုဘက်မှာ ရမယ်။  You’d get some way over there. 

Answer 3       

S2  Mǎthí-ba-bù.  မသိပါဘူး။  I don’t know. 

  S’àw-rì-naw?  ဆောရီးနော်။  I’m sorry. 

Notes 

Di-nà-hma beh-hma yá-mǎlèh thí-dhǎlà? A long sentence. It is built up like this: 

Beh-hma yá- mǎlèh? ဘယ်မှာ ရမလဲ။ Where could I get one? 

Beh-hma yá- mǎlèh thí-dhǎlà? ဘယ်မှာ ရမလဲ သိသလား။ Do you know where could I get one? 

Di-nà-hma beh-hma yá-mǎlèh thí-dhǎlà? ဒီနားမှာ ဘယ်မှာ ရမလဲ သိသလား။ Do you know where I could get one near here? 

Beh-hma yá-mǎlèh? “Where can I get one?” Notice that the Burmese has yá-mǎlèh, literally “Where shall I get one?” It’s as if you were asking “Where would I get one (if I wanted to)?” 

Ho-beq-hma “over there” is used where the place referred to is quite a long way away. 

Di-nà-hma beh-hma yá-mǎlèh thí-dhǎlà? “Do you know where I could get one near here?”. A common variant of this question is: Di-nà-hma beh-hma yá-mǎlè h mǎthí-bù ? This version appears to say “I don’t know where I could get one near here”, but it is often used to imply the unspoken question “… I wonder if you could help me?”.