စောင့်
caung./sa̰ʊɴ/
The Burmese verb for "wait" is စောင့် (caung.).
စောင့် is used to express the action of delaying or staying in a place until a specific event occurs. It is frequently paired with the adverb ခဏ to mean "wait a moment" or "wait a bit".
Meaning: delay until some event (verb)
How does it change in a sentence?
You can modify the verb to change the tense or level of politeness. To indicate the continuous aspect of waiting, add the particle နေ after the verb to form စောင့်နေသည်. To express a future intention to wait, add the particle မယ် to the end of the verb to form စောင့်မယ်. To make a command or request more polite, add the particle ပါ to the end of the verb, resulting in စောင့်ပါ.
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is caung. The IPA is /sa̰ʊɴ/.
Did you know?
- The root of စောင့် is shared with the Mizo word tsoŋ, showing a linguistic link between Myanmar and the hills of Mizoram.
- While စောင့် means to wait, using it in the context of a relationship can imply 'waiting for' a lover in a romantic or longing sense.
- The word စောင့် can be used to describe a 'watchman' or a guardian by treating the verb as a noun for the person doing the waiting.
Examples in context
- စောင့်ဦး။Wait.This sentence is useful for expressing the command to စောင့်.Tatoeba #8273994 by sithu015, translation #3048304 by camilozeta
- အပြင်မှာ စောင့်ပါ။Wait outside.Tatoeba #8289622 by sithu015, translation #2549741 by CK
- ခဏစောင့်ပါ။Wait a moment.Tatoeba #4455715 by Vortarulo, translation #410597 by CK
- 2 more sentences on Tatoeba
Example conversation
Two friends are meeting at a cafe.
- မင်းမင်း Min Minမင်းမင်း ဒီမှာ ခဏစောင့်ပါ။Min Min dhi hmar kha na saung bar.Min Min, please wait here for a moment.
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ ကျွန်မ စောင့်နေပါမယ်။houk ke, kyun ma saung nay bar mal.Okay, I will be waiting.
- မင်းမင်း Min Minသူငယ်ချင်းတစ်ယောက်ကို စောင့်နေတာလား။thu ngal chin ta yout ko saung nay tar lar?Are you waiting for a friend?
- ခိုင်ခိုင် Khine Khineဟုတ်တယ်၊ သူ အခုလာနေပြီ။houk tal, thu a khu lar nay pyi.Yes, he is coming now.
Sources
- Wiktionary, “wait” translations and entries စောင့်, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries စောင့်, CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Example sentences: Tatoeba CC BY 2.0 FR.
