Burmese pronouns
Burmese pronouns are words in the Burmese language used to address or refer to people or things.
Grammatical markers
Burmese has an elaborate case marking system, especially compared to other languages in the region. Subject pronouns begin sentences, though the subject is generally omitted in the imperative forms and in spoken Burmese. Grammatically speaking, subject marker particles must be attached to the subject pronoun, although they are also generally omitted in spoken Burmese. Object pronouns must have an object marker particle attached immediately after the pronoun.Politeness
Burmese exhibits pronoun avoidance, where pronouns are avoided for politeness. This is an areal feature also common in major regional Asian languages like Thai, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese. In Burmese, speakers account for social distinctions linguistically, reflecting gender, relative age, kinship, social status, and intimacy. Burmese uses "negative politeness," whereby speakers avoid directly addressing people. Instead, Burmese relies on status and kinship terms, titles, and other terms of address, rather than regular pronouns. Burmese kinship terms are commonly substituted as pronouns. For instance, an older person may refer to themselves as ဒေါ်လေး or ဦးလေး, while a younger person may refer to themselves as သား or သမီး in spoken conversation.Burmese has a hierarchical system of pronouns, consisting of an open class of pronouns that are grammatically underspecified, but highly marked for the complex relation between speaker and addressee according to their relative position in the society. This feature is also seen in other lowland mainland Southeast Asian languages like Thai and Vietnamese. The prevalence of wet-rice farming in Burmese-speaking areas influenced the development of hierarchical pronouns in Burmese, as society was structured more along hierarchical lines. By contrast, other Tibeto-Burman languages in Myanmar, including Jingpo and Karenic languages, have maintained a grammatical system of pronouns, reflective of their more egalitarian dry-rice farming societies.
Personal pronouns
As a hierarchical system, the set of Burmese pronouns has substantially expanded to include lexical items like nouns and nominal phrases. These pronouns encode pragmatic, social relationships, reflecting the speaker-addressee relationship. In Burmese, the polite forms of first-person pronouns ကျွန်တော် for males, and ကျွန်မ for females humble the speaker, while the polite forms of second-person pronouns မင်း, ခင်ဗျား or ရှင် elevate the addressee.Burmese possesses several "true" pronouns inherited from Old Burmese; however these forms have been relegated to use in intimate situations only and are considered rude when used with people of higher status.These include the first-person pronoun ငါ and second-person pronoun နင်, which are now used only in intimate settings and only with speakers of equal or lower status or age.
Basic personal pronouns
The personal pronouns are pluralized by suffixing the following particles to the pronoun: တို့ or colloquial ဒို့.| Person | Usage | Term | IPA | Origin | Usage notes |
| First | Polite | ကျွန်တော် | used by males | ||
| First | Polite | ကျွန်မ | used by females | ||
| First | Polite | ကျွန်ုပ် | |||
| First | Polite | မိမိ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | ||
| First | Informal | ငါ | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors | |
| First | Informal | ကျုပ် | Contraction of ကျွန်ုပ်. | ||
| First | Informal | တို့ | |||
| First | Informal | ကိုယ် | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language, | ||
| Second | Polite | ခင်ဗျား | Contraction of သခင်ဘုရား, | used by males | |
| Second | Polite | ရှင် | used by females | ||
| Second | Polite | သင် | |||
| Second | လူကြီးမင်း | ||||
| Second | Informal | နင် | Inherited from Proto-Tibeto-Burman language | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors | |
| Second | Informal | မင်း | used when speaking to one's equals or inferiors, typically by male speakers | ||
| Second | Informal | ညည်း | Informal | used by females when addressing another female of same age or one younger | |
| Second | Informal | တော် | used by females | ||
| Third | သူ | ||||
| Third | သင်း | literary usage only | |||
| Third | ချင်း |
Kinship terms
Spoken Burmese commonly uses kinship terms in place of first, second or third person pronouns. Use of these terms indicates proximity and familiarity between the speaker and addressee, as well as relative age. Female speakers commonly reduplicate the terms for 'older brother' and 'younger brother' as romantic terms of endearment, while male speakers do not.| Term | Reciprocal term | Usage notes |
| အဖွား | သား သမီး | Used for elderly women |
| အဖိုး | သား သမီး | Used for elderly men |
| အဒေါ် အန်တီ | သား သမီး | Used for women similar in age to one's parents |
| ဦးလေး အန်ကယ် | သား သမီး | Used for men similar in age to one's parents |
| အမေ | သား သမီး | Used for women similar in age to one's parents, familiar/intimate |
| အဖေ | သား သမီး | Used for men similar in age to one's parents, familiar/intimate |
| အစ်မ | ညီ ညီမ | Used for females younger than one's parents but older than oneself |
| အစ်ကို | ညီ ညီမ | Used for males younger than one's parents but older than oneself; also used as a romantic term of endearment |
| ညီမ | အစ်ကို အစ်မ | Used for females younger than oneself |
| ညီ | အစ်ကို အစ်မ | Used for males younger than oneself |
| မောင် | အစ်ကို အစ်မ | Used for males younger than oneself ; also used as a romantic term of endearment |
Religious personal pronouns
Other pronouns are reserved for speaking with Buddhist monks. When speaking to a monk, pronouns like ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun:, ဆရာတော်, and အရှင်ဘုရား are used depending on their status ; when referring to oneself, terms like တပည့်တော် or ဒကာ are used. When speaking to a monk, the following pronouns are used:Tone sandhi
Spoken Burmese exhibits tone sandhi in the form of a shift from a low to an induced creaky tone, to indicate possession. This does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses ၏ as postpositional marker for possessive case instead of ရဲ့. Examples include the following:The contraction also occurs in some low toned nouns, making them possessive nouns.
Demonstrative pronouns
Burmese demonstrative pronouns are identical to the demonstrative adjectives, but demonstrative pronouns stand alone, while demonstrative adjectives qualify a noun. The most common demonstrative pronouns are listed below. They are usually used for referring inanimate objects, mostly to reference noun or noun phrases. Demonstrative pronouns have the form to demonstrate the previous object.| Gloss | Literary HIGH | Spoken LOW |
| "this" | ဤ i | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "this" | သည် sany | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "this" | အနှီ a hni | ဒီ di ဒါ da |
| "that" | ထို htui | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" | ယင်း yang: | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" | ၎င်း le kaung: | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
| "that" | အနှာ a hna | ဟို hui အဲသည် e: dhi |
For example, မောင်သစ်လွင်သည် ဖားကန့်မြို့တွင်မွေးဖွားခဲ့သည်။ "Mg Thit Lwin was born in Phakant." ထိုမြို့ကို ကျောက်စိမ်းမြို့တော်ဟုလည်းခေါ်သည်။ "That town is also called 'Jade Land'". In the above example sentence, the demonstrative pronoun ထို "that" is used with the noun မြို့ "town" to refer the ဖားကန့်မြို့ "Phakant".
Reflexive pronouns
Burmese has two alternative forms of the reflexive:- literary form: မိမိ, often used in conjunction with ကိုယ်
- spoken form: ကိုယ်, used with direct objects and with pronouns