K’in-bya  ခင်ဗျာ  Sir / Madam (man speaking)   

Shin  ရှင်  Sir / Madam (woman speaking)   

  Example sentences     

  Di-hma t’ain-ba.  ဒီမှာ ထိုင်ပါ။  Please sit here. 

  Di-hma t’ain-ba K’in-bya.  ဒီမှာ ထိုင်ပါ ခင်ဗျာ။  (same, with polite tag, man speaking) 

  Di-hma t’ain-ba Shin.  ဒီမှာ ထိုင်ပါ ရှင်။  (same, with polite tag, woman speaking) 

Burmese polite tags are like “Sir” and “Madam” in English in that they show politeness and are tagged onto the end of a sentence. 

They are different from “Sir” and “Madam” in two ways: 

1. They are more widely used than in (British) English. For example, people use them to strangers when they are asking the way, and customers use them to shopkeepers. 

2. In English both men and women use “Sir” to a man and “Madam” to a woman. In Burmese the gender difference works the other way round: male speakers use K’in-bya to both men and women, and women speakers use Shin to both men and women.