Signification
Brothers and sisters.
Contexte culturel
Siblings are often expected to contribute to a 'family pot' of money to support younger siblings' education or parents' healthcare. Siblings often have 'matching' names or names that start with the same letter/day of the week, reinforcing the 'Nyi-it-ko-maung-hma' bond. In Buddhist tradition, being siblings in this life is often seen as a result of having performed good deeds together in past lives. The term is used in political and social activism to call for unity among the 135 recognized ethnic groups of Myanmar.
The 'Yauk' Rule
Never forget to add 'yauk' after the number when counting siblings. It's the most common mistake for beginners!
Social Lubricant
Use this phrase when talking to a group of Burmese people to instantly sound more warm and culturally attuned.
Signification
Brothers and sisters.
The 'Yauk' Rule
Never forget to add 'yauk' after the number when counting siblings. It's the most common mistake for beginners!
Social Lubricant
Use this phrase when talking to a group of Burmese people to instantly sound more warm and culturally attuned.
Cousin Confusion
Be careful using this for cousins in legal or formal settings. Always clarify with 'Wun-gwဲ' if they aren't biological siblings.
Age Matters
Even though this is a collective term, Burmese people care deeply about who is older. Be prepared to answer 'Who is the eldest?'
Teste-toi
Fill in the missing classifier for people.
ကျွန်တော့်မှာ ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ ၃ _______ ရှိတယ်။
'Yauk' is the correct classifier for humans in Burmese.
Which phrase means 'siblings'?
Select the correct Burmese term:
'Nyi-it-ko-maung-hma' is the term for siblings.
Complete the dialogue naturally.
A: ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ ဘယ်နှစ်ယောက်ရှိလဲ။ B: ___________ ၅ ယောက်ရှိပါတယ်။
'Kyun-taw-hma' (In me/I have) is the correct way to start a sentence about possession.
Match the phrase to the context.
When would you use 'ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ အရင်း'?
'Yin' means biological or 'of the same chest'.
🎉 Score : /4
Aides visuelles
When to use this phrase
Family
- • Introductions
- • Counting siblings
- • Inheritance
Social
- • Close friends
- • Community
- • Solidarity
Banque d exercices
4 exercicesကျွန်တော့်မှာ ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ ၃ _______ ရှိတယ်။
'Yauk' is the correct classifier for humans in Burmese.
Select the correct Burmese term:
'Nyi-it-ko-maung-hma' is the term for siblings.
A: ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ ဘယ်နှစ်ယောက်ရှိလဲ။ B: ___________ ၅ ယောက်ရှိပါတယ်။
'Kyun-taw-hma' (In me/I have) is the correct way to start a sentence about possession.
When would you use 'ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ အရင်း'?
'Yin' means biological or 'of the same chest'.
🎉 Score : /4
Questions fréquentes
10 questionsYes, you can use it as a general term for 'siblings', but it's more precise to say 'Nyi-ama' if they are all female.
Absolutely! It shows you consider them as close as family. It's a very high compliment.
'Nyi-it-ko-maung-hma' is the full, formal, and rhythmic version. 'Maung-nhama' is a common shorthand.
You say 'Kyun-taw/Kyun-ma ka ta-oo-te-thaw-thar/thamee par'. You don't use the sibling phrase at all.
No, the order is fixed. Changing it would break the rhythm and sound very strange to native speakers.
Yes, to describe a family-owned business or a very close-knit team.
Burmese culture values specific roles based on gender and seniority. The phrase combines these roles into one concept.
Only jokingly! It's strictly for humans, as the classifier 'yauk' is for people.
It is neutral. It works in a palace or a tea shop.
Add 'tway' (တွေ) at the end: 'Nyi-it-ko-maung-hma tway'.
Expressions liées
မိသားစု
builds onFamily
မောင်နှမ
similarBrother and sister
ညီအစ်ကို
specialized formBrothers
ညီအစ်မ
specialized formSisters
ဆွေမျိုး
similarRelatives
