တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်
ta me ba
The English word "no" is expressed in Karen as တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ် (ta me ba).
တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ် is used as a particle to show disagreement or to express negation.
Meaning: used to show disagreement or negation (particle)
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is ta me ba.
Did you know?
- When answering a 'yes' or 'no' question, Karen speakers often repeat the verb of the question instead of using တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်. To say 'no' to 'Are you eating?', a speaker might use a negative form of 'eat' rather than a generic 'no'.
- In many Karen-speaking communities, social harmony is highly valued, so a direct တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ် can sometimes be perceived as more blunt than the English 'no'.
- Because Karen languages are tonal, a slight change in the pitch of your voice when saying တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ် could accidentally change the meaning of the sentence entirely.
Example conversation
Two friends are talking about a lost bag.
- စောစော Saw Sawဒါမ့ၢ် ပှ့ၣ်နၤလံာ်?da may pwo na la?Is this your bag?
- ကေကေ Kay Kayတမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်၊ တမ့ၢ်ပှ့ၣ်ယၤဘၣ်။ta may baw, ta may pwo ya bawNo, it is not my bag.
- စောစော Saw Sawပှ့ၣ်နၤ ပျာ်တဲာ်လံာ်?pwo na pyaw taw la?Is your bag lost?
- ကေကေ Kay Kayတမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်၊ ယဲးတဲာ်တမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်။ta may baw, yay taw ta may bawNo, it is not lost.
