Introduction to Compound Verbs (ကြိယာတွဲများ)
Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds
Combine two verbs to add direction, effort, or kindness to an action without using extra words.
- Place the main action first, then the helper verb (e.g., စား + ကြည့် = try eating).
- Use 'လာ' (come) for actions toward you and 'သွား' (go) for actions away.
- Negate by putting 'မ' before the FIRST verb and 'ဘူး' at the end.
Common Compound Verb Pairings
| Main Verb | Secondary Verb | Compound | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
|
ယူ (Take)
|
လာ (Come)
|
ယူလာ
|
Bring
|
|
ယူ (Take)
|
သွား (Go)
|
ယူသွား
|
Take away
|
|
စား (Eat)
|
ကြည့် (Look)
|
စားကြည့်
|
Try eating
|
|
လုပ် (Do)
|
ပေး (Give)
|
လုပ်ပေး
|
Do for someone
|
|
ပြော (Speak)
|
ပြ (Show)
|
ပြောပြ
|
Explain/Tell
|
|
ဝယ် (Buy)
|
ထား (Keep)
|
ဝယ်ထား
|
Buy in advance
|
|
ပြန် (Return)
|
လာ (Come)
|
ပြန်လာ
|
Come back
|
|
မေ့ (Forget)
|
သွား (Go)
|
မေ့သွား
|
Forgot (completely)
|
Meanings
Compound verbs (ကြိယာတွဲများ) are formed by joining two or more verbs to create a single semantic unit where the second verb modifies the meaning of the first.
Directional
Indicates the physical direction of the action relative to the speaker.
“ယူလာပါ (Bring it here)”
“ယူသွားပါ (Take it away)”
Experimental
Indicates trying out an action to see the result.
“စားကြည့်ပါ (Try eating it)”
“ဝတ်ကြည့်မယ် (I will try wearing it)”
Benefactive
Indicates that an action is performed for the benefit of someone else.
“ဝယ်ပေးတယ် (Bought it for someone)”
“ပြောပြပေးပါ (Please explain it to me)”
Resultative/Completion
Indicates that an action has reached a state of completion or a specific result.
“သေသွားပြီ (He has died)”
“ပျောက်သွားတယ် (It disappeared)”
Reference Table
| Form | Structure | Example |
|---|---|---|
|
Affirmative
|
V1 + V2 + တယ်
|
ယူလာတယ် (Brought)
|
|
Negative
|
မ + V1 + V2 + ဘူး
|
မယူလာဘူး (Didn't bring)
|
|
Interrogative
|
V1 + V2 + လား
|
ယူလာမလား (Will you bring?)
|
|
Polite Request
|
V1 + V2 + ပါ
|
ယူလာပါ (Please bring)
|
|
Past/Completed
|
V1 + V2 + ပြီ
|
ယူလာပြီ (Already brought)
|
|
Future/Intention
|
V1 + V2 + မယ်
|
ယူလာမယ် (Will bring)
|
|
Continuous
|
V1 + V2 + နေတယ်
|
ယူလာနေတယ် (Is bringing)
|
|
Polite Question
|
V1 + V2 + ပါသလား
|
ယူလာပါသလား (Did you bring? - Formal)
|
Formalitätsspektrum
ရှင်းလင်းပြောကြားပေးပါရန်။ (Asking for information)
ရှင်းပြပေးပါ။ (Asking for information)
ပြောပြပါဦး။ (Asking for information)
ပြောပြစမ်းပါ။ (Asking for information)
The 'Helper Verb' Universe
Direction
- လာ Towards me
- သွား Away from me
Intent
- ကြည့် Try/Experiment
- ပေး For someone else
Result
- မိ Accidentally
- ထား In advance
Directional Compounds
How to Negate a Compound Verb
Is it a compound verb?
Add 'မ' before which verb?
Where does 'ဘူး' go?
Common A2 Compound Categories
Movement
- • ပြန်လာ (Return)
- • လိုက်သွား (Follow)
- • ဆင်းလာ (Descend)
Social
- • လုပ်ပေး (Help)
- • ပြောပြ (Explain)
- • ဝယ်ပေး (Buy for)
Trial
- • စားကြည့် (Taste)
- • ဝတ်ကြည့် (Try on)
- • လုပ်ကြည့် (Try doing)
Beispiele nach Niveau
ယူလာပါ။
Please bring it.
ယူသွားပါ။
Please take it away.
ပြန်လာမယ်။
I will come back.
ဝင်လာပါ။
Please come in.
စားကြည့်ပါ။
Please try eating it.
ဝယ်ပေးမယ်။
I will buy it for you.
မလုပ်ပေးဘူး။
I won't do it for you.
မေးကြည့်ပါဦး။
Please try asking.
စာအုပ် ပျောက်သွားတယ်။
The book is lost (gone).
ဖုန်း ကျိုးသွားပြီ။
The phone is already broken.
သူ ပြန်ပြောတယ်။
He spoke back / replied.
စောင့်နေပါတယ်။
I am waiting.
ကျွန်တော် ပြောမိသွားတယ်။
I accidentally said it.
သူ လုပ်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။
He did it (and left/before).
သိမ်းထားလိုက်ပါ။
Please put it away (for good).
မေ့သွားလို့ပါ။
It's because I forgot.
အဖြေကို ရှာဖွေရမယ်။
We must search for the answer.
သူ့ကို ကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ပါ။
Please help and look after him.
ဒီအကြောင်းကို စဉ်းစားကြည့်သင့်တယ်။
One should consider this matter.
စာအုပ်ကို ပြန်လည်ထုတ်ဝေသည်။
The book is being re-published.
အခြေအနေကို သုံးသပ်ကြည့်ရှုရပါမည်။
We must analyze and observe the situation.
ရှေးထုံးကိုလည်း ပယ်ဖျက်၍မရပါ။
Ancient traditions cannot be discarded.
သူသည် အလုပ်ကို ကြိုးစားအားထုတ်ခဲ့သည်။
He exerted great effort in his work.
ရန်သူကို တိုက်ခိုက်နှိမ်နင်းခဲ့သည်။
The enemy was attacked and suppressed.
Leicht verwechselbar
Both involve doing something for someone, but 'pyá' specifically means 'to show' or 'to demonstrate'.
Learners often mix up the direction relative to the speaker.
Mixing up a single complex action with two sequential actions.
Häufige Fehler
လာယူ
ယူလာ
ယူ နှင့် လာ
ယူလာ
မယူမလာဘူး
မယူလာဘူး
ယူလာမ
မယူလာဘူး
ကြည့်စား
စားကြည့်
ပေးလုပ်
လုပ်ပေး
ယူလာတယ်လား
ယူလာသလား
ပျောက်တယ်
ပျောက်သွားတယ်
ပြောပြပေးမယ်
ပြောပြမယ်
ရှာဖွေခဲ့တယ်
ရှာဖွေခဲ့သည်
Satzmuster
ကျွန်တော် ___ ကြည့်ချင်တယ်။
ကျေးဇူးပြုပြီး ___ ပေးပါဦး။
သူ ___ သွားပြီ။
___ လာခဲ့ပါ။
Real World Usage
ပို့ပေးပါ (Please deliver/send for me)
ဝယ်လာခဲ့မယ် (I'll buy it and bring it over)
ရှင်းပြပါရစေ (Allow me to explain)
ပြောပြပေးလို့ ရမလား (Could you please explain/show me?)
လျှော့ပေးပါဦး (Please lower the price for me)
ပြကြည့်ပါ (Please show/let me see - to a doctor)
The 'Try' Trick
Don't Split the Pair
The Power of 'Páy'
Directional Logic
Smart Tips
Always attach 'ပေးပါ' (páy-ba) to the verb. It turns a command into a polite request.
Don't translate it as 'looking'. Translate it as 'trying' or 'testing'.
Add 'သွား' (thwa) to emphasize that the state has changed completely.
Point to yourself. If the action moves toward your finger, use 'la'. If away, use 'thwa'.
Aussprache
Tonal Sandhi
When two verbs combine, the first verb's tone might slightly shorten to flow into the second.
Glottal Stop
Verbs ending in a glottal stop (like 'vut' - wear) maintain a sharp break before 'kyi' (try).
Falling-Rising
Sa-kyi-ba-ohn ↘↗
A polite, encouraging suggestion.
Einprägen
Eselsbrücke
Remember 'Main then Modifier': The big action comes first, the helper follows like a shadow.
Visuelle Assoziation
Imagine a train. The locomotive is the Main Verb (the power), and the second car is the Helper Verb (the direction or purpose). They must stay coupled to reach the destination.
Rhyme
First the act, then the way, that's how Burmese verbs will stay!
Story
A traveler (Main Verb) wants to give a gift. He first 'takes' (ယူ) the gift, then 'comes' (လာ) to your house. Together, he 'brings' (ယူလာ) it. If he 'takes' (ယူ) it and 'goes' (သွား) away, he 'takes it away' (ယူသွား).
Word Web
Herausforderung
Look at 5 objects around you. For each, say if you would 'ယူလာ' (bring) it or 'ယူသွား' (take it away) from your current room.
Kulturelle Hinweise
Using 'ပေး' (give) in compounds is essential for politeness. Even if you are paying for a service, asking the provider to 'လုပ်ပေးပါ' (do it for me) shows respect.
Speakers in Mandalay may use more formal or traditional compound auxiliaries in daily speech compared to Yangon.
In professional emails, compound verbs are often expanded into formal doublets to sound more authoritative and precise.
Burmese is an isolating, head-final language. Compound verbs evolved as a way to express complex verbal semantics without the need for prefixes or suffixes found in Indo-European languages.
Gesprächseinstiege
ဒီအစားအစာကို စားကြည့်ဖူးလား။
မနက်ဖြန် ဘာလုပ်ပေးရမလဲ။
မြန်မာပြည်ကို ဘယ်တော့ ပြန်လာမလဲ။
ဒီစာအုပ်ကို ဖတ်ကြည့်ပြီးပြီလား။
Tagebuch-Impulse
Häufige Fehler
Test Yourself
___ ပါ။
စား___ပါ။
Find and fix the mistake:
ဝယ်မပေးဘူး။
Match each item on the left with its pair on the right:
ကျွန်တော် + (do) + (give) + (will)
ဝယ်___ပါ။
B: ဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ (Try wearing it).
In a compound verb, the negation 'ma' (မ) can be placed between the two verbs.
Score: /8
Ubungsaufgaben
8 exercises___ ပါ။
စား___ပါ။
Find and fix the mistake:
ဝယ်မပေးဘူး။
1. ယူသွား, 2. ပြောပြ, 3. ပြန်လာ
ကျွန်တော် + (do) + (give) + (will)
ဝယ်___ပါ။
B: ဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ (Try wearing it).
In a compound verb, the negation 'ma' (မ) can be placed between the two verbs.
Score: /8
FAQ (8)
Yes! You can stack them, like `ယူလာပေးပါ` (Take-come-give), which means 'Please bring it for me.'
In a compound, yes. On its own, it means 'to look' or 'to watch'.
`ယူလာ` is a general 'bring'. `ယူခဲ့` often implies bringing something from a place you were previously at.
You would use `လုပ်ကြည့်တယ်၊ ဒါပေမဲ့ မရဘူး` (I tried doing it, but didn't get it).
No, Burmese verbs do not conjugate for person or number. The compound stays the same.
Yes, especially those ending in `ပေးပါ` (páy-ba). It is very respectful.
Mostly with verbs of change or loss, like 'broken', 'dead', 'lost', or 'melted'.
The `ဦး` (ohn) adds a sense of 'for now' or 'give it a try first,' making it softer and more natural.
Scaffolded Practice
1
2
3
4
Mastery Progress
Needs Practice
Improving
Strong
Mastered
In Other Languages
V-te + kuru/iku
Burmese doesn't need a 'te' connector; the verbs sit directly together.
Verb + Directional Complement (e.g., 拿来)
Chinese has more complex resultative complements (like 'wán' for finished) than basic Burmese A2 compounds.
Traer / Llevar
Spanish uses distinct lexical items rather than compounding 'come' and 'go'.
Trennbare Verben (Separable Verbs)
German prefixes can separate from the verb, while Burmese compounds usually stay together.
Serial Verbs (in some dialects)
Burmese compounding is a core grammatical feature, not a dialectal variation.
Aller + Infinitive
French uses prepositions and separate verbs for directional nuances.
