A2 Time Expressions 1 min read آسان

Using 'O'clock' (နာရီ)

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Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds

To say 'o'clock' in Burmese, place 'နာရီ' (naryi) after the number and add 'ထိုးပြီ' (htoe pyi) to indicate it has struck.

  • Structure: [Number] + နာရီ (naryi) + ထိုးပြီ (htoe pyi). Example: ၅ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ (5 o'clock).
  • For questions, use 'ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ' (be hnet naryi) meaning 'how many hours/what time'.
  • In casual speech, 'ထိုးပြီ' is often shortened or implied if the context is clear.
🔢 + ⏰ (နာရီ) + 🔨 (ထိုးပြီ)

Meanings

The primary way to express the top of the hour, literally translating to 'the hour has struck'.

1

Exact Hour

Used to state the current time or a specific appointment time.

“ကိုးနာရီမှာ တွေ့မယ်။ (Let's meet at 9 o'clock.)”

“ဆယ်နာရီ ထိုးတော့မယ်။ (It's about to be 10 o'clock.)”

2

Duration vs Point in Time

While 'naryi' means hour, in this context, it marks the point on the clock rather than the length of time.

“သုံးနာရီ ကြာတယ်။ (It takes three hours.)”

“သုံးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ။ (It is 3 o'clock.)”

Common Hourly Expressions

Number Burmese Script Pronunciation Meaning
1 တစ်နာရီ ta-naryi 1 o'clock
2 နှစ်နာရီ hnit-naryi 2 o'clock
3 သုံးနာရီ thone-naryi 3 o'clock
4 လေးနာရီ lay-naryi 4 o'clock
5 ငါးနာရီ nga-naryi 5 o'clock
12 ဆယ့်နှစ်နာရီ se-hnit-naryi 12 o'clock

Spoken Contractions

Full Form Spoken Form Context
တစ်နာရီ (tit naryi) တနာရီ (ta naryi) General speaking
ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ (be hnet naryi) ဘယ်နှနာရီ (be hna naryi) Casual questioning

Reference Table

Reference table for Using 'O'clock' (နာရီ)
Form Structure Example
Affirmative [Num] + နာရီ + ထိုးပြီ ၂ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ (It's 2:00)
Negative [Num] + နာရီ + မထိုးသေးဘူး ၂ နာရီ မထိုးသေးဘူး (It's not 2:00 yet)
Question ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ + ထိုးပြီလဲ ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ (What time is it?)
At a time [Num] + နာရီ + မှာ ၃ နာရီမှာ (At 3:00)
Exactly [Num] + နာရီ + တိတိ ၄ နာရီ တိတိ (Exactly 4:00)
About to [Num] + နာရီ + ထိုးတော့မယ် ၅ နာရီ ထိုးတော့မယ် (Almost 5:00)

طیف رسمیت

رسمی
ကိုးနာရီ အချိန် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။

ကိုးနာရီ အချိန် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ (General time telling)

خنثی
ကိုးနာရီ ထိုးပါပြီ။

ကိုးနာရီ ထိုးပါပြီ။ (General time telling)

غیر رسمی
ကိုးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ။

ကိုးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ။ (General time telling)

عامیانه
ကိုးနာရီ ရှိပြီ။

ကိုးနာရီ ရှိပြီ။ (General time telling)

Time Components

Time (အချိန်)

Hour

  • နာရီ naryi

Minute

  • မိနစ် minit

Verb

  • ထိုး to strike

Point vs Duration

Point in Time
၃ နာရီမှာ At 3 o'clock
Duration
၃ နာရီကြာ For 3 hours

Asking the Time

1

Want to ask the time?

YES
Use 'Be hnet naryi htoe pyi le?'
NO
State the time using 'Num + naryi htoe pyi'

Time of Day Markers

🌅

Morning

  • • မနက် (manet)
☀️

Afternoon

  • • နေလည် (nay le)
🌇

Evening

  • • ညနေ (nya nay)
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Examples by Level

1

တစ်နာရီ။

One o'clock.

2

ငါးနာရီ။

Five o'clock.

1

အခု လေးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ။

It is 4 o'clock now.

2

ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ?

What time is it?

1

ခြောက်နာရီ တိတိမှာ လာခဲ့ပါ။

Please come at exactly 6 o'clock.

2

ခုနစ်နာရီ မထိုးသေးဘူး။

It hasn't struck 7 yet.

1

ညနေ လေးနာရီအချိန်တွင် အစည်းအဝေး စတင်ပါမည်။

The meeting will begin at 4:00 PM.

2

ရထားက ရှစ်နာရီမှာ ထွက်ခွာမှာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

The train will be departing at 8 o'clock.

1

သန်းခေါင်ယံ တစ်နာရီအချိန်၌ တိတ်ဆိတ်လျက်ရှိသည်။

It was silent at the hour of 1 AM.

2

ဆယ်နာရီ ထိုးခါနီးအချိန်တွင် သူရောက်လာသည်။

He arrived just as it was about to strike 10.

1

နာရီပြန်တစ်ချက် တီးသောအခါဝယ်...

When the clock struck one once more...

2

အချိန်နာရီ တရွေ့ရွေ့ ကုန်ဆုံးလာသည်နှင့်အမျှ...

As the hours passed by slowly...

Easily Confused

Using 'O'clock' (နာရီ) در مقابل Naryi vs. Minit

Learners swap 'hour' and 'minute' because they sound distinct but are used in the same slot.

Using 'O'clock' (နာရီ) در مقابل Htoe vs. Shi

Both can be used to state time, but 'htoe' is for the action of striking.

Using 'O'clock' (နာရီ) در مقابل Tit vs. Ta

Using the formal 'tit' in casual speech sounds robotic.

اشتباهات رایج

✗

၅ နာရီ ဖြစ်တယ်

✓

၅ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ

Don't use 'pyit tal' (to be). Use 'htoe' (to strike) for time.
✗

နာရီ ၅

✓

၅ နာရီ

The number must come before the noun 'naryi'.
✗

တစ် နာရီ

✓

တနာရီ

In speech, 'tit' usually softens to 'ta'.
✗

ဘယ်အချိန်လဲ?

✓

ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ?

While 'what time' is okay, 'how many hours' is the standard way to ask.
✗

၃ နာရီ ကြာမှာ တွေ့မယ်

✓

၃ နာရီမှာ တွေ့မယ်

Don't use 'kyar' (duration) when you mean 'at' a specific time.
✗

၁၂ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ

✓

ဆယ့်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီ

Ensure you use the full word for 12 (se-hnit) not just the digits.
✗

၅ နာရီ မထိုးဘူး

✓

၅ နာရီ မထိုးသေးဘူး

Use 'thay buu' (not yet) for time that hasn't arrived.
✗

ည ၅ နာရီ

✓

ညနေ ၅ နာရီ

Use 'nya nay' for evening (5 PM), not 'nya' (night/late night).
✗

မနက် ၈ နာရီ တိ

✓

မနက် ၈ နာရီ တိတိ

The formal word for 'exactly' is doubled: 'ti ti'.
✗

နာရီ ၅ ချက်

✓

၅ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ

Using 'chet' (strokes) is for counting gongs, not usually for telling time in conversation.
✗

အချိန် ၅ နာရီ

✓

၅ နာရီ

Adding 'achein' (time) is redundant in casual speech.
✗

၅ နာရီ ရှိပြီ

✓

၅ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ

While 'shi pyi' is used, 'htoe pyi' is more precise for the top of the hour.

Sentence Patterns

အခု ___ နာရီ ထိုးပြီ။

___ နာရီမှာ တွေ့ကြစို့။

___ နာရီ မထိုးသေးဘူး။

Real World Usage

Texting a friend very common

9 နာရီ တွေ့မယ်နော်

Job Interview occasional

ကျွန်တော် ၉ နာရီ တိတိမှာ ရောက်ပါမယ်။

Ordering Food common

၁ နာရီမှာ လာယူမယ်။

Social Media Event common

ပွဲက ညနေ ၆ နာရီမှာ စပါမယ်။

Airport Announcement occasional

လေယာဉ်သည် ည ၁၁ နာရီတွင် ဆိုက်ရောက်ပါမည်။

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💡

The 'Htoe' Rule

Always remember 'htoe' (strike). If you just say '5 naryi', it sounds like you are just naming the concept of 5 hours.
⚠️

1 vs 1:00

Be careful with 'tit' and 'ta'. Use 'ta' for the time 1:00, but 'tit' when counting items.
🎯

Precision

Add 'ti ti' to sound more professional and punctual.

Smart Tips

Soften 'tit' to 'ta' and 'hnit' to 'hna' in fast speech.

tit naryi → ta naryi

Add 'htoe pyi le' to the end of your question.

be hnet naryi? → be hnet naryi htoe pyi le?

Use 'ti ti' to emphasize your punctuality.

9 naryi hma lar mal → 9 naryi ti ti hma lar mal

تلفظ

ta-naryi

Softening of 'Tit'

The number 1 (tit) changes to 'ta' when followed by 'naryi'.

ht-oh

The 'H' in Htoe

The 'h' in 'htoe' is aspirated. Blow a little air out.

Question Rise

ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီလဲ? ↑

Rising intonation at the end indicates a question.

Memorize It

Mnemonic

Naryi sounds like 'Now-Rye'. Imagine a rye bread clock striking NOW.

Visual Association

Visualize a giant Burmese gong shaped like a clock. Every time the hour hits, someone strikes (htoe) it with a mallet.

Rhyme

When the hour is nigh, just say Naryi!

Story

A monk stands by a big bell. He waits for the sun to hit the mark. When it hits 5, he strikes (htoe) the bell 5 times and shouts 'Nga Naryi Htoe Pyi!'

Word Web

နာရီထိုးမိနစ်စက္ကန့်အချိန်မနက်ည

چالش

Look at your watch 5 times today and say the hour out loud in Burmese using 'htoe pyi'.

نکات فرهنگی

In Myanmar, people are very relaxed about time (often called 'Myanmar Rubber Time'). However, for formal events, 'Naryi ti ti' is strictly followed.

Historically, Burmese time was measured in 'maung' (gongs). You might still hear elders use 'maung' in rural areas.

The word 'Naryi' comes from Pali 'nāḷikā', referring to a measure of time or a water clock.

Conversation Starters

“

အခု ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ?

“

မနက်ဖြန် ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီမှာ တွေ့မလဲ?

“

ရုံးက ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီမှာ ပိတ်သလဲ?

Journal Prompts

Write your daily schedule using Burmese hours.
Describe what you do at 7 AM, 12 PM, and 6 PM.
Write a short story about someone who is late for a 10 o'clock meeting.
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Test Yourself

Fill in the word for 'o'clock'.

အခု ငါး___ ထိုးပြီ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: နာရီ
'Naryi' is the word for hour/o'clock.
How do you ask 'What time is it?' چند گزینه‌ای

Select the correct question:

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ?
'Be hnet naryi' is the standard way to ask 'how many hours'.
Correct the sentence: 'It is 3 o'clock.' Error Correction

Find and fix the mistake:

သုံးနာရီ ဖြစ်တယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သုံးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ
Use 'htoe pyi' for the current time.
Translate 'At 10 o'clock' to Burmese. ترجمه

At 10 o'clock

Answer starts with: ဆယ်...

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဆယ်နာရီမှာ
'Hma' is the particle for 'at'.

Score: /4

تمرین‌های عملی

4 exercises
Fill in the word for 'o'clock'.

အခု ငါး___ ထိုးပြီ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: နာရီ
'Naryi' is the word for hour/o'clock.
How do you ask 'What time is it?' چند گزینه‌ای

Select the correct question:

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်နှစ်နာရီ ထိုးပြီလဲ?
'Be hnet naryi' is the standard way to ask 'how many hours'.
Correct the sentence: 'It is 3 o'clock.' Error Correction

Find and fix the mistake:

သုံးနာရီ ဖြစ်တယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သုံးနာရီ ထိုးပြီ
Use 'htoe pyi' for the current time.
Translate 'At 10 o'clock' to Burmese. ترجمه

At 10 o'clock

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဆယ်နာရီမှာ
'Hma' is the particle for 'at'.

Score: /4

سوالات متداول (6)

Yes, but you usually add 'kyar' (long) to clarify. `သုံးနာရီကြာ` means 'for 3 hours'.

Burmese uses time-of-day words: `မနက်` (manet) for AM and `ညနေ` (nya nay) or `ည` (nya) for PM.

In casual speech, you can drop it, but it's better to keep it for clarity until you are fluent.

`Naryi` is the clock/hour, while `achein` is the general concept of 'time'.

You can say `နေလည် ၁၂ နာရီ` (nay le 12 naryi).

That is the traditional system based on gongs. It's rare in cities now.

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In Other Languages

Spanish low

Son las [Number]

Spanish uses 'to be', Burmese uses 'to strike'.

French partial

Il est [Number] heures

Burmese doesn't need a subject like 'It'.

German moderate

Es ist [Number] Uhr

German 'Uhr' stays the same for 1 or 12, like Burmese 'naryi'.

Japanese high

[Number] ji desu

Japanese uses a copula (desu), Burmese uses an action verb (htoe).

Arabic low

Al-sa'a [Number]

Word order is reversed.

Previous
Stating the Minute (မိနစ်)
Next
Half Past and Quarter Past/To (နာရီခွဲ / ဆယ့်ငါးမိနစ်)

Related Grammar Rules

A1

Months of the Year (ဇန်နဝါရီ, ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ...)
A1

Days of the Week (တနင်္ဂနွေ, တနင်္လာ...)
A1

Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday (ဒီနေ့, မနက်ဖြန်, မနေ့က)
A1

This Week, Next Week, Last Week (ဒီအပတ်, နောက်အပတ်, အရင်အပတ်)
B2

Time Clauses: 'Ever since' (ကတည်းက)
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