ကောင်းသော
kaung thaw
In Burmese, the English phrase "good" is translated as ကောင်းသော (kaung thaw).
The word is an adjective meaning pleasant or enjoyable.
Meaning: pleasant, enjoyable (adj)
Which one should you use?
The form ကောင်းသော is used in literary or formal writing, while the colloquial form ကောင်းတယ် (kaung de) is used to mean "is good" in standard daily conversation.
How does it change in a sentence?
In spoken Burmese, the adjective is typically expressed using the form ကောင်းတယ် instead of the formal ကောင်းသော used in writing.
How do you pronounce it?
kaung thaw
Did you know?
- In Burmese culture, the concept of 'good' is often tied to 'merit' (ကုသိုလ်), meaning that a 'good' person is often viewed as someone who has accumulated positive spiritual karma.
- In Burmese, the word ကောင်းတယ် is used not only to describe quality but also to confirm that a task has been completed or a request has been understood, similar to 'okay' or 'understood'.
- When Burmese speakers want to say something is 'very good', they often repeat the root word, such as ကောင်းကောင်း (kaung kaung), which can also change the meaning to 'properly' or 'well'.
Example conversation
Myat Noe and Zaw Zaw are talking about their weekend.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeဇော်ဇော်၊ ပိတ်ရက်မှာ ပျော်ရွှင်စရာ ကောင်းသော အချိန်တွေ ပိုင်ဆိုင်ခဲ့လား။Zaw Zaw, pate yet hmar pyaw shwin sa yar kaung thaw a chein tway pine saung khay lar?Zaw Zaw, did you have some good times over the weekend?
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ တကယ့်ကို ကောင်းသော အနားယူမှု တစ်ခုပါ။hoat kae, ta gae ko kaung thaw a nar yu hmu ta khu par.Yes, it was a really good rest.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeဒါဆိုရင်တော့ အရမ်းကောင်းတာပေါ့။da so yin taw ayan kaung tar paw.Then that is very good.
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawမြတ်နိုးရော ပျော်ခဲ့ရဲ့လား။Myat Noe yaw pyaw khay ya lar?Did you enjoy yourself too, Myat Noe?
