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Nouns

Nouns in Burmese are pluralized by suffixing တွေ twe (or if the word ends in a glottal stop) in colloquial Burmese or များ mya: in formal Burmese. The suffix တို့ tou., which indicates a group of persons or things, is also suffixed to the modified noun. An example is below:

Plural suffixes are not used when the noun is quantified with a number.

ကလေး

hka.le:

/kʰəlé

child

၅

nga:

ŋá

five

ယောက်

yauk

jaʊʔ/

CL

ကလေး ၅ ယောက်

hka.le: nga: yauk

/kʰəlé ŋá jaʊʔ/

child five CL

"five children"

Although Burmese does not have grammatical gender (e.g. masculine or feminine nouns), a distinction is made between the sexes, especially in animals and plants, by means of suffix particles. Nouns are masculinized with the following suffixes: ထီး hti:, ဖ hpa, or ဖို hpui, depending on the noun, and feminized with the suffix မ ma.. Examples of usage are below: