Burmese pronouns

Burmese pronouns (နာမ်စား) are words in the Burmese language used to address or refer to people or things.

Subject pronouns begin sentences, though the subject is generally omitted in the imperative forms and in conversation. Grammatically speaking, subject marker particles (MY က ( in colloquial, MY သည် in formal) must be attached to the subject pronoun, although they are also generally omitted in conversation. Object pronouns must have an object marker particle (MY ကို  in colloquial, MY အား  in formal) attached immediately after the pronoun. Proper nouns are often substituted for pronouns, an example of pronoun avoidance. One's status in relation to the audience determines the pronouns used, with certain pronouns used for different audiences.

Personal pronouns
Polite pronouns are used to address elders, teachers and strangers, through the use of feudal-era third person pronouns in lieu of first and second person pronouns. In such situations, one refers to oneself in third person: MY ကျွန်တော် (kya. nau ) for males, and MY ကျွန်မ (kya. ma. ) for females, both meaning "your servant") and refer to the addressee as MY မင်း (min ; "your highness"), MY ခင်ဗျား (khang bya: ; "master lord") or MY ရှင် (hrang ; "ruler/master"). So ingrained are these terms in the daily polite speech that people use them as the first and second person pronouns without giving a second thought to the root meaning of these pronouns.

When speaking to a person of the same status or of younger age, MY ငါ (nga ; "I/me") and MY နင် (nang ; "you") may be used, although most speakers choose to use third person pronouns, typically derived from Burmese kinship terms. For example, an older person may use MY ဒေါ်လေး (dau le: ; "aunt") or MY ဦးလေး (u: lei: ; "uncle") to refer to himself, while a younger person may use either MY သား (sa: ; son) or MY သမီး (sa.mi: ; daughter).

Basic personal pronouns
Basic pronouns can be pluralized by suffixing the following particles to the pronoun: MY တို့ (tui.) or colloquial MY ဒို့ (dui.).

Religious personal pronouns
Other pronouns are reserved for speaking with Buddhist monks. When speaking to a monk, pronouns like MY ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun: (from MY ဘုန်းကြီး phun: kri:, "monk"), MY ဆရာတော် (chara dau ; "royal teacher"), and MY အရှင်ဘုရား (a.hrang bhu.ra:; ; "your lordship") are used depending on their status (MY ဝါ); when referring to oneself, terms like MY တပည့်တော် (ta. pany. tau ; "royal disciple") or MY ဒကာ (da. ka, "donor") are used. When speaking to a monk, the following pronouns are used:

Contraction pronunciation rule
In colloquial Burmese, possessive pronouns are contracted when the root pronoun itself is low toned. This does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses MY ၏ as postpositional marker for possessive case instead of MY ရဲ့. Examples include the following:

The contraction also occurs in some low toned nouns, making them possessive nouns (e.g. MY အမေ့ or MY မြန်မာ့, "mother's" and "Burma's" respectively).

Demonstrative pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns in Myanmar are same in nature with English. Demonstrative pronouns are identical with the demonstrative adjectives, but demonstrative pronouns stand alone, while demonstrative adjectives qualify a noun. The most common demonstrative pronouns in Myanmar are MY ဤ၊ သည် "this", MY ထို "that", MY ယင်း၊ ၎င်း "it". They are usually used for referring inanimate objects. These pronouns mostly used with noun or noun phrases. Demonstrative pronouns have the form (pronoun + noun phrase) to demonstrate the previous object. For example, MY မောင်သစ်လွင်သည် ဖားကန့်မြို့တွင်မွေးဖွားခဲ့သည်။ "Mg Thit Lwin was born in Phakant Town." MY ထိုမြို့ကို ကျောက်စိမ်းမြို့တော်ဟုလည်းခေါ်သည်။ "That Town is also called 'Jade Land'". In the above example sentence, the demonstrative pronoun MY ထို "that" is used with the noun MY မြို့ "town" to refer the MY ဖားကန့်မြို့ "Phakant township".

Reflexive pronouns
Burmese has two alternative forms of the reflexive:
 * 1) literary form: MY မိမိ, often used in conjunction with MY ကိုယ် (i.e., MY မိမိကိုယ် 'oneself')
 * 2) spoken form: MY ကိုယ်, used with direct objects and with pronouns (i.e., MY သူ့ကိုယ်သူ 'himself' or MY ကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကို 'oneself')