Spanish to Burmese: quién can ask for an identity, an actor or a companion
Identify what information the question requests
Spanish quién asks about a person, but the rest of the sentence determines that person’s role. A question identifying somebody is different from a question asking who performs an action. Burmese makes that difference visible in the constructions taught in Northern Illinois University’s beginning course. Reusing one who-question pattern for both purposes would change what the listener is asked to supply.
The course gives သူ ဘယ်သူလဲ။ for asking who he or she is. It separately gives ဘယ်သူ သွားသလဲ။ for asking who goes. The first asks for an identity; the second asks which person is doing the going. A Spanish source containing ser and a source containing an action verb should therefore not be reduced to the same target question merely because both contain quién.
Con quién does not ask who performs the action
The Burmese lesson explains that နဲ့ follows the question expression when asking about a companion. This is a postposition: its position differs from Spanish con before quién. The relation can survive while the order changes. It must not disappear simply because Spanish and Burmese place the accompanying word on different sides of the questioned person.
Consider the difference between identifying who wants to come and asking which person somebody wants to meet. In one question, the unknown person is the one whose intention is being discussed; in the other, an already identified person has an intention involving somebody else. Treating every occurrence of quién as the actor would exchange those roles and could elicit the wrong name.
The course’s ဘယ်သူ လာချင်သလဲ။ asks who wants to come, illustrating the first pattern. Its syntax table then separates companion questions using နဲ့. These patterns help a Spanish-speaking reader track the difference without assuming that the first person mentioned in the target sentence must always be the person whose identity is unknown.
Do not turn every written quién into a direct question
The RAE explains that accented quién introduces indirect as well as direct questions. A Spanish sentence reporting that someone knows who a visitor is does not necessarily request an answer from the person reading it. The accent identifies the interrogative form; punctuation and the containing clause determine whether the whole message is itself a question.
The same entry distinguishes quién from relative quien and discusses contexts in which the choice changes meaning. This is relevant before applying the Burmese lesson’s direct-question endings. A translation of a reported uncertainty needs to remain a report, rather than suddenly becoming a direct request for the reader to identify somebody.
For this pair, first determine the missing information: a person’s identity, the actor in an event or the companion involved. Then establish whether the Spanish sentence asks the listener directly or embeds that question inside another statement. The documented Burmese examples illustrate the first distinction; they should not be expanded into a universal recipe for every Spanish clause containing quién or quien.
Language references