What does it mean word for word?
The phrase ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ is composed of ဘာ (what), လုပ် (do), နေ (a continuous aspect marker) and လဲ (a question particle).
Which one should you use?
While ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ is the standard spoken form, adding the particle တာ before the question particle လဲ to create ဘာလုပ်နေတာလဲ makes the sentence sound more natural and emphasizes the ongoing nature of the action.
Is there a formal and an informal way to say it?
The form ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ is the standard spoken form. For formal writing or highly formal speech, use ဘာလုပ်နေသလဲ.
How does it change in a sentence?
In Burmese, the subject "you" is often omitted from this phrase if the person being spoken to is already clear from the context. Additionally, adding the particle တာ before the question particle လဲ helps emphasize the ongoing nature of the action.
How do you pronounce it?
ba lote nay le?
Did you know?
- In Myanmar, asking ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ often functions as a casual greeting similar to 'How are you?' or 'What's up?' rather than a literal inquiry into someone's current task.
- The continuous marker နေ in ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ is derived from a word meaning 'to stay' or 'to reside', suggesting the action is 'staying' in a state of progress.
- Depending on who you are asking, you might add a kinship term like အစ်ကို (older brother) or အမေ (mother) to the start of ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ to avoid sounding rude.
Examples in context
- ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ba lote nay le?What are you doing?
- မင်း အခု ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။min a khu ba lote nay le?What are you doing right now?
- ကလေးက ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။ka lay ka ba lote nay le?What is the baby doing?
Example conversation
Hnin Hnin calls Aung Aung on the phone to check on him.
- နှင်းနှင်း Hnin Hninအောင်အောင်၊ ဘာလုပ်နေလဲ။Aung Aung, ba lote nay le?Aung Aung, what are you doing?
- အောင်အောင် Aung Aungစာဖတ်နေတာပါ။sar phat nay dar par.I am reading a book.
- နှင်းနှင်း Hnin Hninအလုပ်တွေ အများကြီး ရှိလား။a lote tway a myar gyi shi lar?Do you have a lot of work?
- အောင်အောင် Aung Aungမရှိပါဘူး။ma shi bar bu.I don't have any.
