Signification
Describing a long distance.
Contexte culturel
Burmese people are very helpful with directions but often underestimate distance to be polite. If they say 'Nee-nee-lay' (very near), it might still be a 20-minute walk. 'A-way-gyi-pal' is only used when they want to emphasize that you definitely need a vehicle. In Yangon, 'A-way-gyi-pal' is often a comment on traffic rather than physical distance. A 5-mile trip can take 2 hours, making it feel like an 'A-way-gyi' journey. In villages, distance is often measured in 'time taken to walk' or 'number of cheroots smoked' during the walk. 'A-way-gyi-pal' might mean a journey to the next town or village. The phrase can be used in sermons to describe the distance to Nirvana (Nibbana) for those who do not practice diligently.
Add 'Naw' for Agreement
If you want to be more social, say 'A-way-gyi-pal-naw!' to get the other person to agree with you.
Don't use with 'Very'
Don't say 'A-yan a-way-gyi-pal'. The 'Gyi' already means 'very', so adding 'A-yan' is redundant.
Signification
Describing a long distance.
Add 'Naw' for Agreement
If you want to be more social, say 'A-way-gyi-pal-naw!' to get the other person to agree with you.
Don't use with 'Very'
Don't say 'A-yan a-way-gyi-pal'. The 'Gyi' already means 'very', so adding 'A-yan' is redundant.
The 'Hooo' Factor
To sound like a native, stretch the word 'Hooo' before the phrase to indicate extreme distance: 'Hoooo... a-way-gyi-pal!'
Teste-toi
Fill in the blank to say 'It's a long way from Yangon to Mandalay.'
ရန်ကုန်ကနေ မန္တလေးက ___________။
The context of Yangon to Mandalay (approx. 700km) requires an expression for a long distance.
Which of the following is the most natural way to ask 'Is it very far?'
Choose the correct question form:
All are correct, but 'အဝေးကြီးလား' is the most common way to ask if something is *very* far.
Complete the dialogue.
A: လမ်းလျှောက်သွားမလို့။ (I'm going to walk.) B: မသွားနဲ့၊ ___________။ (Don't go, ___________.)
B is advising A not to walk, so the reason must be that it is too far.
Match the phrase to the situation.
You have been studying for 10 minutes and realize the book has 500 more pages.
This metaphorical use describes a long way to go before finishing a task.
🎉 Score : /4
Aides visuelles
Banque d exercices
4 exercicesရန်ကုန်ကနေ မန္တလေးက ___________။
The context of Yangon to Mandalay (approx. 700km) requires an expression for a long distance.
Choose the correct question form:
All are correct, but 'အဝေးကြီးလား' is the most common way to ask if something is *very* far.
A: လမ်းလျှောက်သွားမလို့။ (I'm going to walk.) B: မသွားနဲ့၊ ___________။ (Don't go, ___________.)
B is advising A not to walk, so the reason must be that it is too far.
You have been studying for 10 minutes and realize the book has 500 more pages.
This metaphorical use describes a long way to go before finishing a task.
🎉 Score : /4
Questions fréquentes
5 questionsYes, you can use it to mean 'a long time from now' or 'a long time ago' in certain contexts, though it's primarily for distance.
It can be slightly rude if you imply their house is too far. Better to say 'Taw-taw-way-tal' (It's quite far) to be more neutral.
'Way-tal' is a simple fact (It is far). 'A-way-gyi-pal' is more emotional and emphatic (It's so far!).
You would say 'သိပ်မဝေးပါဘူး' (Theik-ma-way-par-bu).
It's better to use 'Way-kwar-par-thee' or 'A-hlan-way-par-thee' for a more professional tone.
Expressions liées
နီးနီးလေး
contrastVery near
တော်တော်ဝေးတယ်
similarQuite far
ခရီးဝေး
specialized formLong journey
မနီးမဝေး
similarNeither near nor far
အဝေးဆုံး
builds onFarthest
