ဟုတ်ကဲ့
hutkai./hoʊʔkɛ̰/
The English phrase "ok" can be expressed in Burmese as ဟုတ်ကဲ့ (hutkai.).
The word is used to provide an acknowledgement or to show acceptance in response to someone.
Meaning: acknowledgement or acceptance (intj)
Which one should you use?
While ဟုတ်ကဲ့ is used for polite acknowledgement, you should use ဟုတ်တယ် if you specifically mean to say "it is true" or "that's right" instead of a simple acknowledgement. Additionally, the word အေး can also mean "ok" or "yeah", but it is used in different social contexts.
Is there a formal and an informal way to say it?
ဟုတ်ကဲ့ is the polite way to say ok or yes when acknowledging someone. In contrast, the word အေး is informal and is used among friends or by elders when speaking to younger people.
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is hutkai. The IPA is /hoʊʔkɛ̰/.
Did you know?
- In very formal or royal settings, the way one says 'ok' or 'yes' changes entirely, moving beyond ဟုတ်ကဲ့ to specialized honorifics.
- The word ဟုတ်ကဲ့ is composed of ဟုတ် and ကဲ့, which literally translates to 'It is the case'.
- When using the polite ဟုတ်ကဲ့, you can increase the level of respect by adding the particle ခင်ဗျ (khin byar) for men or ရှင့် (shint) for women at the end.
Examples in context
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ နားလည်ပါပြီ။hote ke, nar lal par pyi.Okay, I understand.
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ အခုသွားပါ့မယ်။hote ke, a khu thwar pa mae.Okay, I will go now.
- ဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ ဒါဆိုရင် အဆင်ပြေပါတယ်။hote ke, dar so yin a sin pyay par tal.Okay, then it is fine.
Example conversation
At the office, a male colleague confirms a task with a female colleague.
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawခိုင်ခိုင်၊ ဒီစာရွက်ကို သိမ်းပေးပါဦး။khaing khaing, de sar ywet ko thaim pay par oon.Khaing Khaing, please file this paper.
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ ဇော်ဇော်။hote ke, zaw zaw.Okay, Zaw Zaw.
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawဒီနေ့ အကုန်ပြီးအောင် လုပ်ပေးလို့ရမလား။de nay a kone pyi aung lote pay lo ya ma lar.Can you finish it all by today?
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ လုပ်ပေးပါ့မယ်။hote ke, lote pay par mae.Okay, I will do it.
Sources
- Pronunciation: Wiktionary entry ဟုတ်ကဲ့, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries ဟုတ်ကဲ့, CC BY-SA 4.0.
