The Particle (တဲ့) for Reporting Information
Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds
Use တဲ့ (te) at the end of a sentence to report information you heard from someone else without claiming personal knowledge.
- Attach တဲ့ to the end of a statement to mean 'I heard that...' or 'Someone said...'. Example: မိုးရွာမယ်တဲ့ (It will rain, they say).
- It replaces the standard sentence finisher တယ် (de) in informal reported speech.
- Use it to distance yourself from the truth of the statement, effectively saying 'don't quote me on this!'
Reporting Different Sentence Types
| Type | Original Ending | Reported Ending (တဲ့) | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Statement (Present/Past)
|
တယ် (de)
|
တယ်တဲ့ (de te)
|
စားတယ်တဲ့ (He says he eats)
|
|
Statement (Future)
|
မယ် (me)
|
မယ်တဲ့ (me te)
|
သွားမယ်တဲ့ (He says he will go)
|
|
Negative
|
ဘူး (bu)
|
ဘူးတဲ့ (bu te)
|
မလာဘူးတဲ့ (He says he's not coming)
|
|
Command
|
ပါ/တော့ (ba/taw)
|
ပါတဲ့ / တော့တဲ့
|
စားပါတဲ့ (He says please eat)
|
|
Question (Yes/No)
|
လား (la)
|
လားတဲ့ (la te)
|
နေကောင်းလားတဲ့ (He asked if you're well)
|
|
Question (Open)
|
လဲ (le)
|
လဲတဲ့ (le te)
|
ဘယ်သူလဲတဲ့ (He asked who it is)
|
Colloquial Contractions
| Full Form | Contracted Form | Usage Context |
|---|---|---|
|
တယ်တဲ့ (de te)
|
သတဲ့ (tha te)
|
Literary or storytelling
|
|
မယ်တဲ့ (me te)
|
မတဲ့ (ma te)
|
Very fast casual speech
|
|
ပြီတဲ့ (pyi te)
|
ပီတဲ့ (pi te)
|
Informal spoken
|
Meanings
A sentence-final particle used to indicate that the preceding information is reported speech or hearsay. It functions as a shorthand for 'someone said that...' or 'it is said that...'.
Indirect Quotation
Relaying a specific message from one person to another.
“မေမေက ထမင်းစားတော့တဲ့။ (Mom says to eat now.)”
“ဆရာက နားလည်လားတဲ့။ (The teacher asked if you understand.)”
General Hearsay
Reporting rumors, news, or general facts learned from an outside source.
“ဒီနေ့ ဆိုင်ပိတ်တယ်တဲ့။ (I heard the shop is closed today.)”
“မနက်ဖြန် ရုံးပိတ်ရက်တဲ့။ (They say tomorrow is a holiday.)”
Softening a Request
Using a third party's authority to make a request or command sound less direct.
“ဖေဖေက ပြန်လာခဲ့တော့တဲ့။ (Dad says you should come back now.)”
“သူဌေးက အခုလာခဲ့ပါတဲ့။ (The boss says please come now.)”
Reference Table
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Affirmative
|
Verb + တယ် + တဲ့
|
ကောင်းတယ်တဲ့ (They say it's good)
|
|
Negative
|
မ + Verb + ဘူး + တဲ့
|
မသိဘူးတဲ့ (He says he doesn't know)
|
|
Future
|
Verb + မယ် + တဲ့
|
လုပ်မယ်တဲ့ (She says she will do it)
|
|
Polite Request
|
Verb + ပါ + တဲ့
|
ကူညီပါတဲ့ (He asks for help)
|
|
Information Question
|
Question Word + Verb + လဲ + တဲ့
|
ဘယ်မှာလဲတဲ့ (He asked where it is)
|
|
Yes/No Question
|
Verb + လား + တဲ့
|
ဟုတ်လားတဲ့ (He asked if it's true)
|
|
Completed Action
|
Verb + ပြီ + တဲ့
|
ပြီးပြီတဲ့ (They say it's finished)
|
|
Noun Identification
|
Noun + တဲ့
|
ဆရာဝန်တဲ့ (They say he's a doctor)
|
Spectre de formalité
သူလာမည်ဟု ဆိုပါသည်။ (Thu lar myi hu so ba de) (Reporting someone's arrival)
သူလာမယ်လို့ ပြောပါတယ်။ (Thu lar mel lo pyaw ba de) (Reporting someone's arrival)
သူလာမယ်တဲ့။ (Thu lar mel te) (Reporting someone's arrival)
သူလာမှာတဲ့ဟ။ (Thu lar hmar te ha) (Reporting someone's arrival)
The Flow of Information with တဲ့
Source
- သူငယ်ချင်း Friend
- သတင်း News
Action
- ပြောတယ် Says
- ကြားတယ် Hears
Result
- သတင်းပေးခြင်း Relaying info
Direct vs. Reported Speech
Should I use တဲ့?
Did you see it yourself?
Did someone tell you?
Exemples par niveau
သူလာမယ်တဲ့။
He said he will come.
နေကောင်းတယ်တဲ့။
They say they are fine.
စားလို့ကောင်းတယ်တဲ့။
I heard it tastes good.
မရှိဘူးတဲ့။
He says he doesn't have it.
မနက်ဖြန် မိုးရွာမယ်တဲ့။
They say it will rain tomorrow.
ဒီနေ့ ကျောင်းပိတ်တယ်တဲ့။
I heard school is closed today.
သူ ဗိုက်နာနေတယ်တဲ့။
He says he has a stomachache.
ဈေးကြီးတယ်တဲ့။
I heard it is expensive.
ဆရာက အိမ်စာလုပ်ခဲ့ပါတဲ့။
The teacher said to do your homework.
ဘယ်အချိန် လာမလဲတဲ့။
He asked what time you are coming.
ဟိုမှာ လူအရမ်းများတယ်တဲ့၊ မသွားနဲ့ဦး။
I heard there are too many people there, don't go yet.
သူက အခု အလုပ်ထွက်လိုက်ပြီတဲ့။
I heard he has quit his job now.
အစိုးရက အခွန်တိုးမယ်လို့ ကြေညာထားတယ်တဲ့။
I heard the government announced they will raise taxes.
ဒီဆေးက အရမ်းကောင်းတယ်လို့ နာမည်ကြီးနေတယ်တဲ့။
I heard this medicine is famous for being very good.
သူတို့က နောက်လမှ မင်္ဂလာဆောင်မှာတဲ့။
They say they will only get married next month.
ပွဲက ည ၈ နာရီမှ စမှာတဲ့။
They say the show won't start until 8 PM.
သူကတော့ အမှန်အတိုင်း ပြောတာပါဆိုပဲတဲ့။
He claims he's telling the truth, or so he says.
ရှေးလူကြီးတွေ ပြောဖူးတာကတော့ ဒီနေရာမှာ သရဲခြောက်သတဲ့။
The elders used to say that this place is haunted.
စီးပွားရေးက ဒီနှစ်ထဲ ပြန်ကောင်းလာနိုင်ခြေရှိတယ်တဲ့။
They say there's a chance the economy might improve this year.
သူ့ကို ကြည့်ရတာ စိတ်ညစ်နေပုံရတယ်တဲ့။
People say he looks like he's going through a hard time.
ထိုမင်းသည် တရားသဖြင့် အုပ်စိုးသတတ်ဟု ရာဇဝင်တွင် ဆိုထားသတဲ့။
It is recorded in history that the king ruled justly.
သတင်းရင်းမြစ်များအရ ထိုစီမံကိန်းကို ရပ်ဆိုင်းလိုက်ပြီတဲ့။
According to sources, that project has been suspended.
လူပြောသူပြောများနေတာကတော့ သူဟာ သူဌေးကြီးတစ်ဦးဖြစ်သတဲ့။
Common talk has it that he is a great tycoon.
ဘာပဲဖြစ်ဖြစ် သူကတော့ ငြင်းနေတာပဲတဲ့။
Regardless, he continues to deny it, they say.
Facile à confondre
It is spelled and pronounced exactly the same as the hearsay particle.
Both are used for quoting, leading learners to use them interchangeably.
In some dialects, the pronunciation of 'de' (တယ်) can sound like 'te'.
Erreurs courantes
ကျွန်တော် ဗိုက်ဆာတယ်တဲ့။
ကျွန်တော် ဗိုက်ဆာတယ်။
သူလာတယ်တဲ့လား။
သူလာသတဲ့လား။ / သူလာတယ်ဆို။
မိုးရွာတဲ့။
မိုးရွာတယ်တဲ့။
သူပြောတယ်တဲ့။
သူပြောတယ် / သူပြောတာက...
ဒီမှာတဲ့။
ဒီမှာတဲ့။ (Wait, this is actually correct in some contexts, but often used wrongly for 'It is here').
မသွားဘူးတဲ့။ (When you mean 'I am not going')
မသွားဘူး။
သူက လာမယ်လို့တဲ့။
သူက လာမယ်တဲ့။
သူဌေးက ခေါ်တယ်တဲ့။ (To the boss's face)
သူဌေး ခေါ်နေပါတယ်။
သတင်းစာထဲမှာ ရေးတယ်တဲ့။
သတင်းစာထဲမှာ ရေးထားတယ် / ရေးထားသတဲ့။
လှတဲ့ပန်းတဲ့။
လှတဲ့ပန်းပဲ။
Structures de phrases
[Person] က [Action] မယ်တဲ့။
[Source] အရ [Information] တယ်တဲ့။
[Action] လို့ ကောင်းတယ်တဲ့။
မ [Action] ဘူးတဲ့။
Real World Usage
သူတို့ ကွဲသွားပြီတဲ့။ (I heard they broke up.)
အခု အစည်းအဝေးရှိတယ်တဲ့။ (The boss says there's a meeting now.)
မနက်ဖြန် မီးပျက်မယ်တဲ့။ (They say the power will be out tomorrow.)
သူက အစပ်မစားဘူးတဲ့။ (He says he doesn't eat spicy food.)
ဒီဆေးကို အစာစားပြီးမှ သောက်တဲ့။ (The doctor said to take this after meals.)
အဲဒီကားက ကြည့်လို့ကောင်းတယ်တဲ့။ (I heard that movie is good.)
The 'Liability' Shield
Avoid Self-Quoting
Polite Relaying
Question Hearsay
Smart Tips
Always end with 'te' to avoid being blamed for spreading 'fake news'.
Use 'ba te' (ပါတဲ့) to keep the politeness of the original speaker while reporting it.
Use 'so pe te' (ဆိုပဲတဲ့) to add a layer of 'or so they claim'.
Don't forget to keep the question marker (la/le) before the 'te'.
Prononciation
Heavy Tone
The particle တဲ့ is pronounced with a heavy, falling tone (te.). It is short and sharp.
Sandhi Effect
When following a verb ending in a vowel, the 't' sound can sometimes soften slightly, but usually remains distinct.
Falling final
လာမယ်တဲ့။ ↘
A standard report of information.
Mémorise-le
Moyen mnémotechnique
Think of 'Te' as 'Tell'. When you want to 'Tell' what someone else said, add 'Te'!
Association visuelle
Imagine a telephone line connecting two people. The particle 'Te' is the wire that carries the voice from the original speaker to you.
Rhyme
If you heard it from a mate, don't forget to add the 'Te' (တဲ့)!
Story
A traveler arrives in a village and hears that a tiger is nearby. He hasn't seen it, so he tells his friends 'Kyar shi de te' (There's a tiger, they say). Because he used 'te', his friends know he's just reporting a warning, not claiming to be a brave tiger-spotter.
Word Web
Défi
For the next 5 minutes, every time you talk about something you read online or heard from a friend, mentally add 'te' to the end of the sentence.
Notes culturelles
Using 'te' is a sign of politeness and humility. It shows you aren't overstepping your bounds by claiming to know everything for certain.
In Mandalay, people might use 'te' with a slightly more melodic intonation, often followed by 'lay' for emphasis.
In news, 'te' is replaced by 'hu thi' or 'hu so thi' to maintain a formal, objective distance.
Derived from the classical Burmese verb 'ဆို' (so), meaning 'to say', combined with the attributive marker 'သည်' (thi/te).
Amorces de conversation
မနက်ဖြန် မိုးရွာမယ်တဲ့လား။
ဒီနေ့ ဘာသတင်း ထူးသလဲတဲ့။
သူငယ်ချင်းက ဘာမှာလိုက်သလဲတဲ့။
ဟိုဆိုင်က စားလို့ကောင်းတယ်တဲ့၊ သွားစားကြမလား။
Sujets d'écriture
Erreurs courantes
Test Yourself
သူ အလုပ်များနေ___။
မနက်ဖြန် ကျောင်းပိတ်တယ်___။ (I heard school is closed tomorrow.)
Find and fix the mistake:
ကျွန်တော် ထမင်းစားတယ်တဲ့။
သူ / လာမယ် / တဲ့
Match each item on the left with its pair on the right:
A: ဇော်ဇော် ဗိုက်ဆာတယ်___။ B: ဟုတ်လား။
You can use 'te' to report a question someone else asked.
မိုးရွာနေတယ်။ -> ?
Score: /8
Exercices pratiques
8 exercisesသူ အလုပ်များနေ___။
မနက်ဖြန် ကျောင်းပိတ်တယ်___။ (I heard school is closed tomorrow.)
Find and fix the mistake:
ကျွန်တော် ထမင်းစားတယ်တဲ့။
သူ / လာမယ် / တဲ့
1. နေကောင်းတယ်, 2. မလာဘူး, 3. ဘယ်မှာလဲ
A: ဇော်ဇော် ဗိုက်ဆာတယ်___။ B: ဟုတ်လား။
You can use 'te' to report a question someone else asked.
မိုးရွာနေတယ်။ -> ?
Score: /8
FAQ (8)
Yes! If you say `သူဌေးတဲ့`, it means 'They say he is the boss.' It's a very common way to report someone's identity or role.
It is neutral to informal. In very formal writing, you would use `...ဟု ဆိုပါသည်` (hu so ba de), but in almost all spoken contexts, `တဲ့` is perfectly fine.
`လို့` (lo) is used to link a quote to a verb like 'say'. `တဲ့` (te) is used at the end of a sentence to stand in for the word 'say' entirely.
Generally, no. It sounds like you are talking about yourself in the third person. Use it only for others' words or general hearsay.
No, the tense is determined by the verb marker before `တဲ့` (e.g., `တယ်` for present, `မယ်` for future, `ပြီ` for past/completed).
You don't need a separate phrase! Just say the sentence and add `တဲ့` at the end. The 'I heard' is implied.
It is always 'te' with a sharp, heavy tone. Don't confuse it with the standard 'de' (တယ်) ending.
Yes. For example, `လာခဲ့တဲ့` means 'He said to come here.' It's a common way to relay orders.
Scaffolded Practice
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Mastery Progress
Needs Practice
Improving
Strong
Mastered
In Other Languages
って (tte)
Japanese 'tte' can also be used to define a topic, whereas Burmese 'te' is strictly quotative/hearsay.
sollen
German uses a verb in the middle of the sentence, while Burmese uses a particle at the end.
dice que / dizque
Spanish 'dizque' acts more like an adverb, whereas 'te' is a grammatical requirement for reported speech.
听说 (tīngshuō)
Chinese marks hearsay at the start; Burmese marks it at the end.
يقولون (yaquluna)
Arabic relies on standard verb conjugation rather than a dedicated hearsay particle.
paraît-il / on dit que
French requires a full clause structure, whereas Burmese is much more concise with a single particle.
