Danish to Burmese: distinguishing who someone is from who performs an action
One Danish question word can occupy different Burmese patterns
A Danish question beginning with hvem can ask for a person’s identity or for the person performing an action. Burmese does not resolve those meanings by putting a single equivalent of hvem at the beginning of every sentence. Northern Illinois University’s introductory lesson separates a question about someone’s identity from a question asking who does something. Identifying that difference is more useful than matching the first word of the Danish sentence.
The lesson gives သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။ for “Who is he or she?” Here the person being identified comes before the expression asking who that person is. In a Danish message meaning “Who is the person at the door?”, preserve that identification task. A Burmese sentence asking which person comes to the door instead requests the actor of an event, potentially a different answer.
An action question retains its verb and final question marking
For “Who goes?”, the lesson gives ဘယ်သူ သွားသလဲ။ The expression for who precedes the action, and the question has final marking. This differs from the identity pattern without implying that all Burmese questions have the same template. In particular, moving the source question word into the target does not remove the need to express whether the sentence concerns identity, movement, or another action.
Danish main-clause word order gives readers an early signal through the position of the finite verb. The Danish treebank documentation notes that a main-clause subject can occur after that verb, before negation. A Burmese rendering should not imitate that signal by moving the action verb ahead of every participant. The NIU patterns instead show how the question expression, action, and ending work together. For a Danish question meaning “Who wants to come?”, willingness must also survive; replacing it with “Who comes?” drops the very distinction the speaker is investigating.
With whom is not another subject question
The same Burmese lesson places နဲ့, meaning “with,” after the expression for who. This makes a useful contrast with a Danish prepositional phrase: the Danish relation word can precede its complement, whereas the Burmese pattern presented here puts the relation after the questioned person. In “Who do you want to meet with?”, that person is the intended companion or meeting partner, not automatically the subject who wants the meeting.
The Danish Language Council explains that a preposition is followed by an object-form pronoun, as in a phrase ending til mig. That source case distinction helps identify the participant’s role, but its written order cannot simply be transferred to Burmese. A question meaning “Who will live with you?” and one meaning “Who will you live with?” can concern the same possible household while organizing the question differently. Preserve which participant is already known, which is being requested, and the accompanying relation. The target question ending is part of that whole construction, rather than an optional substitute for a Danish question mark.
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