Burmese has an elaborate case marking system, especially compared to other languages in the region.
[1] This is an areal feature also common in major regional Asian languages like Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.
[1][2] Burmese uses "negative politeness," whereby speakers avoid directly addressing people.
For instance, an older person may refer to themselves as ဒေါ်လေး (dau le: [dɔ̀ lé]; "aunt") or ဦးလေး (u: lei: [ʔú lé]; "uncle"), while a younger person may refer to themselves as သား (sa: [θá]; "son") or သမီး (sa.mi: [θəmí]; "daughter") in spoken conversation.
[2] As a hierarchical system, the set of Burmese pronouns has substantially expanded to include lexical items like nouns and nominal phrases.
'female slave') for females humble the speaker, while the polite forms of second-person pronouns မင်း (min [mɪ́ɴ]; lit.
Spoken Burmese commonly uses kinship terms in place of first, second or third person pronouns.
When speaking to a monk, pronouns like ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun: (from ဘုန်းကြီး phun: kri:, "monk"), ဆရာတော် (chara dau [sʰəjàdɔ̀]; "royal teacher"), and အရှင်ဘုရား (a.hrang bhu.ra:; [ʔəʃɪ̀ɴ pʰəjá]; "your lordship") are used depending on their status (ဝါ); when referring to oneself, terms like တပည့်တော် (ta.
[8] This does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses ၏ ([ḭ]) as postpositional marker for possessive case instead of ရဲ့ ([jɛ̰]).
ဒါ da အဲသည် e: dhi For example, မောင်သစ်လွင်သည် ဖားကန့်မြို့တွင်မွေးဖွားခဲ့သည်။ "Mg Thit Lwin was born in [the town of] Phakant."