B2 · Upper Intermediate Chapter 53

Asking Indirectly: Embedded Questions

4 Total Rules
1 min
Rules in This Chapter Quick Practice

Chapter in 30 Seconds

Master the art of indirect inquiry to sound more polite and sophisticated in Burmese.

  • Incorporate questions into larger statements.
  • Use polite markers for indirect requests.
  • Connect clauses using question particles.
Polite questions for sophisticated Burmese communication.

What You'll Learn

Learn how to embed questions within larger sentences, such as 'I don't know where he went'. This chapter adds sophistication to your interrogative structures.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

  1. 1
    By the end you will be able to: Embed 'What', 'Who', 'Where', and Yes/No questions into complex sentences.

Tips & Tricks (4)

🎯

The 'Wrapper' Concept

Always think of 'so dar' as a wrapper. You can't put a question into a sentence without wrapping it first.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'What' questions (ဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)
🎯

The 'So-Dar' Shortcut

In very casual speech, 'so-dar' can be shortened to 'so-ta', but keep it 'so-dar' for B2 exams.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Who' questions (ဘယ်သူလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)
🎯

The 'Le' Rule

Always keep the 'le' (လဲ). If you drop it, the sentence sounds broken or like a beginner's mistake.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Where' questions (ဘယ်မှာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)
💡

Verb Repetition

Always repeat the verb. If you only say 'လာဆိုတာ', it sounds wrong.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding Yes/No questions (လုပ်လားမလုပ်လားဆိုတာ)

Key Vocabulary (6)

သိသည် to know မေးသည် to ask ဘယ်သူ who ဘာ what ဘယ်မှာ where ဟုတ်မဟုတ် whether or not

Real-World Preview

briefcase

Office Inquiry

Review Summary

  • [Subject] [ဘာ] [Verb] [လဲ] [ဆိုတာ] [Main Clause]
  • [Subject] [ဘယ်သူ] [Verb] [လဲ] [ဆိုတာ] [Main Clause]
  • [Subject] [ဘယ်မှာ] [Verb] [လဲ] [ဆိုတာ] [Main Clause]
  • [Subject] [Verb-Negative Verb] [Main Clause]

Common Mistakes

You must include the connector 'ဆိုတာ' when embedding a question into a sentence.

Wrong: သူ ဘာလုပ်လဲ သိတယ်။
Correct: သူဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ သိတယ်။

For Yes/No questions, use the repetition pattern (verb-negation-verb) instead of the 'လား' particle.

Wrong: သူလာမလားဆိုတာ မသိဘူး။
Correct: သူလာမလာ မသိဘူး။

The 'ဆိုတာ' particle acts as a bridge; without it, the sentence feels incomplete.

Wrong: ဘယ်သူလာမလဲ ကျွန်တော်မသိဘူး။
Correct: ဘယ်သူလာမလဲဆိုတာ ကျွန်တော်မသိဘူး။

Next Steps

You have done an amazing job reaching this level of fluency. Keep practicing these structures in your daily conversations!

Write a diary entry using 5 embedded questions.

Continue to: Chapter 1

Quick Practice (10)

Find the error: သူလာမလားဆိုတာ ငါမသိဘူး။

Find and fix the mistake:

သူလာမလားဆိုတာ ငါမသိဘူး။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူလာမလာဆိုတာ ငါမသိဘူး။
Embedded questions should not have question markers.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding Yes/No questions (လုပ်လားမလုပ်လားဆိုတာ)

Choose the correct way to say 'I know what he bought.'

သူဘာဝယ်လဲ ___ သိတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဆိုတာ
We use 'so dar' to embed the 'what' question.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'What' questions (ဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Fill in the missing question particle.

သူဘာပြော ___ ဆိုတာ နားမလည်ဘူး။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: လဲ
'Ba' (what) always pairs with 'le' in questions.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'What' questions (ဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Correct the sentence: သူဘာလုပ်တာဆိုတာ သိတယ်။

Find and fix the mistake:

သူဘာလုပ်တာဆိုတာ သိတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ သိတယ်။
You must use 'le' instead of 'ta' when there is a question word like 'ba'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'What' questions (ဘာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Complete the sentence with the correct particles.

သူ ဘယ်မှာ နေ___ ကျွန်တော် မသိဘူး။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: လဲဆိုတာ
We need the question marker 'le' and the nominalizer 'soda'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Where' questions (ဘယ်မှာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Complete the sentence: I don't know who took the money.

ဘယ်သူ ပိုက်ဆံယူသွား ___ မသိဘူး။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: a
The full 'lae-so-dar' is required for an embedded question.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Who' questions (ဘယ်သူလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Complete the sentence: သူလာ___ဆိုတာ ငါမသိဘူး။

သူလာ___ဆိုတာ ငါမသိဘူး။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မလာ
The pattern is Verb-လား-Verb-မလား.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding Yes/No questions (လုပ်လားမလုပ်လားဆိုတာ)

Which sentence is correct?

Which is correct?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူလာမလာဆိုတာ သိလား။
Correct structure uses Verb-လား-Verb-မလား-ဆိုတာ.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding Yes/No questions (လုပ်လားမလုပ်လားဆိုတာ)

Which sentence means 'I forgot where I put it'?

Choose one:

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်မှာ ထားလဲဆိုတာ မေ့သွားတယ်။
Option A uses the correct embedded question structure.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Where' questions (ဘယ်မှာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Find the mistake in the sentence.

Find and fix the mistake:

ဘယ်မှာ ရှိဆိုတာ ပြောပြပါ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: Missing 'le'
The question marker 'le' must come before 'soda'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Embedding 'Where' questions (ဘယ်မှာလုပ်လဲဆိုတာ)

Score: /10

Common Questions (6)

Yes! It works for all WH-questions. For example, 'Who he is' is ဘယ်သူလဲဆိုတာ (be thu le so dar).
It is neutral and used in both speech and writing. In very formal writing, 'le' might change to 'tha-ni', but 'so dar' usually stays.
Usually no. 'Dar' is for facts you already know. 'So-dar' is for the content of a question.
Yes, but in formal writing, 'so-dar' might become 'so-the-ar' or 'so-the-ma'.
Yes! Just change 'Bae-ma' to 'Ba'. e.g., 'Ba lo-le-so-da' (What you are doing).
It is neutral. In very formal writing, you use 'so-thee-ma'.
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