A1 Sentence Structure 1 min read 简单

Question Word Placement in Sentences

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Grammar Rule in 30 Seconds

Unlike English, Burmese keeps question words exactly where the answer would go in a normal sentence.

  • Keep the question word in the same position as the answer: 'You eat what?' (မင်း ဘာစားလဲ)
  • Add the question particle 'လဲ' (lae) at the end of the sentence for most questions.
  • Do not move the question word to the front of the sentence.
Subject + Object(Question Word) + Verb + လဲ

3. Basic Question Word Formation

Question Word Meaning Example Particle
ဘယ်သူ
Who
ဘယ်သူ လာမလဲ။
လဲ
ဘာ
What
ဘာ စားမလဲ။
လဲ
ဘယ်မှာ
Where
ဘယ်မှာ နေလဲ။
လဲ
ဘယ်လို
How
ဘယ်လို လုပ်မလဲ။
လဲ
ဘယ်လောက်
How much
ဘယ်လောက်လဲ။
လဲ
ဘာလို့
Why
ဘာလို့ မလာတာလဲ။
လဲ

Meanings

In Burmese, question words (who, what, where, etc.) occupy the same syntactic slot as the information they are asking for.

1

In-situ placement

The question word replaces the noun or adverb in the sentence structure.

“မင်း ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ (What are you doing?)”

“သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။ (Who is he/she?)”

Reference Table

Reference table for Question Word Placement in Sentences
Form Structure Example
Affirmative
Subject + Object + Verb
သူ ထမင်းစားတယ်။
Question
Subject + [Question Word] + Verb + လဲ
သူ ဘာစားလဲ။
Negative
Subject + မ + Verb
သူ မစားဘူး။
Negative Question
Subject + [Question Word] + မ + Verb + လဲ
သူ ဘာမစားလဲ။
Short Answer
Noun
ထမင်း။
Yes/No Question
Subject + Verb + လား
သူ စားလား။

正式程度

正式
ဘာလုပ်နေပါသလဲ။

ဘာလုပ်နေပါသလဲ။ (Casual conversation)

中性
ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။

ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ (Casual conversation)

非正式
ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။

ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ (Casual conversation)

俚语
ဘာလုပ်နေတာလဲ။

ဘာလုပ်နေတာလဲ။ (Casual conversation)

Question Word Map

Question Word

People

  • ဘယ်သူ who

Objects

  • ဘာ what

Places

  • ဘယ်မှာ where
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按水平分级的例句

1

ဒါ ဘာလဲ။

What is this?

2

မင်း ဘယ်သွားမလဲ။

Where are you going?

3

သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။

Who is he/she?

4

ဒါ ဘယ်လောက်လဲ။

How much is this?

1

မင်း ဘာလို့ မလာတာလဲ။

Why didn't you come?

2

ဒီနေ့ ဘာစားမလဲ။

What will you eat today?

3

မင်း ဘယ်မှာ နေလဲ။

Where do you live?

4

ဘယ်အချိန် လာမလဲ။

What time will you come?

1

ဘယ်သူ့ကို မေးရမလဲ။

Who should I ask?

2

ဘယ်လို လုပ်ရမလဲ။

How should I do this?

3

ဘယ်နှစ်ခု လိုချင်လဲ။

How many do you want?

4

ဘယ်သူ့ စာအုပ်လဲ။

Whose book is this?

1

ဘယ်လို အခြေအနေမျိုးမှာ သုံးမလဲ။

In what kind of situation would you use this?

2

ဘာကြောင့် ဒီလို ဖြစ်သွားတာလဲ။

Why did it happen like this?

3

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မတွေ့ဘူးလား။

Did you not see anyone?

4

ဘယ်လောက်ထိ ကြာမလဲ။

How long will it take?

1

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မပြောပြချင်တဲ့ အကြောင်းရင်းက ဘာလဲ။

What is the reason you don't want to tell anyone?

2

ဘယ်လို နည်းလမ်းနဲ့ ဖြေရှင်းမလဲ။

By what method will you solve it?

3

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မယုံကြည်နိုင်တဲ့ အခြေအနေမျိုးလား။

Is it a situation where you can't trust anyone?

4

ဘာကို ရည်ရွယ်ပြီး ပြောတာလဲ။

With what intention are you saying this?

1

ဘယ်လို အကြောင်းတရားတွေက ဒီပြောင်းလဲမှုကို ဖြစ်စေတာလဲ။

What kind of causes led to this change?

2

ဘာကိုမှ မသိဘဲနဲ့ ဘယ်လို ဆုံးဖြတ်မလဲ။

How will you decide without knowing anything?

3

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ အပြစ်တင်စရာ မလိုတဲ့ အခြေအနေမျိုးမှာ ဘာလုပ်မလဲ။

What would you do in a situation where no one is to blame?

4

ဘယ်လို အကျိုးဆက်မျိုးတွေ ဖြစ်လာနိုင်မလဲ။

What kind of consequences might arise?

容易混淆

Question Word Placement in Sentences 对比 Yes/No Questions

Learners often use 'လဲ' for yes/no questions.

Question Word Placement in Sentences 对比 Location vs. Direction

Learners confuse 'ဘယ်မှာ' and 'ဘယ်ကို'.

Question Word Placement in Sentences 对比 Subject Omission

Learners think they must always include the subject.

常见错误

✗

ဘာ မင်း စားလဲ။

✓

မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။

Question words cannot move to the front.
✗

မင်း စားလဲ။

✓

မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။

You must include the question word.
✗

မင်း ဘာစား။

✓

မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။

Don't forget the final particle 'လဲ'.
✗

ဘယ်သူ မင်း လာလဲ။

✓

မင်း ဘယ်သူ လာမလဲ။

Keep the subject in the correct position.
✗

ဘယ်မှာ မင်း သွားမလဲ။

✓

မင်း ဘယ်ကို သွားမလဲ။

Use 'ဘယ်ကို' for direction, not 'ဘယ်မှာ'.
✗

ဘယ်လောက်လဲ စျေး။

✓

စျေး ဘယ်လောက်လဲ။

Keep the subject before the question word.
✗

ဘာလို့ မင်း မလာတာ။

✓

ဘာလို့ မင်း မလာတာလဲ။

Always end with the question particle.
✗

ဘယ်သူ့ကို မေးရမလဲ။ (when meaning 'who to ask')

✓

ဘယ်သူ့ကို မေးရမလဲ။ (Correct, but ensure context is clear)

Context is crucial in Burmese.
✗

ဘယ်လို လုပ်ရမလဲ။ (when meaning 'how to do')

✓

ဘယ်လို လုပ်ရမလဲ။ (Correct)

Ensure the verb matches the question.
✗

ဘယ်နှစ်ခု လိုချင်လဲ။ (when meaning 'how many')

✓

ဘယ်နှစ်ခု လိုချင်လဲ။ (Correct)

Use the correct counter for the object.
✗

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မပြောပြချင်တဲ့ အကြောင်းရင်းက ဘာလဲ။

✓

ဘယ်သူ့ကိုမှ မပြောပြချင်တဲ့ အကြောင်းရင်းက ဘာလဲ။ (Correct)

Complex sentences require careful particle placement.
✗

ဘာကို ရည်ရွယ်ပြီး ပြောတာလဲ။

✓

ဘာကို ရည်ရွယ်ပြီး ပြောတာလဲ။ (Correct)

Maintain consistent register.
✗

ဘယ်လို နည်းလမ်းနဲ့ ဖြေရှင်းမလဲ။

✓

ဘယ်လို နည်းလမ်းနဲ့ ဖြေရှင်းမလဲ။ (Correct)

Ensure the preposition matches the verb.

句型

___ ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။

မင်း ___ သွားမလဲ။

ဒါ ___ လဲ။

ဘာလို့ ___ မလာတာလဲ။

Real World Usage

Texting constant

ဘယ်မှာလဲ။

Ordering food very common

ဘာစားမလဲ။

Job interview common

ဘာလုပ်ရမလဲခင်ဗျာ။

Travel common

ဘယ်ကို သွားရမလဲ။

Shopping very common

ဘယ်လောက်လဲ။

Social media common

ဘာဖြစ်တာလဲ။

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💡

Context is King

Don't worry about the subject if it's clear. Dropping it makes you sound more natural.
⚠️

Don't Front!

Never move the question word to the front. It is the #1 mistake learners make.
🎯

Master the Particles

Learn the difference between 'လဲ' and 'လား' early on.
💬

Be Polite

Always add a polite particle when speaking to strangers.

Smart Tips

Think of the answer first, then replace the target word with the question word.

What you eat? → မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။

Ask yourself: am I asking where something IS or where I am GOING?

ဘယ်မှာ သွားမလဲ။ → ဘယ်ကို သွားမလဲ။

Add 'ခင်ဗျာ' or 'ရှင်' at the end of your question.

ဘယ်သွားမလဲ။ → ဘယ်သွားမလို့လဲခင်ဗျာ။

Drop the subject to sound more casual.

မင်း ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ → ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။

发音

lae (rising)

Final Particle 'လဲ'

The 'လဲ' particle should have a slightly rising intonation to indicate a question.

Question Intonation

Sentence + လဲ (↗)

Signals that the speaker is waiting for an answer.

记住它

记忆技巧

Think of the question word as a placeholder. It sits in the chair where the answer belongs.

视觉联想

Imagine a sentence as a train. The question word is a passenger sitting in the seat where the answer (the 'real' passenger) should be.

Rhyme

Don't move the word to the front of the line, keep it in place and add 'lae' at the end every time.

Story

Imagine you are a detective. You have a blank space in your notebook where the suspect's name should be. You write 'Who' in that blank space. That is exactly how Burmese works.

Word Web

ဘယ်သူဘာဘယ်မှာဘယ်လိုဘယ်လောက်ဘာလို့

挑战

Write down 5 things you want to know today. Translate them into Burmese using the 'in-situ' rule.

文化笔记

In Burmese culture, asking direct questions can sometimes be seen as intrusive. It is common to add polite particles like 'ခင်ဗျာ' (for men) or 'ရှင်' (for women) to soften the question.

In professional settings, the use of formal particles is mandatory to show respect to elders or superiors.

Among close friends, particles are often dropped or shortened for efficiency.

Burmese interrogatives are rooted in the Tibeto-Burman language family, which typically uses in-situ question words.

对话开场白

“

မင်း ဘာစားမလဲ။

“

မင်း ဘယ်သွားမလဲ။

“

ဒါ ဘယ်လောက်လဲ။

“

မင်း ဘယ်သူ့ကို အားကိုးမလဲ။

日记主题

Write about your day using 3 questions.
Ask a friend about their plans for the weekend.
Write a dialogue between a customer and a shopkeeper.
Reflect on a difficult decision you made and ask yourself questions about it.

常见错误

Incorrect

正确

Incorrect

正确

Incorrect

正确

Incorrect

正确

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Test Yourself

Fill in the correct question word.

မင်း ___ စားမလဲ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘာ
You are asking about food, which is an object.
Choose the correct sentence. 多项选择

Which sentence is correct?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။
Burmese uses in-situ question words.
Correct the sentence. Error Correction

Find and fix the mistake:

ဘယ်မှာ မင်း သွားမလဲ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘယ်ကို သွားမလဲ။
Use 'ဘယ်ကို' for direction.
Reorder the words. Sentence Reorder

Arrange the words in the correct order:

All words placed

Click words above to build the sentence

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။
Subject + Object + Verb + Particle.
Translate to Burmese. 翻译

Who is he?

Answer starts with: သူ ...

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။
Subject + Question Word + Verb.
Complete the dialogue. Dialogue Completion

A: ___? B: ဈေးသွားမယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်သွားမလဲ။
The answer is about a destination.
Build a sentence. Sentence Building

You + what + eat + ? (future)

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားမလဲ။
Subject + Object + Verb + Particle.
Sort the question words. Grammar Sorting

Which is for location?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်မှာ
ဘယ်မှာ means 'where' (location).

Score: /8

练习题

8 exercises
Fill in the correct question word.

မင်း ___ စားမလဲ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘာ
You are asking about food, which is an object.
Choose the correct sentence. 多项选择

Which sentence is correct?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။
Burmese uses in-situ question words.
Correct the sentence. Error Correction

Find and fix the mistake:

ဘယ်မှာ မင်း သွားမလဲ။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘယ်ကို သွားမလဲ။
Use 'ဘယ်ကို' for direction.
Reorder the words. Sentence Reorder

မင်း / ဘာ / စား / လဲ

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားလဲ။
Subject + Object + Verb + Particle.
Translate to Burmese. 翻译

Who is he?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။
Subject + Question Word + Verb.
Complete the dialogue. Dialogue Completion

A: ___? B: ဈေးသွားမယ်။

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်သွားမလဲ။
The answer is about a destination.
Build a sentence. Sentence Building

You + what + eat + ? (future)

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: မင်း ဘာစားမလဲ။
Subject + Object + Verb + Particle.
Sort the question words. Grammar Sorting

Which is for location?

✓ Correct! ✗ Not quite. Correct answer: ဘယ်မှာ
ဘယ်မှာ means 'where' (location).

Score: /8

常见问题 (8)

Because Burmese is an in-situ language. Moving the word changes the meaning or makes it ungrammatical.

Use 'လဲ' for information questions (who, what, where) and 'လား' for yes/no questions.

Yes, if the context is clear, you can drop the subject to sound more natural.

No, you can also use 'ဘယ်ကို' for direction or 'ဘယ်က' for origin.

It is the marker that tells the listener you are asking a question.

Yes, you can add polite particles like 'ခင်ဗျာ' or 'ရှင်' to make them formal.

The sentence will not be a question. It will be a statement.

Use 'ဘာလို့' or 'ဘာကြောင့်'.

Scaffolded Practice

1

1

2

2

3

3

4

4

Mastery Progress

Needs Practice

Improving

Strong

Mastered

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In Other Languages

Japanese high

In-situ + ka

The specific particles used are different.

Chinese moderate

In-situ + ma

Chinese does not always require a final particle for information questions.

English low

Wh-fronting

Word order is the primary difference.

Spanish low

Wh-fronting

Spanish requires inverted word order.

German low

Wh-fronting

German syntax is much more rigid.

Arabic low

Wh-fronting

Arabic has a different root-based structure.

Learning Path

Prerequisites

Previous
Asking 'What kind?' (ဘာအမျိုးအစား)
Next
The Emphatic Question Particle (လဲ)

Related Grammar Rules

A1

Simple Affirmative Verb Sentences (Subject + Object + Verb + Particle)
A1

Adjectives as Predicates
A1

Basic Sentence Structure: SOV (Subject-Object-Verb)
A2

Connecting Reasons to Actions
B1

Complex Noun Phrases with Relative Clauses
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