နေကောင်းလား?
ne kaung la?
In Burmese, "how are you?" is said as နေကောင်းလား? (ne kaung la?)
This phrase is used to ask about someone's physical health or their general state of being.
What does it mean word for word?
The phrase is composed of နေ (ne) meaning 'to stay/live', ကောင်း (kaung) meaning 'good' and လား (la) which is a question particle.
How does it change in a sentence?
When responding to this question, the standard positive response is နေကောင်းပါတယ် (ne kaung ba tal), which means 'I am well'.
How do you pronounce it?
ne kaung la?
Did you know?
- In many parts of Myanmar, instead of asking 'how are you?', people might ask if you have eaten yet by saying စားပြီးပြီလား? (sa pyi pyi la?).
- Burmese greetings often omit pronouns entirely, meaning the phrase နေကောင်းလား? contains no words for 'you' or 'I'.
- In many social contexts, answering နေကောင်းပါတယ် (I am well) is a social requirement even if the speaker is feeling unwell, to avoid burdening the asker with worry.
Examples in context
- နေကောင်းလား?nay kaung lar?How are you?
- အဖေ နေကောင်းလား?a phay nay kaung lar?Is father doing well?
Example conversation
Two friends meet at a local tea shop.
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawခိုင်ခိုင်၊ နေကောင်းလား?khaing khaing, nay kaung lar?Khaing Khaing, how are you?
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineနေကောင်းပါတယ်၊ ကျော်ကျော်။nay kaung par tal, kyaw kyaw.I am well, Kyaw Kyaw.
- ကျော်ကျော် Kyaw Kyawအလုပ်တွေ အဆင်ပြေရဲ့လား?a lote tway a sin pyay yae lar?Is work going well?
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ အဆင်ပြေပါတယ်။hote kae, a sin pyay par tal.Yes, it is going well.
