ကလေး
ka.le:/kʰəlé/
The Burmese word for baby is ကလေး (ka.le:).
ကလေး refers to a very young human being.
Meaning: very young human being (noun)
How do you pronounce it?
ka.le:
Did you know?
- Burmese speakers may add the word လေး as a suffix to other nouns to make them sound small, cute or endearing, mirroring the feeling of the word ကလေး.
- In Burmese culture, it is common to use kinship terms like 'younger sibling' instead of the general word ကလေး when speaking directly to or about a baby.
- The spelling variant ခလေး might share a distant linguistic ancestor with words meaning 'short' in Mon-Khmer languages, suggesting the word's roots are tied to the concept of smallness.
Examples in context
- ကလေးက အိပ်ပျော်နေပြီ။ka lay ka eit pyaw nay pyi.The baby is sleeping.
- ကလေးက အရမ်းချစ်ဖို့ကောင်းတယ်။ka lay ka ayan chit pho kaung tal.The baby is very cute.
- ကလေးအတွက် နို့ဘူးဝယ်ရမယ်။ka lay a twet no buu wal ya mal.I need to buy a milk bottle for the baby.
Example conversation
A couple is talking about their new arrival at home.
- စုစု Su Suကလေးက အခု ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ka lay ka a khu bar lote nay lal?What is the baby doing now?
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawကလေးက အိပ်နေတယ်။ka lay ka eit nay tal.The baby is sleeping.
- စုစု Su Suသူလေးက ချစ်ဖို့လည်းကောင်းတယ်နော်။thu lay ka chit pho lal kaung tal naw.The little one is so cute, isn't he?
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawဟုတ်တယ်၊ ငါတို့ကလေးလေးက အရမ်းချစ်ဖို့ကောင်းတယ်။hote tal, nga doh ka lay lay ka ayan chit pho kaung tal.Yes, our baby is very cute.
Sources
- Wiktionary, “baby” translations and entries ကလေး, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries ကလေး, CC BY-SA 4.0.
