Syntax
သ is a verb particle for past or present tense. It precedes the question ending.
| verb | သ | လား |
| verb particle | question ending |
| Does (someone) verb?/ Is (something) adjective? |
သူ လာသလား။ Does he come?
ကျွန်တော် မှားသလား။ Am I wrong?
တယ် is a positive sentence ending for past or past or present tense.
ပါ as a verb particle is used for politeness.
| verb | ပါ | တယ် |
| verb particle | sentence ending |
| (Someone) verbs./ (Someone) is adjective. |
သူ လာပါတယ်။ He comes.
ခင်ဗျား မှားပါတယ်။ You are wrong.
မ and ဘူး sandwich verbs in negative statements.
| မ | verb | ပါ | ဘူး |
| negative prefix | verb particle | negative sentence ending |
| (Someone) does not verb./ (Someone) is not adjective. |
သူ မလာပါဘူး။ He does not come.
ခင်ဗျား မမှားပါဘူး။ You are not wrong.
လား is added to negative statements to construct negative questions.
| မ | verb | ဘူး | လား |
| negative prefix | negative sentence ending | question ending |
| Does not someone verb?/ Is not someone adjective? |
သူ မလာဘူးလား။ Does not he come?
ခင်ဗျား မမှားဘူးလာ။ Are not you wrong?
Note: Use of the verb particle ပါ in negative questions is rare.