Ability and Inability: Expressing 'Can' and 'Cannot'
Chapter in 30 Seconds
Unlock your potential in Burmese by learning how to express what you can and cannot do.
- Identify the particles needed to express physical and mental ability.
- Construct negative sentences to describe limitations or prohibitions.
- Differentiate between personal capability and external permission.
ما ستتعلمه
Learn the particles and structures used to express capability or its absence. You'll be able to say 'I can speak Burmese' or 'I cannot go'.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
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1
By the end you will be able to: Use 'နိုင်' (naing) to state personal abilities like speaking languages.
نصائح وحيل (4)
Consistency
Check the Verb
Context is key
Focus on the end
المفردات الرئيسية (5)
Real-World Preview
Ordering at a Restaurant
Review Summary
- Verb + နိုင် + တယ်
- မ + Verb + နိုင် + ဘူး
- Verb + လို့ + ရ + တယ်
- Verb + လို့ + မရ + ဘူး
- Sentence + လား
- Verb + လို့ + ရ + တယ်
أخطاء شائعة
Using နိုင် implies physical ability, but eating is a permission context here.
Again, confuse ability with permission/possibility.
Often learners forget to add the question marker correctly to the verb.
القواعد في هذا الفصل (6)
Next Steps
You have done a fantastic job! Keep practicing these structures and you will be speaking fluently in no time.
Self-talk describing your skills.
تدريب سريع (10)
ကျွန်တော် မ___နိုင်ဘူး။
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Expressing 'Can' / 'To be able to' (နိုင်သည်)
ဒီမှာ ထိုင်___မရဘူး။
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Expressing 'It is impossible to...' (လုပ်လို့မရဘူး)
Find and fix the mistake:
သူ သွားရလား (meaning ability).
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Asking 'Can you...?' (လုပ်နိုင်လား)
သူ မ___နိုင်ဘူး။
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Expressing 'Cannot' (မ + Verb + နိုင်ဘူး)
Find and fix the mistake:
ကျွန်တော် သွားနိုင်တယ် (meaning I am allowed to go).
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Ability vs. Permission (နိုင်သည် vs. ရသည်)
ဒီမှာ ထိုင်___သလား။ (Permission)
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Ability vs. Permission (နိုင်သည် vs. ရသည်)
I cannot come.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Expressing 'Cannot' (မ + Verb + နိုင်ဘူး)
I cannot eat.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Expressing 'Can' / 'To be able to' (နိုင်သည်)
Which is correct?
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Asking 'Can you...?' (လုပ်နိုင်လား)
ကျွန်တော် ရေကူး___တယ်။
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Ability vs. Permission (နိုင်သည် vs. ရသည်)
Score: /10