B1 · Intermediate Chapter 33

What They Said: Reported Speech

6 Total Rules
1 min
Rules in This Chapter Quick Practice

Chapter in 30 Seconds

Master the art of relaying conversations and sharing information accurately in Burmese.

  • Identify direct and indirect speech structures.
  • Transform questions and requests into reported forms.
  • Apply the particle (တဲ့) to share hearsay or news.
Master the art of relaying stories perfectly.

What You'll Learn

Understand how to report what someone else has said, both directly and indirectly. This chapter is crucial for conveying conversations and information from others.

Learning Objectives

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

  1. 1
    By the end you will be able to: Accurately report a statement made by a third party.

Tips & Tricks (4)

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The 'Thought' Trick

If you want to explain *why* you did something based on a quick thought, use ဆိုပြီး. It makes you sound much more like a native speaker than using 'because'.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Direct Speech Marker (ဆိုပြီး)
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Keep it simple

Don't worry about changing the tense. Just use the original sentence.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Indirect Speech (ပြောသည် / ဆိုသည်)
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Keep the Particle

Always keep 'la' or 'le' in the reported sentence. If you drop them, it's no longer a question report.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Questions (မေးသည်)
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The 'Ko' Rule

Always remember to put 'ko' after the person who is being told what to do. It's the most common mistake for learners.
frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Commands/Requests (ခိုင်းသည် / တောင်းဆိုသည်)

Key Vocabulary (6)

ဆိုသည် to say မေးသည် to ask ခိုင်းသည် to order/command တောင်းဆိုသည် to request တဲ့ heard that/reportedly သတင်း news

Real-World Preview

briefcase

At the Office

Review Summary

  • [Speaker] + 'Quote' + လို့ ပြောတယ်
  • [Statement] + တဲ့

Common Mistakes

In indirect speech, 'I' (ငါ) must change to 'he/she' (သူ).

Wrong: သူက ငါမနက်ဖြန်လာမယ်လို့ ပြောတယ်
Correct: သူက သူမနက်ဖြန်လာမယ်လို့ ပြောတယ်

Reported verbs should often reflect the past tense of the original interaction.

Wrong: သူက ဘာလုပ်နေလဲလို့ မေးတယ်
Correct: သူက ဘာလုပ်နေလဲလို့ မေးခဲ့တယ်

The particle (တဲ့) usually follows the future or state-of-being marker appropriately.

Wrong: သူမနက်ဖြန်လာတယ်တဲ့
Correct: သူမနက်ဖြန်လာမယ်တဲ့

Next Steps

You've successfully mastered the art of reporting. Keep practicing and your Burmese will sound incredibly natural!

Listen to a news report and summarize it using (တဲ့).

Continue to: Exploring Possibilities: Advanced Conditional Clauses

Quick Practice (10)

Fill in the blank with the correct reporting verb (khine/taung-so).

အမေက ကျွန်တော့်ကို ဈေးဝယ် ___ တယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ခိုင်း
Mother telling a child to do something is usually a command/instruction, so 'khine' is most natural.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Commands/Requests (ခိုင်းသည် / တောင်းဆိုသည်)

Choose the correct reporting verb.

သူ ဘာလုပ်မလဲ ___ မေးတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မေး
Use 'မေး' for questions.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Indirect Speech (ပြောသည် / ဆိုသည်)

Choose the formal version.

သူ လာမယ်လို့ ပြောတယ်။ (Formal)

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူ လာမည်ဟု ဆိုသည်
Formal register uses 'ဟု' and 'ဆိုသည်'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Indirect Speech (ပြောသည် / ဆိုသည်)

Choose the correct reported version of 'Don't go!'.

သူက 'မသွားနဲ့' လို့ ပြောတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူက မသွားဖို့ ပြောတယ်။
Negative commands are reported using 'ma + verb + pho'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Commands/Requests (ခိုင်းသည် / တောင်းဆိုသည်)

Correct the sentence: သူ ကျွန်တော် သွားခိုင်းတယ်။

Find and fix the mistake:

သူ ကျွန်တော် သွားခိုင်းတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူ ကျွန်တော့်ကို သွားခိုင်းတယ်။
The object marker 'ko' is required for the person being told.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Commands/Requests (ခိုင်းသည် / တောင်းဆိုသည်)

Which sentence correctly reports 'Are you coming?'

Choose the correct reported question:

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: လာမလားလို့ မေးတယ်။
It must include 'la' (question), 'lo' (quotative), and 'may' (ask).

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Reporting Questions (မေးသည်)

Fill in the blank with the correct connector.

သူ လာမယ် ___ ပြောတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: လို့
Use 'လို့' for statements.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Indirect Speech (ပြောသည် / ဆိုသည်)

Choose the correct sentence for 'He says he is busy.'

သူ အလုပ်များနေ___။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: တယ်တဲ့
We use 'te' after the verb marker 'de' to report what someone said.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: The Particle (တဲ့) for Reporting Information

Fill in the blank for a command.

သူ စာကျက် ___ ပြောတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဖို့
Use 'ဖို့' for commands.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Indirect Speech (ပြောသည် / ဆိုသည်)

Fill in the correct pronoun.

သူက 'ကျွန်တော်သွားမယ်' လို့ ပြောတယ်။ ➔ သူက ___ သွားမယ်လို့ ပြောတယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူ
Must shift 'I' to 'he'.

frontend.learn_grammar.from_rule: Changes in Pronouns and Time Expressions in Reported Speech

Score: /10

Common Questions (6)

Mostly yes, as long as the verb describes an action or a state that follows the speech/thought. Common verbs include မေးတယ် (ask), ပြောတယ် (say), and သွားတယ် (go).
It is neutral to informal. In very formal writing, you would use ဟူ၍ (hu-ywae) instead.
No, keep the original tense of the statement.
'လို့' is for casual speech, 'ဟု' is for formal writing.
In very casual speech, you can end with '...လို့' if the context of asking is already clear, but it's safer to include 'may de'.
Use 'la' (လား) for yes/no questions and 'le' (လဲ) for questions with words like 'what', 'where', or 'who'.
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Adding Detail: The Power of Relative Clauses
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Exploring Possibilities: Advanced Conditional Clauses
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