Burmese

About Burmese

Burmese is the official language of Myanmar, the first language of about 33 million people and a second language for many of the country's other peoples. It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan family.

Burmese is tonal and is written in a rounded script of its own. Its formal written style differs a good deal from everyday speech, so guides may mix the two. Politeness shows at the end of a sentence: men end polite sentences with khin bya and women with shin. Mingalaba means hello and kyay zu tin ba de thank you.

FamilySino-Tibetan, Lolo-Burmese
Native speakersabout 33 million (2019)
Official inMyanmar
ScriptBurmese alphabet
Tonesusually counted as four
Codesmy (ISO 639-1), mya (ISO 639-3)

Speaker number: Ethnologue (2019), via Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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