Negative Questions (မ...ဘူးလား)
Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds
To ask a negative question in Burmese, simply wrap your verb in 'မ' and 'ဘူး' and add the question particle 'လား'.
- Place 'မ' before the verb: 'မစား' (don't eat).
- Add 'ဘူး' after the verb: 'မစားဘူး' (don't eat/didn't eat).
- Add 'လား' at the end: 'မစားဘူးလား' (Don't you eat?).
2. Negative Interrogative Formation
| Prefix | Verb | Suffix | Particle | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
မ
|
စား
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မစားဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
သွား
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မသွားဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
လာ
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မလာဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
လုပ်
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မလုပ်ဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
ကြည့်
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မကြည့်ဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
ဖတ်
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မဖတ်ဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
ဝယ်
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မဝယ်ဘူးလား
|
|
မ
|
သောက်
|
ဘူး
|
လား
|
မသောက်ဘူးလား
|
Meanings
This structure is used to ask for confirmation of a negative state or to express surprise that an action is not occurring.
Confirmation
Checking if a negative assumption is correct.
“မသိဘူးလား။ (Don't you know?)”
“မစားဘူးလား။ (Aren't you eating?)”
Reference Table
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Affirmative
|
Verb + တယ်
|
စားတယ်
|
|
Negative
|
မ + Verb + ဘူး
|
မစားဘူး
|
|
Question
|
Verb + လား
|
စားလား
|
|
Negative Question
|
မ + Verb + ဘူး + လား
|
မစားဘူးလား
|
|
Short Answer (Yes)
|
ဟုတ်တယ်
|
ဟုတ်တယ်
|
|
Short Answer (No)
|
မစားဘူး
|
မစားဘူး
|
Spectre de formalité
မသွားဘူးလားခင်ဗျာ/ရှင်။ (Asking a friend or colleague.)
မသွားဘူးလား။ (Asking a friend or colleague.)
မသွားဘူးလား။ (Asking a friend or colleague.)
မသွားဘူးလားဟ။ (Asking a friend or colleague.)
Negative Question Components
Prefix
- မ Negative marker
Core
- Verb Action
Suffix
- ဘူး Completion
Particle
- လား Question
Exemples par niveau
မသွားဘူးလား။
Aren't you going?
မစားဘူးလား။
Aren't you eating?
မသိဘူးလား။
Don't you know?
မလာဘူးလား။
Aren't you coming?
မလုပ်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you doing it?
မကြည့်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you watching?
မဖတ်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you reading?
မဝယ်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you buying it?
မကြိုက်ဘူးလား။
Don't you like it?
မပြောဘူးလား။
Didn't you tell?
မနားဘူးလား။
Aren't you resting?
မသောက်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you drinking?
မစဉ်းစားဘူးလား။
Aren't you thinking about it?
မနားလည်ဘူးလား။
Don't you understand?
မယုံဘူးလား။
Don't you believe it?
မမှတ်မိဘူးလား။
Don't you remember?
မသဘောတူဘူးလား။
Don't you agree?
မကြိုးစားဘူးလား။
Aren't you trying?
မစောင့်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you waiting?
မခေါ်ဘူးလား။
Aren't you calling?
မဆွေးနွေးဘူးလား။
Aren't you discussing it?
မဆုံးဖြတ်ဘူးလား။
Haven't you decided yet?
မအံ့သြဘူးလား။
Aren't you surprised?
မသတိထားဘူးလား။
Don't you notice?
Facile à confondre
Learners mix up 'စားလား' (Do you eat?) and 'မစားဘူးလား' (Don't you eat?).
Learners forget to add 'လား' to turn it into a question.
Confusing with future tense markers.
Erreurs courantes
မစားလား
မစားဘူးလား
စားမဘူးလား
မစားဘူးလား
မစားဘူး
မစားဘူးလား
စားဘူးလား
မစားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလ
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားလား
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားတယ်
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားတဲ့
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားနော်
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားကော
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားလို့
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားပဲ
မသွားဘူးလား
မသွားဘူးလားလေ
မသွားဘူးလား
Structures de phrases
___ မ___ဘူးလား။
ဘာလို့ ___ မ___ဘူးလား။
___ ကို မ___ဘူးလား။
ဒီနေ့ ___ မ___ဘူးလား။
Real World Usage
မလာဘူးလား။
မစားဘူးလား။
မသိဘူးလားခင်ဗျာ။
မသွားဘူးလား။
မကြည့်ဘူးလား။
မနားလည်ဘူးလား။
Consistency
Don't skip 'ဘူး'
Intonation
Politeness
Smart Tips
Use this to confirm someone's routine.
Use this to show you didn't expect the negative.
Use this to double-check information.
Use this to push someone to act.
Prononciation
Intonation
The 'လား' particle should have a rising pitch at the end.
Question Rising
မစားဘူးလား↑
Indicates a genuine question.
Mémorise-le
Moyen mnémotechnique
Remember 'M-B-L': M for 'မ', B for 'ဘူး', L for 'လား'.
Association visuelle
Imagine a sandwich: The verb is the meat, 'မ' is the top bun, 'ဘူး' is the bottom bun, and 'လား' is the toothpick holding it together.
Rhyme
မ at the start, ဘူး in the middle, လား at the end, the question is simple, my friend.
Story
Aung is sitting at a table. He isn't eating. His friend asks, 'မစားဘူးလား?' (Aren't you eating?). Aung smiles and says, 'မစားဘူး' (I'm not eating).
Word Web
Défi
Ask three people today if they are NOT doing something using this structure.
Notes culturelles
Asking negative questions is very common when showing concern for someone's well-being.
The structure evolved from the combination of the negative marker 'မ' and the completion marker 'ဘူး'.
Amorces de conversation
မစားဘူးလား။
မသွားဘူးလား။
မသိဘူးလား။
မကြိုက်ဘူးလား။
Sujets d'écriture
Erreurs courantes
Test Yourself
မင်း ___ စားဘူးလား။
Which is correct?
Find and fix the mistake:
မစားလား။
Arrange the words in the correct order:
All words placed
Click words above to build the sentence
Aren't you going?
Answer starts with: မသွ...
A: (Aren't you coming?) B: မလာဘူး။
Use 'ကြည့်' (watch).
မ + သွား + ဘူး + လား
Score: /8
Exercices pratiques
8 exercisesမင်း ___ စားဘူးလား။
Which is correct?
Find and fix the mistake:
မစားလား။
ဘူး / လား / မ / စား
Aren't you going?
A: (Aren't you coming?) B: မလာဘူး။
Use 'ကြည့်' (watch).
မ + သွား + ဘူး + လား
Score: /8
FAQ (8)
Yes, the structure is the same for all tenses.
It depends on your tone. Keep it neutral.
It marks the completion of the negative action.
No, it is for verbs.
It becomes a positive question.
Yes, it is very common in informal writing.
Use 'မ...ဘူး' for no, or 'ဟုတ်တယ်' for yes.
The structure is standard across Burma.
Scaffolded Practice
1
2
3
4
Mastery Progress
Needs Practice
Improving
Strong
Mastered
In Other Languages
¿No comes?
Burmese requires a double-particle structure.
Ne manges-tu pas?
French uses inversion for questions; Burmese uses a final particle.
Isst du nicht?
Burmese is strictly agglutinative.
Tabenai no?
Burmese does not conjugate the verb itself.
Ala ta'kul?
Burmese uses a specific suffix 'ဘူး' for completion.
Ni bu chi ma?
Burmese adds 'ဘူး' which is absent in Chinese.
