Learn Burmese from Natural Talk: Recent Episodes
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Hello! Greetings from the Burmese corner! I'm Kenneth Wong, a Burmese language instructor, author, and translator. This is a podcast series for intermediate and advanced Burmese language learners who want to learn Burmese by listening to natural conversation. Every two weeks or so, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I upload an episode on a specific topic. At the end of each episode, you'll find the keywords and phrases with their meanings. You can reach BLAY from its Facebook page: BurmeseLanguageAcademyofYangon. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/
Hello Burmese learners! In this episode, my regular guest Su from Burmese Chatter Talk and I introduce you to a list of basic words and phrases to describe physical appearance, from body types and skin tones to hair and height. We discuss the Burmese word "to be fat," which few people like to hear, and the alternatives that are much more diplomatic. We also discuss tricky words that are typically used to describe tall people, long streets, and long hair, and some that are used primarily to describe height (in vertical dimension) but not length (in horizontal dimension). Want to know how to say "tall, dark, and handsome," or "brown-skinned cutie" in Burmese? Tune in to this episode. (Image licensed from Shutterstock. Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ဝတယ် to be fat
ပြည့်တယ် to be full-figured, to be chubby
ဝလာသလိုပဲ seem to have gain weight
ပိန်သွားသလိုပဲ seem to have lost weight
ဗိုက်ပူတယ် to have a beer belly
(အရပ်)ပုတယ် to be short
(အရပ်)နိမ့်တယ် to be short
(အရပ်)ရှည်တယ် to be tall
(အရပ်)မြင့်တယ် to be tall
ဒေါင်ကောင်းတယ် to have good height
ရှည်တယ် to be tall, long
မြင့်တယ် to be high
တိုတယ် to be short
နိမ့်တယ် to be low
ဆံပင်ရှည်တယ် to have long hair
ဆံပင်တိုတယ် to have short hair
ဂင်တိုတိုနဲ့လူ someone who is short and stout
ကလန်ကလား gangly (tall, with long arms, legs, and neck)
ဗျိုင်း egret
ဗလကောင်းတယ် to be muscular
ဗလတောင့်တယ် to be muscular
သွယ်တယ် to be slim, willowly
ခန့်တယ် to be handsome
ချောတယ် to be goodlooking
ရုပ်ဆိုးတယ် to be ugly
အကျည်းတန်တယ် to be ugly
အသားဖြူတယ် to have fair skin
အသားညိုတယ် to have brown skin
အသားမည်းတယ် to have dark skin
ညိုချောလေး a brown-skinned cutie
ဖြူချောလေး a fair-skinned cutie
အသားတော်ညိုပြာညက်ကယ် with brown and bluish skin, from the lyrics of an old song
ညက်တယ် to be fine-grained, to be smooth
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Following our debut Vocabulary Booster episode introducing you to flavor-related words, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher, and I now introduce you to commonly used weather-related verbs and expressions, along with a handful of time-related phrases such as "today, yesterday, and tomorrow." (Image licensed from Shutterstock. Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
ပူတယ် to be hot
မပူဘူး not hot (negative)
အေးတယ် to be cold
မအေးဘူး not cold (negative)
အိုက်တယ် to be humid
ချမ်းတယ် to be chilly
နေသာတယ် to be sunny
မိုးရွာတယ် to be rainy
မိုးမရွာဘူး not rainy (negative)
မိုးသည်းတယ် to rain heavily
နှင်းကျတယ် to snow
နှင်းမကျဘူး not snow (negative)
လေတိုက်တယ် to be windy
လေထန်တယ် to be extremely windy
ဒီနေ့ today
မနေ့က yesterday
မနက်ဖြန် tomorrow
သဘက်ခါ the day after tomorrow
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In collaboration with Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, I am launching a new series of mini-episodes called Vocabulary Boosters, as part of the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk podcast.
Long-form conversations, like the past episodes on the Burmese teashop culture and common insults, target intermediate and advanced learners. They're meant to replicate authentic conversations a learner might overhear on the streets or in the market. On the other hand, Vocabulary Boosters target Burmese learners at the beginning of their journey. As such, the episodes are delivered with English explanations. Each episode introduces a handful of basic words and phrases related to a certain topic, along with some simple sentences that show how they might be used.
In this debut episode, we introduce you to food-related words. Don't blame us if you get hungry after listening! (Image licensed from Shutterstock. Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
Vocabulary
စပ်တယ် to be spicy (affirmative)
မစပ်ဘူး not spicy (negative)
စပ်လား / စပ်သလား is it spicy? (yes-no question)
ခါးတယ် to be bitter (affirmative)
မခါးဘူး not bitter (negative)
ခါလား /ခါးသလား Is it bitter? (yes-no question)
ချိုတယ် to be sweet
ချဉ်တယ် to be sour
ငန်တယ် to be salty
လေးတယ် to be over-seasoned / to be heavy in weight
ပေါ့တယ် to be under-seasoned / to be light in weight
ဒီကော်ဖီ this coffee
ဟိုကော်ဖီ that coffee
ဟင်း dish
ကြက်သားဟင်း poultry dish
ဝက်သားဟင်း pork dish
အမဲသားဟင်း beef dish
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
"Life's like a box of chocolate; you never know what you're gonna get," says Forrest Gump, the title character played by Tom Hanks in the 1994 film. In Burmese, the saying roughly translates to "ဘဝဆိုတာ ချောကလက်ဘူးလေးလိုပါပဲ။ ဘာပါလဲဆိုတာ ဘယ်သူမှ မသိကြပါဘူး။"
In this episode, my cohost Su, a Burmese language teacher from Chiang Mai, and I discuss Forrest Gump's attitude toward life's tragedies and challenges, war's toll on the human psyche, and the bitter-sweet nature of first love. Along the way, we introduce you to the words and phrases related to childhood, unrequited love, the Vietnam war's unhealed trauma, the flower-child generation, and women's liberation. Join us as we go for a run with Forrest. (Illustration generated in ChatGPT; music courtesy of Pixabay. "Flower Power" excerpt courtesy of Alana Jordan.)
Vocabulary
ဇာတ်ကောင် character
ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main character
တစ်စေ့တစ်စောင်း to catch a glimpse
မှော်ပညာ wizardry, witchcraft
ရေသူမ mermaid
စုန်းမ witch
ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fable
တပ်စုမှူး platoon commander
တိတ်တိတ်ပုန်းချစ်တယ် to love someone secretly
လိင်အမြတ်ထုတ်တယ် to take advantage of someone sexually
အခွင့်အရေးယူတယ် to take advantage of
ဒုက္ခိတ disabled
ပြည့်တန်ဆာ prostitute
သူရသတ္တိဘွဲ့ award for bravery
စိတ်ဓာတ်ခွန်အားရတယ် to get inspiration or spiritual encouragement
အရိပ်အယောင် hint, implication
မှင်တက်သွားတယ် to be stunned, to be awe-struck
စိတ်လုံခြုံရာ space for mental security
ထိပ်တိုက်ရင်ဆိုင်တယ် to face or confront something head-on
သဟဇာတဖြစ်အောင် in order to be harmonious
နားမလည်ပါးမလည် without fully realizing or understanding something
နာတာရှည်ရောဂါ terminal disease
ရောဂါကျွမ်းနေပြီ to be incurable
ခါးစည်းခံမယ် to endure
ကဲ့ရဲ့တယ် to criticize, to condemn
ခံရသူကို အပြစ်တင်တယ် to blame the victim
လေနှင်ရာ မျောပါသွားတယ် to be carried away by the wind
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
"Pyimma Ngote Toe (ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို)" by Min Thu Wun (1909 to 2004), written in the four-syllable rhyme scheme typical of classic Burmese poetry, is an ode to a tree stump, the surviving fragment of a pyimma tree standing on a mound. The common name for this specimen in English is Queen's Crape Myrtle or Queen's Flower, giving off the unavoidable stench of colonialism. The original Burmese name pyimma, however, is quite different. It invokes the image of a sturdy, leafy tree offering refuge from Southeast Asia's cruel midday Sun. (With a lack of standardized Romanization for Burmese, pyima, pyinma, or pyimma can serve as an approximation of the Burmese name ပျဉ်းမ.)
The opening line, "ဖုထစ်ရွတ်တွ၊ ငှက်ဠင်းတသို့" is strung together with textured, aspirated, plosive words, allowing us to feel the bumps, ridges, knurls, and knots of the trunk as we pronounce them. The simile that follows compares the stump to a vulture, associated with burial grounds and death.
Written with stacked rhymes in the fourth, third, and second syllables of subsequent lines (the 4-3-2 pattern), the poem describes how the old pyimma has endured the termite's swarm, the sun's flames, the wind's wrath, and even warfare. The final stanza gives us hope and inspiration, depicting how the stump "ရွက်ဟောင်းညှာကြွေ၊ ရွက်သစ်ဝေ (sheds old stems and springs new leaves)" with the return of summer.
In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese (more a bowl than a bite, due to its length), I break down the first stanza of the poem, explain the rhyme scheme, and the post-independence sociopolitical climate of 1949 that gave birth to the poem. (Image: AI-generated in ChatGPT; Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို (မင်းသုဝဏ်)
"The Pyimma Stump" by Min Thu Wun (translated by Kenneth Wong)
ဖုထစ်ရွတ်တွ၊ ငှက်ဠင်းတသို့
ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို၊ သက်ကြားအိုသည်
ကုန်းမိုထက်တွင် တပင်တည်း။
Gnarled, knotted, with humps and ridges,
Like a vulture on a mound
Stood the lonely pyimma stump.
ခွဆုံအကွေး၊ သစ်ခေါင်းဆွေးလည်း
အဖေးတက်လှာ၊ အိုင်းအမာသို့
ကျယ်စွာဟက်ပက် ခြအိမ်ပျက်။
The bending bough at the split
Is a hollowed, rotten termite shelter,
A scab-encrusted gaping wound.
ကုန်းမိုကမ်းပါး၊ မြေပတ်ကြားတွင်
စစ်သားခမောက်၊ ပိန်ခြောက်ခြောက်လည်း
စစ်ရောက်စခန်း လက်ပြညွှန်း။
A soldier’s shriveled war helmet,
Resting on the mound’s edge,
Points to a battle’s reach.
ထိုပင်ငုတ်တို၊ ပျဉ်းမအိုသည်
စစ်ကိုလည်းကြုံ၊ ခြအုံလည်းဖြစ်
ဓားထစ်လည်းခံ၊ နေလျှံလည်းတိုက်
လေပြင်းခိုက်လျက်၊ မငိုက်ဦးခေါင်း
နွေသစ်လောင်းသော်
ရွက်ဟောင်းညှာကြွေ၊ ရွက်သစ်ဝေ၍
လေပြေထဲတွင်၊ ငယ်ရုပ်ဆင်သည်
အသင် ယောက်ျားကောင်းတကား။
This severed trunk, aged and withered,
Has faced warfare, endured termites,
The sword’s hack, the sun’s flames,
And the gale’s wrath, and yet,
It stands with its head held high.
When summer returns,
It sheds old stems and springs new leaves,
Youthful again in the breeze—
A mighty gallant man is he!
More on the poet Min Thu Wun here.
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Twitchy eyebrow? Itchy sole? According to Burmese superstition, twitching eyebrows may be an omen of good fortune or financial ruin, depending the exact spot of the twitch, also on who you ask. And an itch in the sole might be a sign of imminent travel. မျက်ခုံးလှုပ်တယ် (the eyebrow twitches) and ခြေဖဝါးယားတယ် (the sole itches) are also expressions people might use to convey worry and anxiety or wanderlust and the itch to travel, so even if you don't plan on visiting a fortuneteller, it's a good idea to add them to your vocabulary and learn to use them correctly.
Sometimes the itch is not in the sole but in the heart. The expression အသည်းယားတယ် (the heart itches) is the Burmese equivalent of "I can't stand it! I can't bear it!" The sight of an adorable baby or puppy might make an English speaker feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but for a Burmese speaker, the common response is an itch in the heart.
In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I discuss the circumstances in which you might encounter these phrases, along with examples. (Image: AI-generated in ChatGPT; Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
Vocabulary
မျက်ခုံး eyebrow
လှုပ်တယ် to shudder, to move
မျက်ခုံးလှုပ်တယ် the eyebrow twitches
ခြေဖဝါး sole, the underside of the foot
လက်ဖဝါး palm, the underside of the hand
ယားတယ် to itch
ခြေဖဝါးယားတယ် the sole itches
အသည်း (also written အသဲ) heart
အသည်း (အသဲ) ယားတယ် the heart itches
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In San Francisco, the city I now call home, the large Christmas tree in downtown Union Square has officially been turned on to usher in the holiday season. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, home to my guests for this episode, regular night markets have turned into Christmas markets. For this special year-end episode, I invited Su and Zue, two Chiang Mai-based Burmese teachers, to talk about Christmas, from our earliest memories of the carol singers, our favorite Christmas movies and books, and our preferred hot drinks, to the presents we might give one another if we were to have a gift exchange. So grab your eggnog or nutmeg-flavored coffee, and join us. (Photo of Wat Arun with fireworks by Prasit Rodphan, licensed from Shutterstock. Music excerpts courtesy of Pixabay.)
Vocabulary
သုံးပွင့်ဆိုင်စကားဝိုင်း a three-way conversation
ခရစ်ယာန် Christian
အဆောင် boarding house
မုန့်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် to ask for tip / money
ယေရှု Jesus
ဘုရားသခင် God
တားမြစ်တယ် to forbid
ကားစင် / လက်ဝါးကပ်တိုင် the crucifix
ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to celebrate / to participate in festive activities
ဖျော်ရည် flavored drink / juice
ကျင်းပတယ် to hold (an event, a festival)
သောင်းသောင်းဖြဖြ energetically, earnestly
နားစွင့်တယ် to listen for a certain sound
ဂီတာကြိုး guitar string
ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာ blessings
မြို့လယ်ခေါင် downtown, center of the town
မြို့တော်ဝန် mayor
ကိုယ်စားလှယ် representative
အလှဆင်တယ် to decorate
လုပ်ဖေါ်ကိုင်ဖက် coworkers
လက်ဆောင်လဲတယ် to exchange gifts
လက်မှုလုပ်ငန်း handcraft business
ရိုးရာဓလေ့ tradition / customs
အဖြူအမည်းကား black and white movie
အမွေးအကြိုင် spices
သည်းထိတ်ရင်ဖို thriller
ဝက်ဝက်ကွဲ overwhelmingly
ဘဲ boyfriend (slang)
မဖြစ်မနေ unavoidably, definitely
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ memorably
လွှမ်းမိုးတယ် to influence, to dominate
ဝိညာဏ်တော်သုံးပါး three spirits
တရားပြတယ် to give spiritual guidance, to enlighten
စာအုပ်ချုပ်တယ် to bind books
စာအုပ်ရွဲနေတယ် the book is in a bad shape (slang)
အခါသမယ auspicious period
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Imagine this. You’re a diplomat, and in the middle of an embassy cocktail party, you suddenly switch language and speak to your counterpart from the host country in his or her mother tongue, with the kind of fluency that only comes from years of dedicated learning. With that display of earnest interest in the host country's culture, you’re bound to impress those in attendance. Who knows? The favorable impression you’ve made might even help you broker a peace deal or a trade agreement in the future.
My special guest for this episode is linguist, teacher, and translator Ye Min Tun, who has spent more than a decade teaching Burmese to the diplomats heading to Burma. For this episode, we discuss how language and culture knowledge facilitate diplomatic relationships. See if you can pick up a few Burmese words and phrases to help you sound more diplomatic. (Musical excerpts courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
အထူးဧည့်သည်တော် special guest
နိုင်ငံခြားရေးဝန်ထမ်း foreign service officer, foreign office staff
... [အဖြစ်] တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်တယ် to perform duties [as], to serve [in the capacity of], to work [as]
သံတမန် diplomat
အမျိုးသားအကျိုးစီးပွား national & economic interest
ကာကွယ်တယ် to protect
မြှင့်တင်တယ် to promote
မိတ်ဆွေနိုင်ငံ ally nation
ရန်သူနိုင်ငံ enemy nation / hostile nation
ထမင်းစားရေသောက်အဆင့် functional fluency (literally, fluency sufficient for eating and drinking)
ကျွဲကူးရေပါ (figure of speech) when accomplishing the main objective, minor objectives are also accomplished (literally, the water follows when a buffalo swims)
ဖိဖိစီးစီး (adverb) strenuously, intensely
နိုင်ငံရေး politics
စီးပွားရေး economics
သိပ္ပံ science
စိုက်ပျိုးရေး agriculture
ကောင်စစ်ဝန် counsellor / senior diplomat
သင်္ကြန် Thingyan festival, Burmese new year festival
စတုဒိသာ a general feast where anyone is welcome
သံအမတ် ambassador
ဝင်စားတယ် to reincarnate
ကွမ်းသီးကြိုက်သူကိုတောင်ငူပို့ to send a betelnut lover to Taungoo (known for the best betelnut)
ဖုတ်ပူမီးတိုက် (adverb) hurriedly, speedily
ပုံရိပ် impression, image
နေ့ကောင်းရက်သာ special days
တရားဝင် (adverb) officially
ဗမာဆန်တယ် to be Burmese centric
ကိုးလိုးကန့်လန့် (adverb) awkwardly
ယုန်ထင်ကြောင်ထင် (figure of speech) to cause confusion (literally, to mistake something for a rabbit or a cat)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Many Burmese words describing how you feel—happy, sad, depressed, and so on—are constructed with the root words ဝမ်း for "belly" or "womb," and စိတ် for "the mind." The phrase ဝမ်းသာတယ် "to be glad, to be happy" literally translates to "the belly is pleasant, favorable." The opposite phrase ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် "to be sad or unhappy" is "the belly is deficient."
To feel an overwhelming happiness is ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ်, a picturesque phrase that means "to be choking on a ball of happiness." And to be overtaken by sadness or grief is ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် , an adverb describing someone grieving in a horizontal, face-up position.
In this episode, I introduce you to words and phrases to describe feelings and emotions—with melodramatic, hyperbolic options if you so desire. (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
Vocabulary
- ဝမ်းသာတယ် to be happy, glad
- ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် to be unhappy, sad
- ဝမ်းသာအားရ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
- ဝမ်းမြောက်ဝမ်းသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
- ဝမ်းပန်းတသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
- ဝမ်းသာအယ်လဲ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
- ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ် to be overwhelmed with happiness (lit. to be choking on a ball of happiness)
- ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် to be unhappy (lit. sad and flat)
- စိတ်ကောင်းတယ် to be kind, good-natured
- စိတ်မကောင်းဘူး to be sad
- စိတ်ထားမကောင်းဘူး to be of spiteful, malicious temperament
- စိတ်ပုတ်တယ် to be spiteful, malicious (lit. to have a rotten mind)
- စိတ်ဆင်းရဲတယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is impoverished)
- စိတ်ညစ်တယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is tainted, dirty)
- စိတ်ချမ်းသာတယ် to be content, satisfied, delighted (lit. the mind is luxurious)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
My first introduction to Burmese poetry was through the children’s nursery rhymes and classic verses scattered throughout the government-prescribed school textbooks. These were usually in the traditional four-syllable rhyme scheme, called လေးလုံးစပ် (lay lone zat), often depicting the charm of pastoral life or the longing of royal courtiers. Later, I’d come across rhymeless or freeform modern poetry, in the front pages of popular lifestyle and literary magazines.
In this episode, my guest Zue, the founder of Akkhaya Burmese Language Institute, and I recite and discuss our favorite poems, like ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (the Guest) by တင်မိုး (Tin Moe ), a succinct three-line poem open to many different interpretations, and သင်သေသွားသော် (When You’re Gone) by ဇော်ဂျီ (Zawgyi), a poem about the legacy we leave behind. We also highlight modern poetry’s symbolism, its use of everyday language and more relatable subjects, like conversations in teashops and housewives scouring the market for affordable fish or poultry, and the English words that make cameo appearances in the works of တာရာမင်းဝေ (Taya Min Wai) and မောင်ချောနွယ် (Maung Chaw Nwe).
Vocabulary
တစေ့တစောင်း at a glance
မီးတောက်ရစ်သမ် (တာရာမင်းဝေ) The Rhythm of the Flame by Taya Min Wai
ပြဋ္ဌာန်းတယ် to prescribe [a piece of writing] in a textbook
ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (တင်မိုး) "The Guest" by Tin Moe
ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ် life-portrayal [literary genre]
ကံကုန်တယ် to pass away
ထင်ဟပ်တယ် to reflect, to mirror
စာပေဟောပြောပွဲ literary talk
သင်သေသွားသော် (ဇော်ဂျီ) "When You Are Gone" by Zaw Gyi
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
အဝဝအစစ everything, all-encompassing
ညှပ်ပြီးသုံးတယ် to interject [English words]
ထောင့်ချိုးများ (မောင်ချောနွယ်) "Corners" by Maung Chaw Nwe
သင်္ကေတ symbols
ဥရောပ Europe
မှီငြမ်းတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by
အငွေ့အသက် signs, remnants, characteristics
ပုံရိပ် image
ရူး (မြကျေး) "Crazy" by Mya Kyay
စီးမျောပြီးဖတ်တယ် to read with deep focus, to be swept up in reading
တစ်ကိုယ်တော် solo
ဖန်တီးမှု creation
ခေါင်းပါးတယ် / ချို့တဲ့တယ် to diminish, to decline
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Orwell’s masterpiece, Animal Farm, was inspired by the power struggle in post-revolution Russia, where a one-party authoritarian rule slowly began to take shape under the guise of Communism. The book outlines the playbook of many dictators, past and present, from the way they use propaganda and false nationalism to sway mass opinion to the way they accuse dissidents and critics of treason to silence them. In Part II on Animal Farm, my cohost Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss which historical figures the main characters are supposed to represent, and how the plot foreshadows the rise of tyrants in Burma and other parts of the world. Tune in to hear about how the pigs and dogs hijacked a well-meaning revolution and turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ပီပြင်တယ် to be vivid
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda
အားကောင်းမောင်းသန် full of strength
ရုပ်လုံးကြွတယ် to be three dimensional
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal
မူဝါဒ policy
မျက်မှောက်ခေတ် contemporary era, the present era
အာဏာရတယ် to gain power
အရင်းရှင်နိုင်ငံ Capitalist country
အဓိဋ္ဌာန် pledge
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
စည်းစိမ်ယစ်မူးတယ် to be addicted to privilege
သရော်တယ် to mock, to satirize
မျက်ဝါးထင်ထင် to be able to visualize, to see clearly
နိုင်ငံပိုင်ရုပ်သံလှိုင်း national airwave, government broadcast
အာဇာနည် martyr
မဏ္ဍပ်ထိုးတယ် to pitch a pavilion or tent
မကွဲပြားဘူး to be indistinguishable
ဖြည့်ဆွက်တယ် to fill a gap, to add, to augment
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm shows how a revolution could lead to the rise of opportunists, power struggles, infighting, fake news, and ultimately a new breed of authoritarians. Even though Orwell was looking at the rise of Joseph Stalin in post-revolution Russia as the model for his animal farm, we would later see the same sequence of events in Communist Cuba, Chairman Mao’s China, and other places. In this episode, my cohost Su and I discuss Thakin Ba Thaung’s translation of Animal Farm, titled ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး (The Four-Legged Revolution), and how some of the chapters are chillingly similar to what has happened, and is still happening in present day Burma, our homeland. Along the way, we give you the Burmese words and phrases you can use to talk about dictator pigs and dogs in the book, and in the world we live in. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
သခင်ဘသောင်း Thakhin Ba Thaung, a Burmese translator of Animal Farm
ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး The Four-Legged Revolution, name of a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
လေရူးသုန်သုန် Wild Gust Blowing, Burmese name for a translation of Gone with the Wind
ဘာသာပြန်တယ် to translate
လက်ထောက်ပုလိပ်အုပ် assistant superintendent of police
မူရင်း original
အနှစ်သာရ essence
အဓိကဖြစ်ရပ် main events
အာဏာရှင်စနစ် authoritarianism
ဖိနှိပ်တယ် to oppress
အာဏာယစ်မူးတယ် to be drunk with power
အာခံတယ် to defy
သုတ်သင်တယ် to execute, to eliminate
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate by class
စည်းရုံးတယ် to persuade others to join
ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characters
မျက်မှောက်ကာလ current age
ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလ contemporary era
စင်ပြိုင်ပါတီ rival party
ဗန္ဓုလ Bandoola, name of a historical general, also the Burmese name for Napoleon in the Burmese version of Animal Farm
သံကြောင် squeaky voice, name of the character Squealer in a Burmese translation of Animal Farm
အသံပြာပြာနဲ့ with scratchy, raspy voice
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda
ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to embody
လူမှုကွန်ရက် social media
ဝါဒမှိုင်းမိတယ် to be swept up in propaganda
ခို pigeon
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal
ဘုရားမြှောက်တယ် to turn someone into a God
ပဋိညာဉ် pledge, oath, agreement
သားရေကွင်းဥပဒေ rubber band regulation, meaning it bends to serve a group
ကျုံ့တယ် to shrink
ဆန့်တယ် to expand
အခွင့်ထူးခံလူတန်းစား the privileged class
ဇာတ်ကွက် dramatic scene
သစ္စာဖေါက် traitor
သွေးညှီနံ့ the stench of blood
လက်နက်ကိုင် armed, weapon carrying
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In English, when you’re talking about yourself, your choice of pronoun is a solitary “I.” Not so in Burmese. There’s a variety of ways to refer to yourself, based on your gender, profession, age, and your relationship towards the other person. And the same is true of ways to refer to the person you’re speaking to. You can refer to him or her by name, a kinship term, or an honorific associated with his or her profession or field of expertise. In fact, there are situations where using what is technically the polite way to say "you" – ခင်ဗျား (khamyar) or ရှင် (shin)—could be considered rude. How many ways can you say "You" and "I" in Burmese? Too many, as you'll discover in this episode. (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
As singles with no marital experience, my cohost Su and I are under-qualified to discuss this episode's theme: dowry. In Burmese context, it usually means what the groom and his family offer to the bride’s parents as gifts when asking for the girl’s hand in marriage. The so-called gifts could be cows for ploughing, a plot of farm to live on, a new bed, furniture for the newly weds' room, a luxury car, a home, or even cold, hard cash. When the wealth and social status of the two families involved are unequal, dowry could become a source of headache and heartache, a serious roadblock to the couple’s happy union. In modern times, the practice is not as popular as it was in the past, but it still exists in some form. In this episode, Su and I discuss a classic poem by Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing that refers to the practice, and share out own personal thoughts on it.
Vocabulary
ငါတွေ့မဟုတ်၊ စာတွေ့ not from personal experience but from books
ခန်းဝင်ပစ္စည်း gifts to help the newly weds establish a home / dowry
လက်ဖွဲ့ gifts for the newly weds / dowry
ပရိဘောဂ furniture
ကြောင်အိမ် cabinet for temporarily storing food, usually not refrigerated
တင်တောင်းတယ် to offer something as dowry to ask for permission to marry someone (in Burmese culture, traditionally, what the groom offers to the bride’s family)
ပမာဏ amount
လုပ်ကျွေးတယ် to feed and take care of someone
နွားတစ်ရှဉ်း a pair of cows
စပါးကျီ a plot of farm
စရိတ် expense
ကန်တော့ပွဲ ceremonial offering
ကြွက်မြီး literally, rat tail; figuratively, it refers to the stem of a coconut
မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to lose face
လက်ဖွဲ့ခြင်းသည်းခံပါ request to come without gift (a phrase that appears on some wedding invitations)
ဝါတွင်း during the Buddhist Lent
ကူငွေ literally monetary help; donation at funeral, given to the surviving family
လက်သံပြောင်တယ် (1) skilled at musical performance; (2) to have a very powerful slap, strike, or punch
ချိုလိမ် pacifier
ဘိုးဘွားရိပ်သာ home for the elderlies
ပျားရည်ဆမ်းခရီး honeymoon
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
If you’re going out to lunch with a Burmese friend who says he’s running low on water (ရေခမ်းနေတယ်), be prepared to pay for the meal. That means he’s broke. On the other hand, if you’re running low on water yourself, but he is overflowing, so to speak (ရေလျှံနေတယ်), you can probably ask him to pay for the meal.
In English, if you need some type of permit or approval from a government office or an institution, you may need to grease the wheel. In Burmese, you may need to offer the clerk or the boss some tea money (လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး) to get your application on the top of the pile. And if you’re single, dressed in your best outfit, sitting in a conspicuous spot in a café, doing something cute or sexy to attract the attention of romantic prospects, you are displaying your goods on a tray (ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ်).
In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the colorful phrases and slangs the young people are using, and what they actually mean. Join us as we shoot the breeze, as you might say in English, or bake potatoes (အာလူးဖုတ်), as we might say in Burmese. (Illustration AI generated, Microsoft Designer; music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ဗန်းစကား slang
နယ်ပယ် territory, sector, segment
အနုပညာလောက the creative sector
အနုပညာလောကသား members of the creative sector
ရေလောင်းပေးတယ် to bribe (lit. to pour water)
စကားဝှက် code word
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး bribe (lit. tea money)
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးထိုးတယ် / ပေးတယ် to offer bribe (lit. to offer tea money)
မိုက်တယ် to be stylist / hip
ဆယ်လဖီဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ဓာတ်ဖမ်းတယ် to take photo (lit. to capture electricity)
ရေလျှံတယ် to have money to spend (lit. to be overflowing)
ရေခမ်းတယ် / ရေပြတ်တယ် to be broke (lit. to be low on water, to run out of water)
ဘိုင်ပြတ်တယ် to be broke
ကြွေတယ် to develop a crush
Crush တယ် to develop a crush
ကြူးတယ် to show off, to publicize someone’s virtues excessively
ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ် to attract attention, especially in the romantic sense (lit. to display goods on a tray)
အိုဗာတင်းတယ် to overact, to be melodramatic (from close pronunciation of “over” from “Ovaltine”)
Drama ခင်းတယ် to cause drama
အာလူးဖုတ်တယ် to be talkative (lit. to bake potatoes)
လေပေါတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be windy)
ရွှီးတယ် to lie, to make up stuff, to exaggerate
ပေါက်ပေါက်ဖေါက်တယ် to be talkative, to pester, to scold incessantly (lit. to pop popcorn)
ပွားတယ် to pester, to scold incessantly
စိတ်လေတယ် to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down
ဘူတယ် to be at a loss, to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down
ဟွန်ဒီ unofficial money transferring agent
လန်းတယ် to be stylish, hip (lit. to be fresh)
အထာကျတယ် to be impressive, attractive
ဘိုးတော် / ဘွားတော် dad, mom
ချောင်တယ် / ပေါက်တယ် to lose one’s mind, to be crazy
ပလပ်ကျွပ်တယ် to lose one’s mind (lit. to be unplugged)
ယောက်ဖ / သားကြီး good friend (lit. son, brother-in-law)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Would you ever drink a cigarette or a cigar? In English, you wouldn't, but in Burmese, you must. To describe smoking a cigarette or cigar, you must use the verb သောက်တယ် , the same verb for drinking coffee, tea, or Coca Cola. It may seem counterintuitive to use the verb to describe consuming liquid for smoking, but that's the correct form: ဆေးလိပ်သောက်တယ် , quite literally, to drink a cigarette.
When talking about having a dream, you cannot just use the single-word verb "dream," as you do in English. Instead, you have to use a noun-verb combo -- အိပ်မက်မက်တယ် meaning, to dream a dream -- the way Ella Fitzgerald did, when she sang "Dream a Little Dream Of Me."
And the standard way to say "take a photo" is ဓာတ်ပုံရိုက်တယ် , with the verb that means "to strike" or "to hit," as if you're trying to defeat your photo with a punch or a blow in a boxing match.
In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to the standard choices of verbs in Burmese that might perplex or confound you if you're a foreigner. (Photo of old lady smoking in Bagan by Oneinchpunch, licensed from Shutterstock; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Mid-April is when Burmese people celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of another one with a water festival, similar to the people of Thailand and several other neighboring countries.
In modern times, young people driving around in open pickup trucks and shooting water through high-pressure tubes and cannons is the standard practice, but in the old days, people dipped laurel leaves into silver goblets of fragrant water and dabbed them on one another-- a practice that seems quaint now.
Also, in Thingyan in bygone times, street performers and dance troupes would come up with call and response routines, called သံချပ် Than Jaat, that celebrate life, welcome the new year, and also take jabs at the authorities’ hypocritical behaviors and corruption.
In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my regular guest Su, a Burmese teacher based on Chiang Mai, and I discuss these and more.
Vocabulary
သင်္ကြန် Burmese water festival
သင်္ကြန်ကျပြီ Thingyan has arrived
ပြက္ခဒိန် calendar
ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate
နံ့သာရည် aromatic water
ရင်ဖုံး / ရင်စေ့ bosom-covered / bosom-buttoned blouse style
အကြိုနေ့ the pre-arrival, the precursor (to a festival)
အကျနေ့ the day of arrival (of a festival)
အကြတ်နေ့ the in-between day
အတက်နေ့ the day preceding the end (of a festival)
နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ first day of new year
ရေသေနတ် / ရေပြွန် water gun / water canon
ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to perform good deeds
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
အတိုင်အဖေါက် call and response
အတိုင်အဖေါက်ညီတယ် the call and response are in sync
သံချပ် a call-and-response routine
ပူဆာတယ် to pester, to repeatedly request
အာဏာသိမ်းတယ် to stage a coup
သီလယူတယ် to pledge to observe certain precepts
အတာအိုး a well-wishing pot with flowers and leaves
၇ရက်သားသမီးအတွက် for those born on each of the weekday
ခွက်စောင်းခုတ်တယ် to slap a cup of water down with force
ဥပုသ်သည် those observing precepts
ညိုမြမလုပ်နဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested
မူမနေနဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested
ဈေးကိုင်တယ် to be holding out
မုန့်လုံးရေပေါ် sweet rice balls, a specialty of Thingyan
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
You might have noticed that, in Chinatown, red lanterns are going up, and lion dancers and dragon dancers are coming out, ready to parade the street. Mid-February is usually Chinese New Year, so both the Chinese community in Yangon, and the Chinese diaspora around the world are decked out in red dresses and new outfits, ready to welcome the new year. In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the new year festivities we can see around us. (Photo by Maritxu, licensed from Shutterstock, Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
ချစ်သူများနေ့ Valentine’s Day
ထုံးတမ်းအစဉ်အလာ tradition
ပြန့်နှန့်တယ် to spread
သည်းခံတယ် to tolerate, to put up with
တရုတ်နှစ်သစ်ကူး Chinese New Year
မြန်မာပြည်ဖွားတရုတ် Chinese born and raised in Burma
တိုးနယား mythical creature with features of lion, dragon, and phoenix
ဘုံကျောင်း Chinese clan house
အံပေါင်း red envelope with spending money (Burmese loan word from Chinese 红包 Hongbao)
ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, myth
တရုတ်တန်း Chinatown
မီးပုံး lantern
ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker
ဗျောက်အိုးဖေါက်တယ် to set off firecrackers
အမွှေးတိုင် incenses
မျက်စိစပ်တယ် to get itchy eyes
လမ်းသလားတယ် to stroll around
မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks
ကလန်ကဆန်လုပ်တယ် to act rebelliously, to defy
နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ New Year Day
လူပျိုဟိုင်း old bachelor (slang)
ဝက်သား သုံးထပ်သား pork belly meat
အိတယ် to be soft, tender (in meat texture)
ဘဲကင် roast duck
ခေါက်ဆွဲ noodle
စုတ်ချက် brushstroke
ဗန်းစကား slang
ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
If a politician speaks ambiguously without committing to one side or the other on an issue, you might call it political doublespeak in English, and accuse him or her of being wishy-washy. In Burmese, you might say he or she is "straddling the sides of two boats," လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် or လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်ခွတယ်. On the other other hand, if you can resolve a conflict by satisfying the two opposing sides, your solution may be praised as ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ , meaning "the chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it"; or မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး "neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break." To learn how to use these phrases correctly, listen to the latest episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
- လှေနံ the edge of a boat
- လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် / ခွတယ် to straddle on the sides of two boats (to play both sides, to be noncommital)
- ဝေ့လည်ကြောင်ပတ် to be wishy-washy
- သောင်မတင် ရေမကျ neither stranded on the beach, nor going back into the water (to be in a stalemate, to be a deadlock)
- ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ The chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it.
- မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး Neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break.
- ပြန်လည်သင့်မြတ်သွားတယ် to reconcile
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In the 1980s, when I was growing up in Rangoon under Ne Win's Socialist Government, I remember how foreigners were shocked by, among other things, local people chewing betel quid and spitting out splashes of red betel juice all over the sidewalks. Today, if you come from a place like Japan, where nobody expects you to tip, you’re in for a shock when visiting the U.S., where tipping is expected everywhere, from coffee shops to fine-dining restaurants (15-20% of your bill is the norm, in case you’re wondering). In both Thailand and Burma, travelers are expected to remove their footwear when entering temples and shrines, but there’s a notable difference between the two countries. In Japan, you can generally enter temple grounds with your shoes on, but must remember to remove them if you’re entering someone’s home, especially a traditional home with tatami mats.
In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher, and I discuss the culture shocks we have experienced at home and abroad. (Photo by Jirawatfoto, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabulary
မျက်နှာချင်းဆိုင် face to face (adverb)
ခြေချတယ် to settle
မြေအောက်ရထား underground train, subway
မိုးပျံတံတား / မိုးပျံလမ်း overhead bridge or walkway (lit. flying bridge or walkway)
ညဈေး night market
ကျတ်ရွာ village of the lost souls / ghost village
သရဲတစ္ဆေ ghosts
အလာကျဲတယ် to come infrequently (used with trains and buses)
အလာစိပ်တယ် to come frequently (used with trains and buses)
ဖိုမဆက်ဆံရေး intimate relationships (lit. male-female interaction)
ပွင့်လင်းတယ် open, progressive, liberal (socially)
ပရဝဏ် pagoda precinct
အများသုံးအိမ်သာ public bathroom
ကွမ်း betel quid
ကွမ်းတံတွေး betel juice (liquid from chewing betel quid)
ထွေးတယ် to spit
ပက်ခနဲ in a splash
လူ့ကျင့်ဝတ် social protocol, proper manner
လိုင်းကား bus
၃၁ ဘုံ 31 planes of existence
ဖေါ်ရွေတယ် to be hospitable
နှိုးဆော်တယ် to urge, to rally
ချေလျင် on foot (adverb)
တစ်ပြ a distance equal to one furlong or 220 yards, but Burmese people also use it to refer to ill-defined distances
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Some homegrown businesses and neighborhood restaurants flourish in Burma, thanks for the power of viral posts and social media. But fake news of levitating monks and strange omens also spread online, like wildfire. While not exactly fake news, inaccurate news and old news also tend to resurface from time to time, stirring up racial tension or raising false hopes. In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of social media. (Photo by Lanlao, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)
Vocabularyကောင်းကျိုး benefits
ဆိုးကျိုး negative impact
မီးပုံးပျံ aerial balloon
ရင်တထိတ်ထိတ် anxiously (adverb, literally, with the heart beating fast)
လူမှုရေးကွန်ရက် social network
လူမှုရေး social
ကွန်ရက် / ပိုက်ကွန် network
သတင်းမှား fake news
ကောလာဟလ rumors
ပွဲဆူအောင် to stir up things
ပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict
ဆဲလဖီ ဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ဆဲလဖီ တင်တယ် to post selfie
ဆဲလီ celebrity
ဝေခွဲလို့မရဘူး cannot determine
ဈာန်ကြွတယ် to levitate, to float by spiritual means
Google ခေါက်တယ် to search in Google
Google လိုက် go ahead and use Google
နှလုံးရောဂါ heart disease
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
ချဉ်းကပ်တယ် to approach
စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk
ဂျင်းမိတယ် to be deceived, to be taken advantage of (slang)
ဂျင်းထည့်တယ် to deceive, to take advantage of (slang)
ပေါက်သွားတယ် to become popular, to go viral online (slang)
ကျမ်းကိုးကျမ်းကား cited sources
ငွေသား cash, money
ပိတ်ပင်တားဆီး to forbid
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Given a choice, would you rather drink the Kool-Aid, or the bitter rainwater (မိုးခါးရေ)? The phrase “to drink the Kool-Aid,” meaning to embrace an irrational, foolish, or dangerous popular ideology, is associated with the tragic episode involving the American cult leader Jim Jones. The Burmese equivelent is "to drink the bitter rainwater" (မိုးခါးရေသောက်တယ်), stemming from the folktale about a kingdrom where everyone, save but a few wise citizens, drank the toxic rainwater and became insane.
The Burmese moviemaker Ko Pauk, who left the country after the military coup of 2021 and joined the resistance, made a documentary honoring the activists in the civil disobedience movement. Though it was released under the English title "The Road Not Taken," the original Burmese title was မသောက်မိသောမိုးခါးရေ ("The Bitter Rainwater I Refused to Drink"). The songwriter and singer ဆောင်းဦးလှိုင် (Hsaung Oo Hlaing) recently released a song titled မိုးခါးရေ ("Bitter Rainwater").
To learn more about the folktale behind the phrase and how to use the expression to talk about taking a stand or caving to pressure, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Why are the robes woven on full-moon night of တန်ဆောင်မုန်း , the 8th month in the Burmese lunar calendar, called, မသိုးသင်္ကန်း , literally, unspoiled robes? What is the legend of the origin of the practice called ပံ့သကူ to leave out items that others can take away? And what kind of mischiefs or troubles are you allowed to cause on the night called ကျီးမနိုးပွဲ , the carnival of the sleeping crows, or သူခိုးကြီးည , the night of the thieves? These phrases are associated with တန်ဆောင်တိုင် Tazaungdaing Festival, which marks the end of the rainy season, and ကထိန် Kathina, which marks the end of Lent in many Buddhist countries in Southeast Asia. In this episode, my guest Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss the history, legends, and stories behind these phrases. (Photo: a girl lighting candles in a temple in Bagan, by f11photo, licensed from Shutterstock; music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ဝရုန်းသုန်းကား in a messy, chaotic fashion (adverb)
တန်ဆောင်တိုင် Tazaungdaing festival, marks the end of rain
ကထိန် Kathina festival, marks the end of Buddhist Lent
ပဒေသာပင် a frame for attaching donated objects
သင်္ကန်း a monk’s robe
စုပေါင်းမဟာဘုံကထိန် communal donation
မသိုးသင်္ကန်း robes woven in a single day
သင်္ကန်းရက်တယ် to weave robe
သင်္ကန်းကပ်တယ် to offer robe
ပုဂ္ဂိုလ် person (respectful usage)
ကျီးမနိုးပွဲ carnival of the sleeping crows (night for harmless mischief)
သူခိုးကြီးည night of thieves (night of mischief)
အအိပ်ဆတ်တယ် to be easily awakened
ထိုးကွင်းထိုးတယ် to get tattooed
ဆေးအောင်တယ် the tattoo proves magical
ထိပ်တုံးခတ်တယ် to lock up in a pillory
ဆေးမင်ကြောင် tattoo
အင်းကွက် magical diagrams
တုတ်ပြီး ဓားပြီး staff-proof, sword-proof
ပံ့သကူပစ်တယ် / ပံ့သကူစွန့်တယ် to cast away something as a donation
ပံ့သကူကောက်တယ် to pick up cast away items
ဖန်ရည် liquid from boiled tree barks
ဖန်ရည်ဆိုးတယ် to dye with liquid from boiled tree barks
အပေါက်ဆိုးတယ် to be bad-tempered
လူကုံထံ the wealthy, the rich
သင်္ကန်းရုံတယ် to drape a robe
ဒလိန့်ခေါက်ကွေး (to fall) in a roll
နိဗ္ဗာန်ဈေး a general giveaway by raffle (figuratively called Nirvana market)
စတုဒိသာ a feast, an event that serves meals to the general public
အယုတ်အလတ်အမြတ်မရွေး regardless of class or virtue
မီးခိုးတိတ် smokeless (unnecessary to cook)
ထမင်းရည် juice left from cooking rice in a pot
ထမင်းရည်ချောင်းစီး rice juice flows like a river
အဟာရ nutritious
ထန်းလျက် jaggery
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Do you know the legend of မဖဲဝါ Ma Phe Wah, the graveyard guardian spirit in disheveled hair, dressed in a yellow outfit? And do you know the origin of the Burmese word စုန်း for witches? How about the two different branches of sorcery, အထက်လမ်း and အောက်လမ်း, quite literally the high path and the low path? If you don’t, grab your wicked candies, your pumpkin spiced latte, and join me and my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, or Burmese Language Academy of Yangon. In this Halloween special episode, we are talking about Burmese witches, sorcerers, bewitching curses, and some ways to undo them. (Illustration generated by AI in Microsoft Designer. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
စုန်း / ကဝေ witches
မျက်လှည့် sleight of hand
မှော်ဆရာ wizard, sorcerer
တစ်ဆင့်စကားတစ်ဆင့်နား hearsay, word of mouth
ကိုယ်တွေ့ အတွေ့အကြုံ personal experience
အသွင်အပြင် appearance
ပင်လယ်စုန်း sea witch, unexplainable fire or light at sea, similar to St. Elmo’s Fire
အထက်လမ်း white magic, noble sorcery
အောက်လမ်း black magic, wicked sorcery
ဗေဒင်ဟောတယ် to predict the future
ယတြာချေတယ် to counter an ill omen
ကျိန်စာတိုက်တယ် to put a curse on someone
လူဝင်စား reincarnation
သရဲ တစ္ဆေ ghosts
သင်္ချိုင်းစောင့် guardian of the cemetery
ဆံပင်ဖားဖား long, unkept hair
တွေ့လိုတွေ့ငြား hoping to meet (the ghost) by chance
သိုက် site of hidden treasure, often protected by supernatural means
ဥစ္စာစောင့် treasure-guarding spirit
သိုက်ကလာတယ် slang, he/she is a snob; he/she won’t mingle with ordinary folks
ခနဲ့တယ် to mock
ပြုစားတယ် to possess, to bewitch
အပနှင်တယ် to exorcise, to drive away an evil spirit
အာနိသင် potency
ပရိတ်ကြိုး blessed string amulet
ပရိတ်ရေ blessed water
စွပ်စွဲတယ် to accuse
ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In Myanmar or Burma, October is the month of Thadingyut, the festival of light. For the children, it's a rare excuse to play with fireworks, sparkles, and even firecrackers. For young people and couples, it’s a chance to take a stroll along the bright-lit streets and the festival market, to sample the crispy fritters and grilled meat in the food stalls, and to buy handmade crafts and toys, like fish-shaped paper lanterns and demon figurines with movable limbs. In this episode, my friend Su, a Thailand-based Burmese languge teacher, and I share our favorite things to do during Thadingyut, and explain the words, phrases, and expressions related to the festival. So grab your sparkles and celebrate the festival of light from our childhood. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut, the festival of light
ဖယောင်းတိုင်ထွန်းတယ် to light candles
နည်းနည်းနောနောမဟုတ်ဘူး not trivial, not insignificant
ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate, to hold (an event or festival)
မိုးလေကင်းလွတ်တယ် to be free of rain and wind, to have temperate weather
အငြင်းပွားစရာ debatable
ဘီလူးရုပ် demon figure
ယမင်းရုပ် figure of a dancing maiden
ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel
ရင်တလှပ်လှပ်ဖြစ်တယ် the heart beats erratically from excitement
အသည်းငယ်တယ် to have a weak heart, to be easily frightened
မအီမသာဖြစ်တယ် to feel uncomfortable, to be queasy
အူ၊ ကလီစာ intestines and internal organs
အဘိဓမ္မာ Abhidharma
ကျေးဇူးဆပ်တယ် to return a favor, to repay a debt of gratitude
အထွတ်အမြတ် paragon, pinnacle
စောင်းတန်း corridor
ဗြဟ္မာ a type of heavenly spirits
အလေ့အထ tradition
ဒေဝါလီ Diwali, Hindu festival of light
နွယ်တယ် to be intertwined, to be related
မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks
မီးပန်းဆော့တယ် to play with sparkles
ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker
ကာလသား young men, especially unmarried
ငရဲမီး flame from burning acid
အိမ်စောင့်နတ် guardian spirit of the home
ဆီမီး cup-shaped oil lamp
မျှောတယ် to float something in the water
ကန်တော့တယ် to pay homage
ဝပ်တွား to crouch
ဆွေမျိုးမိတ်သဟာ kinsmen and friends
ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to join the festivities
ဆွမ်း၊ ဘောစဉ် alms (for monks and nuns)
ပြိုးပြိုးပြက်ပြက် to be sparkling, bright
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
Do you have a brother or sister from another belly? Most of you probably do. The Burmese term အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ or ညီမတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ , literally brother or sister from another belly, refers to the son or daughter of your uncle or aunt -- in other words, your first cousin. In English, you wouldn't refer to such relatives as your "brother" or "sister," but many Burmese often call them အကို "brother" or ညီမ "sister," opting to drop the qualifier တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ for "one belly removed" or "one womb away."
Since your first cousins are တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ "one belly removed," naturally, your second cousins -- related to you by your grandparents' siblinghood -- are referred to as "နှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ" or "two bellies removed."
The word ဝမ်း for "belly" is often the root word in emotion-related words, such as ဝမ်းသာတယ် (literally, excessive belly) for "to be happy or delighted," and ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် (literally, reduced belly) for "to be unhappy or sad." Then there's the expression တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်း "of a single mind, a single belly" that means "to see things the same way, to share the same view." So if you and your cousin happen be in agreement on something, you could say ကျွန်တော်နဲ့ ကျွန်တော့်အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲဟာ တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်းပါ "I and my brother from another belly are of the same mind, the same belly" -- an inadvertent self-contradiction that might prompt chuckles from your audience.
For more on these quirky expressions, listen to the latest episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration AI-generated: Microsoft Image Creator; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io. With thanks to my Burmese friends Nyunt Wai Moe and Zaw Min Oo for confirming the use of the kinship terms.)
Vocabulary
- အကိုတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ first cousin, older male (older brother, one belly removed)
- ညီမတစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ first cousin, younger female (younger sister, one belly removed)
- အကိုနှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ second cousin, older male (older brother, two bellies removed)
- ညီမနှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ second cousin, younger female (younger sister, two bellies removed)
- တစ်စိတ်တည်းတစ်ဝမ်းတည်း of the same view (to be of the same mind, same belly)
- တစ်သွေးတည်းတစ်သားတည်း of the same view (to be of the same blood, the same flesh)
- စိတ်ဝမ်းကွဲတယ် to be in disagreement, to be divided (to be of a different mind and belly)
- သွေးကွဲတယ် to be in disagreement, to be divided (to be of different blood)
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In a song about timid lovebirds too shy to confess their feelings for each other, the lyrics says "မျက်လုံးချင်းစကားပြောနေပြီ (Their eyes are speaking to each other)." In the song "ရတနာသူ (Jeweled Lover)," the lyrics compares the girl's bodyparts to precious gemstones, ending with "အသည်းနှလုံးကိုကျောက်စိမ်းနဲ့မွမ်းမံခြယ် (her heart should be adorned with jade)," implying the cold, unfeeling nature of the subject.
Now that many young people are fleeing the armed conflicts and the political chaos in Burma, the singer Htoo Ein Thin's poignant song about leaving one’s hometown is seeing a revival. In "လေလွင့်ခြင်းလမ်းမများ (Wind-Blown Paths)," the lyrics says:
အဝေးက လမ်းဟောင်းလေးကို ငါဟာနှုတ်ဆက် (I bid farewell to the familiar road in the distance)
အမေ့ရဲ့မျက်ရည်စက်တွေ ငါနှုတ်ဆက် (I bid farewell to my mother's tears)
အပြာရောင်ကျောပိုးအိတ်တစ်ခုထဲ (Into my blue backpack)
ဒဏ်ရာအဟောင်းလေးကိုထည့် (I stuffed my old wounds)
သွားရတော့မယ် (Cause I must go now)
In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a language teacher based in Thailand, and I dissect the lyrics from our favorite songs, and single out some expressions, phrase turns, and similes you might reuse in your daily conversations -- especially when talking about love. (Illustration generated with AI in Miscosoft Image Creator; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
သီချင်းစာသား song lyrics
ပိစိသေးသေးလေး a tiny, small thing
သားချော့တေး lullaby
အာညောင်းတယ် the mouth gets tired from singing / speaking
ကလေးသိပ်တယ် to put a child to sleep
တေးပေါင်းချုပ် collect song lyrics
မျှားတယ် to convince or persuade someone to do something
ပေါက်ကရ nonsense, silly
ဆူညံဝုန်းဒိုင်းကြဲတယ် to be noisy, loud
ကျေးလက်ဒေသ rural area
မဟူရာ jet, black gemstone
ပုလဲ pearl
ကျောက်စိမ်း jade
သူ့ကိုယ်သူနှစ်သိမ့်တယ် she consoles herself
အကြိမ်ကြိမ် repeatedly, time after time
လက်တည့်စမ်းတယ် to test out, to try out, to attempt
စိန်ခေါ်တယ် to challenge
ကြိမ်းဝါးတယ် to declare, assert, to roar
သမင်မျက်လုံး deer’s eyes (sparking, watery eyes)
ဇင်ယော်တောင်မျက်ခုံး seagull-wing eyebrow (curly, elegant eyebrow)
လှိုက်လှိုက်လှဲလှဲ warmly, affectionately, whole-heartedly
(ဒီအပင်အရင်) ညွှတ်မယ် the stem is ready to bend down, to yield the flower (suggesting willingness)
ရေလာမြောင်းပေး to make a canal to direct the water (to give romantic hints) အထာပေးတယ် to give hints
ပျိုတိုင်းကြိုက်တဲ့နှင်းဆီခိုင် a rose branch beloved by all the maids (a popular boy)
အတိုင်းအဆမရှိဘူး limitless, immeasurable
ဘယ်ပန်းချီရေးလို့မမီ no painting can faithfully depict (parental love)
မြင့်မိုရ်တောင် Mount Meru, a mythical mountain
သံစဉ်မြူးတယ် the melody is lively
တစ်ကြော့ပြန် to enjoy a revival
လေလွင့်တယ် to be blowing in the wind, to be aimless, to be lost
ခြေဦးတည့်ရာ wherever one’s feet might take one, in no specific direction, aimless
Songs mentioned
ရတနာသူ (ခင်မောင်တိုး)
ဘယ်သူကိုယ့်လောက်ချစ်သလဲ (ဖြူဖြူကျော်သိန်း)
မျက်လုံးချင်းစကားပြောနေပြီ (အောင်ရင်)
ဒိုင်ယာရီလေးသက်သေ (ပန်းရောင်ချယ်)
မျက်ဝန်းစကား (စိမ်းမို့မို့)
ဘယ်ပန်းချီရေးလို့မမီ (တက္ကသိုလ်အေးမောင်)
လေလွင့်ခြင်းလမ်းမများ (
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
In the western culture, people often shrink from number 13. Noone wants to go out on Friday the 13th, and some businesses go so far as to skip the 13th floor's button in their elevators. In Burmese culture, people love number nine. When looking for a new place, many would look for a house address divisible by nine. And if they’re about to go on a sea journey, they summon the nat or deity known as U Shin Gyi, and offer a special meal to him, because he’s believed to rule over the sea, never mind that, in the story of his origin, he died from drowning.
Logic doesn’t explain these beliefs, but superstition might. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I discuss long-held superstitions and what might have been the logical reasons for these outlandish beliefs. In the spirit of curiosity, join us for a talk on invisible spirits and unlucky numbers. (Photo by Patchanokk, a worshiper with Bo Bo Gyi at Botahtaung Pagoda, licensed from Shutterstock; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
အင်တာနက် လိုင်းကျတယ် the internet connection dropped
အယူသီးတယ် to be superstitious
တူတူပုန်းတယ် / တူတူပုန်းတမ်းကစားတယ် to play hide-and-seek
နတ်ဖွက်တယ် to be kidnapped by the spirits
လက်တွေ့ကျတယ် to be pragmatic
စေတနာ goodwill
တားမြစ်တယ် to forbid
ဂမုန်းပင် Chinese evergreen, spilt milk, Aglaonema
ဥစ္စာစီးပွား material wealth, prosperity
လာဘ်ရွှင်တယ် to be lucky
ကိုးနဝင်းကျေတယ် / ကိုးနဝင်းအောင်တယ် to be divisible by nine, to total up to nine
ဂြိုဟ်မွှေတယ် to be oppressed by a planet
ရာသီခွင် the zodiac circle
နတ်ယုံတယ် to believe in animistic spirits
(သင်္ဘောသား) သင်္ဘောထွက်တယ် (a sailor) travels by trip
ဦးရှင်ကြီး U Shin Gyi, a spirit known for protecting seafarers
တူကိုတည့်တည့်စိုက်တယ် to stick the chopsticks straight up
အသုဘ funeral
တလျော်ကင်ပွန်း roots used for washing away bad luck
အသုဘပို့တယ် to attend a funeral
သုသာန် burial ground, cemetery
ယုတ္တိရှိတယ် to be logical
ဘုန်းနိမ့်တယ် to lose one’s aura
ထဘီလှန်းတယ် to dry women’s sarongs in the sun
တဘောင် prophetic songs and verses
နတ်စာကျွေးတယ် to offer something to a spirit
အထအနကောက်တယ် to read the prophetic signs
အတိတ်နမိတ်ကောက်တယ် to read the prophetic signs
မင်းဆက်ပြတ်တယ် the dynasty ended
ဓာတ်ခွဲခန်း laboratory
အထောက်အထား evidence
နောက်မီးလင်းတယ် to have an affair
ကပ်ကြေး scissors
ဗေဒင်ကြည့်တယ် to see a fortuneteller
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
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For the most part, people associate Burma, or Myanmar, with pagodas and Buddhist monks, but in reality, the country is much more diverse. Its multi-faith population comprises Christians, Hindus, and Muslim communities in addition to the majority Buddhist Burmans. The population's ethnic makeup also includes Shan, Karen, Kachin, Kayah, Mon, and Chin peoples, among others. In this episode, special guest LungLunng Kutza, a Christian Chin based in Thailand, discusses the Matupi Chin group's customs, traditions, food, and the thriving Christian community he belongs to. He also teaches us basic Chin greetings and the Burmese equivalent of common Biblical terms and phrases. (Photo of LungLunng Kutza and wife, Kate, courtesy of LungLunng); Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ချင်း ethnic Chin people
ထုံးစံ customs
ရိုးရာ traditions
မြန်မာမှုပြုတယ် to Burmanize
ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်း honestly
မျိုးနွယ်စု groups
လေယူလေသိမ်း accent
နှာသံ nasal sound
ကိုးကွယ်တယ် to worship, to believe in
နှစ်ခြင်းအသင်းတော် Baptist Church
ခြုံပြောတယ် to speak generally
အခြောက်လှန်းတယ် to dry something
ပြာမှုန့် ash powder
ကတော့ cone
စာဗူးသီး shredded, dried corn
ကလီစာ intestines
နူးသွားတယ် to become soft from cooking
ဝဥ / ပိန်းဥ taro
နုပ်နုပ်စင်းတယ် to mince
ပြည်မ mainland
အစေး sap
ကောက်သစ်စားပွဲ new harvest festival
နွားနောက် a special breed of buffalo-like cow
ခေါင်ရည် alcoholic drinks from the ethnic region
ဒိုင်း shield
ခရစ်ယာန် Christian
လည်လည်ဝယ်ဝယ် fluently
တရားဟောတယ် to preach
သိက္ခာတော်ရဆရာ reverend
သင်းအုပ်ဆရာ chief pastor
သမ္မာကျမ်းစာ The Bible
နှုတ်ကပါဌ်တော် the Words of God
ယေရှု Jesus Christ
အသက်သာပြောင်းလဲလာတယ် to be born again
ဆယ်ဖို့တစ်ဖို့ a tithe / one-tenth
ခရစ်တော်၌အိပ်ပျော်ခြင်း to sleep in the House of Christ, to pass away
ဘုရားဘုန်းတော်ဝင်စားသွားတယ် to went to the Eternal Lord, to pass away
ဘုရားရင်ခွင်ခိုနားသွားတယ် to take refuge in the bosom of God
ဓမ္မဟောင်း old testament
ဓမ္မသစ် new testament
တမန်တော် a term for the Apostles
သုံးပါးတစ်ဆူ Holy Trinity
လောက်စာလုံး pellets for the slingshot
နိဂုံးချုပ် conclusion
အိပ်မက်ကောင်းပါစေ Have a nice dream
What do you do when you’re in a pinch, out of options, or desperate? In English, you might make a Last-Ditch Effort. If you’re a football player, you might throw a Hail Mary Pass. But in Burmese, you might do what the mythical bird Garuda did: cook salt. To understand the Burmese expression အကြံကုန် ဂဠုန်ဆားချက် (when the Garuda runs out of ideas, it cooks salt), you need to know the legend about the Garuda (ဂဠုန်) and its mortal enemy, the serpent Naga (နဂါး). For more on the legend, and on ways to use this expression, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
အကြံ idea
ကုန်ပြီ to be depleted, to run out, to exhaust
ဂဠုန် Garuda, a mythical bird
မတတ်နိုင်လို့ because it cannot be helped
သေသေကြေကြေ live or die
မထူးဘူး makes no difference
ကတုတ်ကျင်း ditch
သမ္မာကျမ်းစာ Bible
မယ်တော်မယ်ရီ Mother Mary
ယျေဘုယျအားဖြင့် generally speaking
လူယောင်ဖန်ဆင်း to transform into a human, to take the human shape
ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fable
အလွတ်ကျက် to learn by heart
The phrase လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး literally translates to "cost of tea" or "tea money," but in workplaces, especially in government offices known for corruption, it takes on a different meaning. လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် or "to ask for tea money," is "to demand a bribe"; and လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးပေးတယ် or "to offer tea money" is "to offer a bribe." Just like in English, the Burmese phrases for "applying for a job / posting a job vacancy / getting a job" all revolve around the noun အလုပ် or "job." But do you know the right verbs to express them?
In this episode dedicated to work-related vocabulary, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, or Burmese language academy of Yangon, and I talk about getting our first office jobs, and introduce you to words and phrases related to office life. Let’s go to work!
(Illustration generated in AI with Microsoft Designer; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
အလုပ်လျှောက်တယ် to apply for a job
အလုပ်ခေါ်တယ် to announce a vacant position
အလုပ်ရတယ် to get a job
ဆောက်လုပ်ရေးပစ္စည်း construction materials
အရောင်းအဝယ်မြှင့်တင်ရေး marketing
အင်တာဗျူး interview
အင်တာဗျူးထိုင်တယ် / အင်တာဗျူးသွားတယ် to go to an interview, to be interviewed
လုပ်ရည်ကိုင်ရည် ability, performance
ကိုယ်ရည်ကိုယ်သွေး capacity, aptitude
အချိန်ပြည့်ဝန်ထမ်း full-time employee
အစမ်းခန့်ကာလ trial period
ဝန်ထမ်း / စာရေး staff, clerk
ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး supervisor, manager
လက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး assistant supervisor, manager
အစည်းအဝေး meeting
အစည်းအဝေးခေါ်တယ် / အစည်းအဝေးလုပ်တယ် to hold a meeting
အစည်းအဝေးတက်တယ် to attend a meeting
ဆွေးနွေးတယ် to discuss
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
ချီးကျူးစကားပြောတယ် to praise
လုပ်ငန်းခွင် workplace
တာဝန်ကျေတယ် to fulfil one’s duty
ရာထူးတိုးပေးတယ် to promote someone
လခတိုးပေးတယ် / လစာတိုးပေးတယ် to give someone a raise
အပိုဆုကြေး reward money
ဘောက်ဆူး bonus
ရုံးတက်ချိန် start of office hours
ရုံးဆင်းချိန် end of office hours
ဝန်ဆောင်မှုပေးတယ် to offer services
စာရင်းပိတ်တယ် to close daily transaction records (in a bank)
နေ့လယ်စာစားချိန် lunch time
နားချိန် / အားလပ်ချိန် break time
ညောင်းညာလာပြီ to get tired
အလုပ်ရှင် employer
သူဌေး boss, owner
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး / လာဘ် tea money / bribe
လာဘ်ပေးတယ် / လာဘ်ထိုးတယ် to offer a bribe
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် / လာဘ်တောင်းတယ် to demand a bribe
Humane, inhumane, humanitarian, humanize, humanist, subhuman—there are examples of English words derived from the root word Human . In Burmese, if you want to publicize something, you have to do it so that "men would know and monks would hear (လူသိရှင်ကြား)." If you have lost your influence, you'd become someone who "men don't respect and dogs don't fear" (လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့်). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to some colorful Burmese praises, insults, and expressions revolving around the word လူ (lu) for Human. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
လူဆန်တယ် to act in a human-like manner, to be humane
လူမဆန်ဘူး to act in ways unbecoming a human, to be inhumane
လူတောမတိုးဘူး to be socially awkward, to be unable to fit in
လူရာမဝင်ဘူး to fail to measure up, to be considered inferior
လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့် men don't respect (him), dogs don't fear (him), to be subjected to disdain
လူသိရှင်ကြား men would know and monks would hear, to publicize far and wide, to officially announce
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate based on social class
လူ့ဘောင် human society
To talk about modern-day travel means to talk about air travel primarily. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I teach you all the terms and phrases associated with airport, from custom officers and immigration officers to flight attendants and x-ray machines. We can’t help you avoid excess luggage fees or make your inflight meal taste better, but we’ll give you the words you need to talk about them. Buckle up for a short 30-min flight with us. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabularyလေဆိပ် airport
ရန်ကုန်အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာလေဆိပ် Yangon International Airport
... ကို အစွဲပြုပြီးခေါ်တယ် … to be named after (something)
ပြည်တွင်း domestic
ပြည်ပ abroad
အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ international
လုံခြုံရေးအရာရှိ security personnel
အိတ်စစ်တယ် to examine the luggage
ဓာတ်မှန်ရိုက်တယ် to x-ray
လေကြောင်း airline
ဒဏ်ငွေရိုက်တယ် to be charged a penalty (for excess luggage, for example)
လေယာဉ် airplane
လေယာဉ်ထွက်တယ် the airplane departs / takes off
လေယာဉ်ဆိုက်တယ် the airplane arrives / lands
စကားလုံးပွားတယ် to spawn a new word
အကောက်ခွန်အရာရှိ custom officers
လူဝင်မှုကြီးကြပ်ရေး immigration
လဝက Burmese acronym for immigration
နိုင်ငံကူးလက်မှတ် passport
အငှားကား taxi
ငွေလဲကောင်တာ money exchange counter
လေယာဉ်မယ် female flight attendant
လေယာဉ်မောင် male flight attendant
လေယာဉ်မှူး pilot
ကပ်စေးနည်းတယ် to be penny pinching, to be stingy
ခရီးစဉ် flight, itinerary
တိုက်ရိုက်သွားတယ် to fly direct
လေယာဉ်ပြောင်းတယ် to transfer plane
ခရီးသည် passenger, traveler
… နဲ့ သိပ်မရင်းနှီးဘူး not that familiar with
ယောင်ပြီး (adverb) absent-mindedly, unconsciously
ခြေဟန်လက်ဟန်နဲ့ with body language, with hand gestures
လေယာဉ်ပြေးလမ်း runway
If you can butter up someone into doing something in English, you can also “စကားချိုသွေး” or "sweettalk" someone in Burmese. In English, you might describe someone as “a foul mouth”; in Burmese it takes the verb form: “ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ်” or his or her “mouth is foul." If you need to fish for information, you might “စကားချူ” or “siphon words." Some people might siphon more than words. They'll give you a sob story to "မျက်ရည်ချူ" or "siphon tears." But what does it mean to “စကားပလ္လင်ခံ” or “use a throne to raise your words”? That is what you do when you start off with a prelude to get to something else that really matters. For example, you start off talking about the bad economy, your low wages, and eventually you ask to borrow money. In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to a list of Burmese expressions that describe the manners and strategies of speaking. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
စကားများတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be of excessive words)
စကားနည်းတယ် to be of few words, to speak very little
စကားကြမ်းတယ် / အပြောကြမ်းတယ် / ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ် to be a foul mouth, to speak harshly or rudely
စကားချိုတယ် / အပြောချိုတယ် to be a persuasive, eloquent, or gentle speaker
စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk
စကားပြေ prose
စကားပြန် interpreter
စကားချူတယ် to fish for information (lit. to siphon words)
မျက်ရည်ချူတယ် to give a sob story (lit. to siphon tears)
စကားလွန်သွားပြီ / အပြောလွန်သွားပြီ to over-speak, to speak too much, to overpromise
စကားမှားသွားပြီ / အပြောမှားသွားပြီ to misspeak
စကားလွဲသွားပြီ / အပြောလွဲသွားပြီ to misspeak
စကားပလ္လင်ခံတယ် / စကားချီတယ် / စကားပျိုးတယ် to use a prelude or preliminary words to get to something else
စကားကောင်းနေတယ် to be having a lively conversation
စကားဖြတ်တယ် to cut off or terminate a conversation
You have probably heard the Burmese phrase မင်္ဂလာပါ Mingalah bah--typically used by hotel receptions and restaurant staff to greet you. Derived from Pali, the word roughly means to be auspicious, to have good omen, and to have good tidings -- a general word of positivity. But do you know that you can also spawn other compound words with it, like an auspicious new year, a blessed birthday, an auspicious donation ceremony, and so on? Also, if you must count your blessings, what is the classifier required?
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss how you can use the word မင်္ဂလာ Mingalah as more than a simple "Hello!" Talking about getting married, becoming a novice, or piercing your ears? You’ll need this word for just about every special occasion.
Vocabulary
မင်္ဂလာ (noun) blessings, good tidings, auspiciousness
နှစ်သစ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious new year
ရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ auspicious novitiation
ဖန်တီးတယ် to create
မွေးနေ့မင်္ဂလာ auspicious birthday
ကင်ပွန်းတတ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious child-naming ceremony
နားသမင်္ဂလာ / နားထွင်းမင်္ဂလာ auspicious ear-piercing ceremony
မင်္ဂလာဆောင်တယ် to get married
မင်္ဂလာဆောင် wedding
မင်္ဂလာစကားပြောတယ် to speak auspicious words, to gave a wedding speech
စုလျားရစ်ပတ်တယ် to get married (literally, to bind with a towel)
ဘိသိတ်ဆရာ traditional orator, storyteller, speaker
မင်္ဂလာဦး eve of wedding
မင်္ဂလာဆွမ်း alms donated to monks to mark a wedding
မင်္ဂလာရှိတယ် to be auspicious
မင်္ဂလာမရှိဘူး to be inauspicious
အမင်္ဂလာ that which is inauspicious, that which invites bad luck
အကုသိုလ် bad deeds
နိမိတ်မကောင်းဘူး the omen is no good
မင်္ဂလာတစ်ပါး one type of blessing (note the use of ပါး as the counting word)
တံမြတ်စည်း broom
လာဘ်ပိတ်တယ် to invite bad luck
In Burmese, the face is a great way to express your helplessness, pride, shame, or outrage--figuratively. When you’re feeling awkward, you might say, your face is burning (မျက်နှာပူတယ်). When you’re feeling insecure, your face is small (မျက်နှာငယ်တယ်). And when you favor someone, you give them face time (မျက်နှာပေးတယ် or မျက်နှာသာပေးတယ်). By the same token, if you get special treatment, people begrudge you for getting face time (မျက်နှာရတယ် or မျက်နှာသာရတယ်). Why say, “Don’t dishonor me” when you can say “Don’t rub soot on my face” (မျက်နှာကို အိုးမည်းမသုတ်နဲ့)? For more, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese about face-related expressions.
(Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabularyအခြေခံတယ် to be based on
မျက်နှာပူတယ် to feel awkward, to feel embarrassed
မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to feel small, insecure
အားငယ်တယ် to feel insecure, helpless
အားကိုးတယ် to rely on, to depend on
အကြွေး debt
မျက်နှာပေးတယ် / မျက်နှာသာပေးတယ် to give favorable treatment
မျက်နှာရတယ် / မျက်နှာသာရတယ် to receive favorable treatment
မျက်နှာပျက်တယ် to lose prestige
မျက်နှာကို အိုးမည်းနဲ့သုတ်တယ် to bring shame, dishonor on someone
လှောင်ပြောင်တယ် to mock, to make fun of someone
စော်ကားတယ် to insult someone
မျက်နှာပြောင်တိုက်တယ် to act with a bold face
What is your favorite bedtime story? Cinderella? Snow White? For Burmese kids, most likely it’s a story associated with a proverb, like Maung Po and the Tiger, or one of the jatakas, a retelling of the Buddha’s past lives that brought him to enlightenment. In this episode, I speak to A Zun Mo, the coauthor of Burmese Stories for Language Learners, published by Tuttle. Want to know why people pray for the angle May Khalar when they’re in a pinch? Want to know why the Burmese say, Maung Po and the Tiger should go back to the way they were? A Zun Mo is here to explain these. (Photo licensed from Shutterstock: Girl reading with light inside a pagoda in Bagan, by Nuttavut Sammongkol; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ပုံပြင် fable, story
ဘုရားလောင်း Boddhisatva, someone destined to become buddha
မဟာဇနက္က / မဟာဇနက Maha Zanaka, a prince in a Buddhist parable
ရွှေသွေး Shwe Thway, a weekly journal for children
ဇာတ်တော်ကြီးဆယ်ဘွဲ့ Ten Jatakas based on Buddha’s past lives
ခြုံငုံပြီး to sum up, to speak to summary
နတ်သမီး goddess, female deity
သမုဒ္ဒရာ ocean
ပန်းတိုင် goal
ဇွဲ / လုံ့လ determination, perseverance
ကုန်သည် merchant
စာသင်သားတွေအတွက် ရည်ရွယ်တယ် intended for language learners
မဏိမေခလာကို တမ်းတတယ် to long for the goddess May Khala
ပိုနေမြဲ ကျားနေမြဲ Maung Po and the tiger are back to where they were, a proverb
စကားပုံ proverb
ထောင်ချောက် trap
ကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful
ရုပ်ပြစာအုပ် graphics novel, illustrated book
ကျန်စစ်သား Kyansittha, the name of a king from the Bagan Dynasty
ရာဇကုမာရ် Rajakumar, the name of a prince from the Bagan Dynasty
ခိုင်ခိုင်မာမာ solidly, firmly
ဘာသာဗေဒ linguistics
ကောက်ကာငင်ကာ suddenly, spontaneously
ကျွတ်သွားတယ် to have found salvation (used when discussing ghosts and spirits)
The Mons, an ethnic group with its own distinct language and culture, exist in both Burma and Thailand. The Mon script is considered a source of the current Burmese script. The conventional view is Bagan’s conquest of the Mons in 1057 reshaped the character of Bagan, the first Burmese empire, as a Buddhist kingdom.
Mon also happens to be the mother tongue of my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon). In this episode, we discuss the link between Mon and Burmese words, Mon dishes and Burmese dishes, and traces of Mon names that can be seen in contemporary place names like Kamayut, a township in Yangon. (Photo licensed from Shutterstock: Mon girls on a bridge in Sangklaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ဘာသာစကား language
ဆရာခေါ်တယ် to treat someone as a teacher or mentor
အဆက်အစပ်ရှိတယ် to be related
အက္ခရာ alphabet, letters
ဗျည်း consonant letters
အပိတ်ဗျည်းသံ end-consonant sound
သရ vowel
နှုတ်ဆက်တယ် to greet, to bid farewell
အဓိပ္ပာယ် meaning
အဓိပ္ပာယ် တူတယ် to have the same meaning
အသံထွက်ဆင်တယ် pronunciation is similar
ကွာခြားတယ် to be dissimilar, to be different
ရန်အန္တရာယ်တွေချုပ်ငြိမ်းပြီ danger and strife have been extinguished
ရာမညဒေသ Ramanya Daytha, old Mon name lower Burma
ဟံသာဝတီ Hanthawady, old name for present day Bago (Pegu)
ကမာရွတ်မြိုနယ် Kamayut, a township in Yangon (Rangoon)
ကျိုက်ထီးရိုး Kyaiktiyo Pagoda
ဟင်းရည်ပျစ်တယ် the soup is thick
ခေါင်ရည် sweet ale, available in certain ethnic regions
ထန်းရည် palm ale
တစ်သွေမတိမ်း to strictly adhere to something
သံဖြူဇရပ် Thanphyu Zayat, a city in lower Burma
ရေး Yay/Ye, a city in lower Burma
စကားဝဲတယ် to have an accent, to deviate from standard pronunciation
ပိဿာ peittha, traditional weight measurement unit, roughly 3.6LB
ဈေးသက်သက်သာသာ with affordable price
စော Sao, Karen male name prefix
စိုင်း Sai, Shan male name prefix
မင်း Min, Mon male name prefix
ယဉ်ကျေးမှု culture
ရွာလုံးကျွတ် the entire village
Gone to live in the village of the sacred spirits (နတ်ရွာစံတယ်), flown away (ပျံလွန်တော်မူတယ်), has taken up residence in Nirvana (ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် ) ... They all mean "to die," but depending on the type of person involved, some terms may be appropriate, others may not be. Then there are also monosyllabic terms you might use to describe death disdainfully or sarcastically, the Burmese equivalent of "kick the bucket" or "gone six feet under." If your life depends on it, will you be able to pick the correct verb to describe a queen's death, a monk's death, or a good-riddance death? Listen to this Bite-Size episode for a crash course the Burmese way to die. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
သေတယ် to die
ဆုံးတယ် to die, to pass away
ကွယ်လွန်တယ် to die, to pass away
နတ်ရွာစံတယ် to die, lit. to take up residence in the realm of the spirits (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ပျံလွန်တယ် to die, lit. to fly away (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် to die, to enter Nirvana (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ကြွတယ် to die, disrespectful
ဂန့်တယ် to die, disrespectful
ကြိယာ verb
အရွဲ့တိုက်တယ် to be sarcastic
ရှောင်လွှဲလို့မရဘူး cannot be avoided
ဒဲ့ဒိုးပြောတယ် / တဲ့တိုးပြောတယ် to speak directly, to speak bluntly
မြင့်မြတ်တယ် to be noble
မင်းမျိုးမင်းနွယ် royal blood
တော်ဝင်မိသားစု royal household
Is Burmese difficult to learn--in particular, for English speakers? What’s the difference between Burmese and English grammar and sentence structures? And how do Burmese tones affect Burmese learners? How does the Burmese expression ရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့ အသံ sum up a hurdle Burmese learners must face? To discuss these, I invited Professor Justin Watkins, who specializes in Burmese and Linguistics. His students include researchers, diplomats, and NGO staffs, among others. Listen to our chat, and pick up a few fancy grammar terms to shock or surprise your own Burmese tutors. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
သဒ္ဒါ grammar
စာပေ literature
ဘာသာဗေဒ linguistics
လက်ဦးဆရာ first teacher or mentor
ကိုယ်တိုင် on one’s own
ကွာခြားတယ် to be different
နီးစပ်တယ် to be similar
ဥရောပ Europe
ဖွဲစည်းထားတယ် to be constructed of
ဥပမာ example
ဝါကျ sentence
ဝါကျတည်ဆောက်ပုံ sentence structure
ကြိယာ verb
နာမ် noun
ဒုက္ခရောက်တယ် to get into trouble
သဘာဝမကျဘူး not natural
ပြောင်းပြန် reverse
စိတ်ရှုပ်တယ် to be confused, to be frustrated
ရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့အသံ When you write, spell it correctly; when you speak, say it properly. (A reminder that, in Burmese, the way something is spelled doesn’t always match how it’s pronounced.)
မှန်းတယ် to guess
သရ vowel
ဗျည်း consonant
ပြဿနာ problem
ပြောစကား spoken style
စာစကား written style, literary style
ရှေးဆန်တယ် to be old-fashioned
ပြောဖို့ကအနိုင်နိုင် (it’s) a struggle to speak
နားရည်ဝတယ် to be exposed to the spoken language
ရလာဒ် result, outcome
မထိရောက်ဘူး not effective
နာမဝိသေသန adjective
ဧကဝဏ္ဏ monosyllabic
အတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ biography
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
ဘဏ္ဍာရေး treasury, money management
ပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince of Denmark told his trusted friend Horatio, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In this episode, I introduce you to Burmese phrases that stemmed from the word မိုး (sky, heaven) and မြေ (ground, earth). You might say "someone is on cloud nine" in English. We say in Burmese "he or she can neither see the sky nor feel the wind" (မိုးမမြင်လေမမြင်). You might complain that someone is not dependable because he or she shows up "only once in a blue moon," but in Burmese, you might accuse the same person of being "a golden spirit dropped out of heaven" (မိုးကျရွှေကိုယ်). For the definitions and example usages of these and a few more heavenly, earthy words, listen to this episode. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
မိုးမဆုံး မြေမဆုံး endless sky, endless earth; figuratively, to go on and on, infinitely
မိုးမမြင် လေမမြင် to neither see the sky nor feel the wind; figuratively, to be on cloud nine
ဘဝင်မြင့်တယ် to think highly of oneself
မိုးကျရွှေကိုယ် someone who fell from the sky; figuratively, someone with special talent, or someone who appears once in a blue moon
မြေကြီးလက်ခတ်မလွဲ as sure as the ground you can pat
မုချ for sure, certainly
မြေတောင်မြှောက်တယ် to make the soil fertile; figuratively, to nurture someone, to help someone succeed
ဥပဇာ simile, a figure of speech
For today’s episode, I invited a special guest – the mesmerizing voice behind the podcast စာဖတ်ပြမယ် or “I’ll read you stories.” The podcaster Win Ei regularly uploads recorded audio clips of Burmese short stories and essays to entertain us weekly with her voice. For many Burmese booklovers, her voice is what they hear before going to bed. In this episode, she discusses why and how she became addicted to books, how she chooses what to read every week, and which stories were her personal favorites. If you want to pick up some Burmese words and expressions related to Burmese literary genres, listen to our book chat here. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabularyစာပေ literature
ဆွေးနွေးတယ် to discuss
လေကန်တယ် to chitchat, to shoot the breeze
အာဘောင်အာရင်းသန်သန် (argue, talk, or debate) vociferously, in an animated fashion
ငြင်းခုန်တယ် to argue, to debate
သိုင်းဝတ္ထု martial arts novels
စာကြီးပေကြီး great literature
အိပ်ရာဝင်ပုံပြင် bedtime story
မူကြို kindergarten
အချစ်ဝတ္ထု romance novel
အမွှာညီအမ twin sisters
ကြွေတယ် slang, to be infatuated with someone, to fall for someone
တလွဲတချော်ဖြစ်တယ် to make a blunder, to make a mess of things
ရှိမဲ့စုမဲ့ very limited in quantity or volume to spare
ဂန္တဝင်စာပေ classic literature
ပေါ့ပေါ့ပါးပါး lightheartedly
စိတ်ပြေလက်ပျောက် as a distraction
ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ် life-depiction, a literary genre
လုံးချင်းဝတ္ထု full-length novel
ရသစာပေ fiction
သည်းထိတ်ရင်ဖို thriller
စုံထောက်ဝတ္ထု detective novel
ရာဇဝင်နောက်ခံဝတ္ထု historical novel
ဟာသဝတ္ထု humorous novel
ရေသန့်သမား purified water delivery person
အဆောင် dormitory
အချစ်သူရဲကောင်း romantic hero
မတတ်သာလို့ because it cannot be helped
သနားမိတယ် to feel sorry for
ဘယ်နှစ်ခေါက်ဖတ်ဖတ်မရိုးဘူး doesn’t get old no matter how many times you read
အမြင်ကျယ်စေတယ် to expand one’s horizon
ခရစ်ယာန်အသိုင်းအဝိုင်း Christian community
တောင်ပြုံးပွဲတော် Taungbyone spirit festival
လျှောလျှောရှူရှူ willingly, freely
အသံတည်းဖြတ်တယ် to edit audio
ပုံနှိပ်လောက the publishing world
အပျော်ဖတ်တဲ့စာပေ light reading, in other words, not serious literature
လေးနက်တဲ့စာပေ serious literature
နှိုက်နှိုက်ချွတ်ချွတ်မေးတယ် to ask intrusive questions
လှို့ဝှက်အသံရှင် secret voice, unidentified v
What might inspire someone in Burma to donate? The reasons can range from celebrating a birthday or remembering a loved one who has passed away to supporting a monastery or nunnery. A rite of passage, such as a young man becoming a novice monk or a young woman getting her ears pierced, could also prompt a community to hold a general feast, where everyone is welcome. For Burmese language learners, describing a donation might be much harder than making a donation. The meals you offer to the monks and nuns are called ဆွမ်း (alms); and when you donate money to them, it’s marked as ဝတ္ထုပစ္စည်း (material goods) for the purpose of နဝကမ္မ (general use). A feast where anyone—invited or not—is welcome, is called စတုဒိသာ, meaning “open to those from the four cardinal directions” in Pali. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the donation rituals and the proper terms to describe them. (Thumbnail image by by NattapolStudio, licensed from Shutterstock, a novitiation ceremony in Burma. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
အလှူ / အလှူဒါန donation
အလှူလုပ်တယ် to make a donation
ဘာသာရေး religion
လူမှုရေး social affairs
ရှင်ပြုတယ် to novitiate, to become a novice monk
ရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ novitiation ceremony
နားသတယ် / နားထွင်းတယ် to pierce ears
နားသမင်္ဂလာ ear piercing ceremony
နားတောင်း / နားကပ် earring
ကွယ်လွန်သူ the deceased, the departed
ရည်စူးတယ် to dedicate an act of merit to someone
မိဘမဲ့ဂေဟာ orphanage
စတုဒိသာ general feast
ဖောဖောသီသီ generously
ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း monastery
သီလရှင်ကျောင်း nunnery
မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to be unimportant, to be neglected or overlooked
ဆွမ်း alms (food for monks and nuns)
ဆွမ်းကပ်တယ် to offer alms
အရုဏ်ဆွမ်း dawn meal for monks and nuns
နေ့ဆွမ်း midday meal for monks and nuns
လူနေရပ်ကွက် residential district
စည်ကားတယ် to be lively
ဝိနည်း monastic rules
နဝကမ္မ general use
ဝေယျာဝစ္စ general tasks
ရေစက်ချတယ် to ritualistically pour water after a donation
ငါးပါးသီလ five precepts
ရှစ်ပါးသီလ eight precepts
ကုသိုလ်ကောင်းမှု meritorious deeds
နတ်ကောင်းနတ်မြတ် divinities
သာဓုခေါ်တယ် to proclaim an act of merit
ခေါင်းလောင်းထိုးတယ် to strike a bell
ပွဲတော်ရက် festival day
လပြည့်နေ့ full-moon day
သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut festival
ဆွမ်းဆန်စိမ်း nonperishable goods for the monks
ကထိန်သင်္ကန်း robes offered during the period of Kahtein
အခြောက်အခြမ်း dry goods
ပဒေသာပင် a makeshift structure to attach donated objects
ထွေးအင် spittoon
အဘိဓမ္မာစာမေးပွဲ monastic exam
ဒုက္ခသည် refugee, those in need
လေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် storm refugee
ရေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် flood refugee
မီးဘေးဒုက္ခသည် fire refugee
စစ်ဘေးဒုက္ခသည် war refugee
Where are your hidden talents hiding? If you’re speaking Burmese, they might be hiding under the leaves. The Burmese expression for someone with a hidden talent is ရွက်ပုန်းသီး -- meaning "a fruit hidden under the leaves." And someone you might call a Plain Jane in English is ရွက်ကြမ်းရေကျို or "tea brewed with plain leaves." Someone who can adapt to any situation, be comfortable in any circumstance or environment is ရွက်ကျပင်ပေါက် or "a plant that regrows wherever its leaves may fall." The Burmese word for leaves on trees and sails on ships are the same. Both are referred to as ရွက်. So the Burmese version of "full sail ahead" is ရွက်စုံဖွင့် or "raise all sails." In this episode, I introduce you to some leave-related phrases, along with example usages. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
ရွက်ပုန်းသီး someone with a hidden talent
အရည်အချင်း skill, talent
မထင်ရှားဘူး not well-known
ကျွမ်းကျင်တယ် to be proficient, to be skilled
အလှမယ် beauty queen
ရွက်ကြမ်းရေကျို Plain Jane
အသင့်အတင့် ordinary, fair
သာမန်ကာလျှံကာ ordinary, fair
အနံ့အရသာ fragrance and flavor
ရွက်ကျပင်ပေါက် plant that regrows from fallen leaves, someone who can thrive in different circumstances or environments
ဥပစာ metaphor, figure of speech
ရွက်စုံဖွင့် with all sails raised, full speed ahead, with all might
ချွပ်စွပ်တူတယ် to be an exact match
ခရီးဆက်တယ် to journey on
My students -- not all, but the rowdy and curious ones -- often ask me, how do you curse in Burmese? What is the Burmese version of the F-word or the C-word? Since this is supposed to be a G-rate podcast, I won’t be going anywhere near those. But there are well-worn insults, acceptable forms of name calling for the deserving ones. The terms range from wishing someone a horrible death to calling somebody a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing, to comparing them to the film of oil floating on the water -- a useless impurity, a surface-only type of being. So, for those rare occasions when you need to hurl abuses at someone in Burmese, my cohost Mol Mol and I will share some delicious insults: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
ဖရုဿဝါစာ curse words, indecent words
ငပျင်း lazybones
ငတုံး a numbskull
လူပေါ်ကြော့ a frivolous, wasteful person
စော်ကားတယ် to insult
အထင်သေးတယ် to look down on
ငါးစိမ်းသည်မ a fishmonger, fish seller
စွာတယ် to be feisty
ပက်ခနဲ ပြန်ပြောတတ်တယ် to talk back swiftly
ဆန်ကုန်မြေလေး a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing
ပေါက်လွှတ်ပဲစား undisciplined, unprincipled
ပညာတတ်လူတန်းစား the educated class
လက်လွတ်စပယ် frivolously, carelessly
ဗျောက်သောက် / လူဗျောက်သောက် riffraff
ဘုကလန့်တိုက်တယ် to be difficult, to be argumentative
လူ့ဂွစာ a difficult person
ဂွကျတယ် to be difficult
လိုက်လျောညီထွေ to be harmonious
ရေပေါဆီ oil floating on the water (corrupted, fake, disingenuous, surface only)
မိ မဆုံးမ ဖ မဆုံးမ someone without proper upbringing (lit. unschooled by mom, unschooled by dad)
ကောက်ကျစ်တယ် / စဉ်းလဲတယ် / ကောက်ကျစ်စဉ်းလဲတယ် to be wicked, to be devious
သားသမီးမကောင်းမိဘခေါင်း proverb, the failure of the children reflects poorly on the parents
သေခြင်းဆိုး someone doomed to die a horrible death
ကျိန်ဆဲတယ် to put a curse on
နလပိန်းတုံး a dumb person
စကား တန်ဆာဆင်တယ် to add linguistic flourishes, to add padding words
တင်းမပြည့်ကျပ်မပြည့် to be incomplete, to be substandard (lit. neither a full kyat nor a full bucket)
ဉာဏ်ရှည်မပြည့်ဘူး to be short of intelligence
လူပါးဝတယ် / လူဝါးဝတယ် to be arrogant
ရင့်သီးတယ် to be harsh in speech
တင်တင်စီးစီးဆက်ဆံတယ် to treat others as underlings
ကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful
ထမင်းတစ်လုတ် a mouthful of rice
စောက် / သောက် damn / darn
The peculiar nature of traditional Burmese names is, they usually do not have last names or family names. Instead, they’re chosen based on the day of the week a person is born. In other words, when you hear someone’s full name, you can often tell which day of the week he or she was born on.
Not only that, in Burmese astrology, the weekday of your birth also determines your spiritual animal, compatible marital allies, incompatible business partners, and your lucky number. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, Burmese language academy of Yangon, and I discuss the astrological system known as နေ့နဲ့နံ (nayt naet nane). What’s in a name? It could be your Destiny for a start. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
နေ့နံ weekdays and names, part of Burmese astrology
တနင်္လာ Monday
အင်္ဂါ Tuesday
ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး Wednesday
ရာဟု Period between Wednesday and Thursday
ကြာသပတေး Thursday
သောကြာ Friday
စနေ Saturday
တနင်္ဂနွေ Sunday
တိရစ္ဆာန် animal
ကျား tiger, Monday planet’s animal
ခြင်္သေ့ lion, Tuesday planet’s animal
ဆင် elephant, Wednesday planet’s animal
ဟိုင်းဆင် tuskless elephant, Rahu planet’s animal
ကြွက် rat, Thursday planet’s animal
ပူး guinea pig, Friday planet’s animal
နဂါး mythical serpent, Saturday planet’s animal
ဂဠုန် Garuda, Sunday planet’s animal
အက္ခရာ alphabet
ဗျည်း consonant letters
စနေသား Saturday-born male
အင်္ဂါသမီး Tuesday-born female
ဂြိုဟ် planet
ဂြိုဟ်မွှေတယ် to suffer the ill effects of a planet
ဦးသာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ / ဥဿာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ variations of a verse describing the compatible nuptial pairs
ဓမ္မာ သောက အင်းဝ ရာဇာ a verse describing the incompatible nuptial pairs
ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to do meritorious deeds
စိတ်ကြီးတယ် to be sensitive, to have a tendency to hold a grudge
စိတ်ကောက်တယ် to be offended, to hold a grudge
မိတ်ဘက် ally, compatible forces
ရန်ဘက် foe, incompatible forces
အရပ်မျက်နှာ the cardinal directions
ယတြာချေတယ် to perform rituals to ward off ill fate
ဗေဒင်ဆရာ fortuneteller
ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်းပြောရရင် to speak honestly
ပြောင်းပြန်ဖြစ်နေတယ် to be the opposite
စကားများတယ် to be talkative
အမောက်ထောင်တယ် to show off, to raise one’s comb
မာနကြီးတယ် to be proud or aloof
မျက်စောင်း glance
ကြားဖူးနားဝ hearsay
နက္ခတ် astrology
ကိန်းဂဏန်း number
ဝှက်စာ coded message
တစ်စိတ်တစ်ဒေသ a part, a portion
မရေရာဘူး uncertain
ရေသပ်ပယ်တယ် to purify a sacred object with water
When are Venetian blinds not Venetian? In Burmese language, they become Chinese shutters (တရုတ်ကပ်). (Variations of the design are also known as Louvre window or Jalousie window.) The spiky chayote, called Buddha's palm in Chinese (佛手瓜) due to its shape, is called Gurkha fruit (ဂေါ်ရခါးသီး) in Burmese. Cement, even when locally made with Burmese dirt, is still called British dirt (ဘိလပ်မြေ). Today, fizzy, carbonated soft drinks like Coca-Cola or 7-Up are called Canned drinks (သံဗူး), but in the past, they were called British juice (ဘိလပ်ရည်). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to the Burmese names of some foreign objects. Who brought them to the country? The clues are in the names themselves. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
တရုတ်ကတ် Venetian blinds, Louvre window, Jalousie window
ဘိလပ်မြေ cement
သံဗူးရည် canned drink, soft drink
ဘိလပ်ရည် carbonated drink, soft drink
ဘိလပ်ပြန် someone who returned from Britain
ဂေါ်ရခါးသီး chayote
ကုလားထိုင် chair
ပရိဘောဂ furniture
ကုလားဝန် minister in charge of foreigners’ affairs (in the royal court)
ဗိုလ် / ဘိုကေ western-style hair
ဗိုလ် / ဘိုလိုပြောတယ် to speak English
လက်အုပ်ချီတယ် to put one’s palms together in homage
အခေါ်အဝေါ် usage, term, vocabulary
အတုခိုးတယ် to mimic, to copy
ကုန်ကူသန်းရောင်းဝယ်ရေး commerce, trade
ယဉ်ကျေးမှုဖလှယ်တယ် to exchange culture
ကောက်ချက်ချတယ် to conclude, to deduce
ယူဆတယ် to think, to believe
တစ်နည်းတစ်ဖုံ in one way or another
ဆက်စပ်တယ် to be connected to, to be associated with
အိန္ဒိယနွယ်ဖွား of Indian descent
ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ် in the Konbaung Era
မူလအဓိပ္ပာယ် original meaning
ကျယ်ပြန့်တယ် to be broad
သျှောင်ထုံး hairstyle with a bun
စစ်ဗိုလ် army general
နိဂုံးချုပ် to conclude
Balderdash, baby talk, pillow talk, a clumsy act, a half-ass job, or a cuddly pet? Chances are, there's a four-letter, four-syllable word to describe it. They give your speech a certain meter and rhythm and make you sound musical. But many of them also sound quite similar. For language learners, the challenge is not to mix them up and use the wrong one. In this episode, I introduce you to a handful of four-letter expressions to impress or amaze your friends and tutors. Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.
Vocabulary
တောက်တိုမည်ရ odd jobs, errands
တိုလီမိုလီ miscellaneous items
တော်ရိရော်ရိ (adverb) half-hearted, in a mediocre fashion
တိုးလိုးတန်းလန်း (adverb) half-finished, left undone
တောက်တီးတောက်တဲ့ nonsense, balderdash
ကတ်သီးကတ်သတ် (adverb) to be nitpicking, to be difficult
ကိုးရိုးကားရား (adverb) in a clumsy, bungling fashion
ပိုးစိုးပက်စက် (adverb) cruelly, hurtfully, in a mean-spirited fashion
ပိုးလိုးပက်လက် (adverb) to be undignified, sprawled out
ပွတ်သီးပွတ်သတ် (adverb) to be touchy feely, to be fondling
တွတ်တီးတွတ်တာ (adverb) to speak nonstop, to speak baby talk or pillow talk
In this special Halloween episode, my cohost Mol Mol from the Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I delve into the things that go bump in the night. We share stories of haunted trees, school corridors, and college dormitories. And we trade spine-chilling, goosebump-inducing urban legends. Do you know how to tell a ghost story in Burmese? If not, listen to our talk and pick up some words. And just in case, grab a glass of holy water. (Illustration by Nyan Kyal Say. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
စိတ်မနှံ့ဘူး to be mentally unwell
ပရိတ်ရွတ်တယ် to recite prayers to ward off evil or ensure safety
ကောလာဟလ rumor
တူတူပုန်းတယ် to play hide and seek
ဇဝေဇဝါ ambivalent
သရဲခြောက်တယ် to be haunted by ghosts
ဥစ္စာစောင့် a possessive spirit attached to objects and materials
ရွှေချောင်း gold bullions
ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend
ဆောင့်ဆွဲတယ် to yank and pull
ကုက္ကိုပင် lebbek tree
ညောင်ပင် banyan tree
အဆောင် boarding house
ဂါဝန် skirt
အရိပ်အရောင်ပြတယ် to make an appearance
ကျောင်းသားသမ္မဂ student union
မှောင်စပျိုးချိန် twilight, dusk
အူယားဖားယား frantically
ကြွတ်ကြွတ်အိပ် plastic bag
ကျောချမ်းတယ် to feel a chill down the spine
ကြက်သီးထတယ် to get goosebumps
ရင်ခွဲရုံ mortuary
ဗိုလ်တစ်ထောင်မြနန်းနွယ် Botataung Mya Nan Nwe, a renowned female spirit
အိပ်ရေးမဝဘူး to be sleep deprived
ဘီလူးစီးတယ် to be seized by a demon, to have sleep paralysis
ထမင်းလုံးတစ္ဆေခြောက်တယ် to be haunted by the spirit of leftover rice grains
နတ်ဖွက်တယ် to be hidden by the spirits
နိုးနိုးကြားကြား in an awakened state
အိပ်မက်ဆိုး nightmare
In English, green is the color of jealousy, but in Burmese romance, a green-branch split (သစ်စိမ်းချိုး ချိုးတယ်) is a cruel, hurtful breakup. If a cold shoulder is the precursor to a breakup, in Burmese, the sign is a green-wind blowing (လေစိမ်းတွေတိုက်နေတယ်). Strangers and unfamiliar faces are green men (လူစိမ်း) and green faces (မျက်နှာစိမ်း). Sushi and tuna tartar could be described as green-fish dishes (ငါးစိမ်း) and violent, untimely deaths are green deaths (အစိမ်းသေ). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, explore and learn the green-colored expressions that might surprise or delight you.
Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io. Illustration by Nyan Kyal Say, licensed to K. Wong
Vocabulary
လူစိမ်း stranger
မျက်နှာစိမ်း an unfamiliar face
ရင်းနှီးတယ် to be familiar
သစ်စိမ်းချိုး ချိုးတယ် to break up with someone in a cruel, hurtful fashion
အဘာဝအတိုင်း in the course of nature
ရက်ရက်စက်စက် cruelly
မညှာမတာ without mercy
စိမ်းစိမ်းကားကားကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something bitterly, hatefully
စိန်းစိန်းဝါးဝါးကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something intensely
စူးစူးစိုက်စိုက်ကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something intensely
ကြိယာဝိသေသန adverb
အစိမ်းစားတယ် to eat something raw, uncooked
အသေဆိုးနဲ့သေတယ် to die a violent, painful death
လေစိမ်းတွေတိုက်နေတယ် to give the cold shoulder
ဗန်းစကား slang
နွေးနွေးထွေးထွေးဆက်ဆံတယ် to treat warmly, affectionately
In English, to talk about making the best use of time and circumstances, you’d say, make hay while the sun shines. But in Burmese, it’s to weave while the moon shines. To do things in the wrong order is to put the cart before the horse in English. In Burmese, it’s to put the plough before the ox. If someone is thinking too far ahead, you might say, don’t count your chicken before they hatch. In Burmese, we would say, the fritter is nowhere near done, but you’re worried about it burning your lips.
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from the Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I talk about popular and obscure Burmese proverbs, and how and when you might use them. Listen to our chat if you want to know what it means to serenade a buffalo or to dig up turtle eggs on the way to a pagoda.
Vocabulary
ကျစ်ကျစ်လစ်လစ် succinctly
အဓိပ္ပာယ်လေးနက်တယ် to have deeper meaning
လိုက်နာသင့်တယ် should abide by
ကျင့်စဉ် practice
လသာတုန်းဗိုင်းငင် to weave while the moon shines (same as to make hay while the sun shines)
မိုးရွာတုန်းရေခံ to collect water while it rains (same as to make hay while the sun shines)
မုဆိုးနားနီးမုဆိုး၊ တံငါနားနီးတံငါ Surrounded by hunters, one becomes a hunter; surrounded by fishermen, one becomes a fisherman. (One is shaped by the environment.)
အိုးချင်းထားအိုးချင်းထိ၊ ကြိုးချင်းထား ကြိုးချင်းငြိ A pot will rub against the pots nearby; a string will get entangled to the strings nearby. (One cannot help but become involved with those nearby.)
ဇာတိ၊ စရိုက် character, personality
အားကိုးတယ် to rely on, to depend on
ကျားကြောက်လို့ရှင်ကြီးကိုး၊ ရှင်ကြီးကျားထက်ဆိုး Turning to a deity for protection from the tiger, you find out the deity is worse than the tiger. (Beware of seeking help from the wrong authority.)
တစ်ရွာမပြောင်း သူကောင်းမဖြစ် Those who don’t move to a new village, won’t rise to greatness (a proverb that urges people to take risk).
စွန့်စားတယ် to take risk, to seek adventure
သေချင်တဲ့ကျားတောပြောင်း A tiger that relocates to a different forest, is a tiger that courts death.
ချောင်းကိုပြစ်၍မြစ်ကိုရှာ၊ ရေသာများ၍ငါးမတွေ့ Forsaking the stream for the river, one finds more water but no fish.
ကျင်လည်တဲ့အသိုင်းအဝိုင်း a familiar environment or circle
ကျွဲပါးစောင်းတီး to serenade a buffalo with a harp (to engage in a futile act)
ခွေးမြီးကောက်ကျဉ်တောက်စွပ် to straighten a dog’s crooked tail with a bamboo tube (to engage in a futile act)
(ဝါး)ကျဉ်တောက် bamboo tube
ဂျစ်ကန်ကန် / ဂျစ်တီးဂျစ်ကန် to be rebellious, to be feisty
ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ် to be foul-mouthed
အကျိုးမရှိတဲ့အလုပ် actions that have no benefit
ဆုံးမတယ် to instruct, to admonish
အနုပညာရသ artistic pleasure
ကွက်ကွက်ကွင်းကွင်း vividly
ပါးစပ်ကဘုရားဘုရား၊ လက်ကကားယားကားယား divine words with reckless deeds (words don’t match the action)
မုန့်ဆီကြော်ဘယ်ဆီနေမှန်းမသိ နှုတ်ခမ်းနာနဲ့တဲ့ပါ့မလား (တွေးပူ) The fritter is nowhere to be found, yet she’s worried about burning her lips (to worry about unlikely events).
နွားရှေ့ထွန်ကျူး to put the plough before the ox (to do things in the wrong order)
ထွန်တုန်း the plough
ဆရာထက်သား တစ်လကြီး / အဖေထက်သား တစ်လကြီး / အဖထက်သားတစ်လကြီး The pupil acts a month older than the teacher / The son acts a month older than the father (to act as if one is wiser than the elder or the mentor).
လွဲနေတယ် has gone awry
မဝေဖန်သင့်ဘူး should not criticize
မမှားသောရှေ့နေ၊ မသေသောဆေးသမား (No such thing as) a lawyer who has never misspoken, a doctor who has never lost a patient.
ထိုင်နေရင်အကောင်းသား၊ ထသွားမှကျိုးမှန်းသိ No one knows about his limp until he tries to walk.
ထော့နဲ့ထော့နဲ့ to limp
ခလုတ်ထိမှ အမိတ to
Destiny comes in many shapes and forms, but in Burmese, figuratively speaking, it comes as water droplets, or ရေစက်။ People became friends, neighbors, or lovers because they share some droplets of fate (ရေစက်ဆုံလို့၊ ရေစက်ရှိလို့), as the saying goes. By the same token, when the supply of droplet runs out (ရေစက်ကုန်ပြီ), it's time to part ways, ever to meet again.
Your romantic fate, on the other hand, comes as words scribbled on your forehead (နဖူးစာ/ဖူးစာ). Hence, the name ဖူးစာရေးနတ်, or the God who Scribbles on the Forehead. In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, learn to talk about the droplets of fate that you'd brought with you from the previous life to this, and your spouse-to-be with a mark inscribed on his or her forehead.
(Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io)
Vocabulary
အလွမ်းပြေ a nostalgic act
နားဆင်တယ် to listen
ရေစက် acts of merit that bring people together in another life
ရေစက်ရှိတယ် to have cause to come together, to be fated to meet
တူနှစ်သွယ်ဆုံစည်းရတယ် two strands happen to merge / the two of us happen to meet
မှန်းဆတယ် to guess
ကံဆုံတယ် to have compatible karma, to be fated to meet
ရေစက်ကုန်ပြီ to run out of the fate to meet or be together
ကံကုန်ပြီ to exhaust one’s supply of karma, to die
နဖူးစာ/ဖူးစာ romantic destiny (literally, words written on the forehead)
နဖူးစာရေးနတ် the god of love / the god who scribbles on the forehead
ဖူးစာရှင် the romantic partner chosen by fate or destiny
ကြင်ဖေါ် spouse, partner
ဘယ်လိုသဘောရလဲ။ What do you think?
What might you expect to find at a Burmese pagoda fair? What kind of food, souvenirs, and attractions would you likely encounter? Aside from cotton candy stands, Ferris wheel rides, and souvenir shops with paper tigers and paper demons, the fair might also give you a chance to have your fortune read by a fortuneteller. There may also be gambling going on, where you can bet on different animals on a chart, picked by a dice roll. In today’s episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my cohost Mol Mol and I share our fond memories from the pagoda fairs. Grab your parasol and come along.
Vocabulary
ဘုရားပွဲ pagoda fair
ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel
ပင်လယ်ဓါးပြ pirates
မူးပြီးအန်တယ် to get dizzy and throw up
မုခ် the entrance to a pagoda
စောင်းတန်း the climb or walkway to a pagoda
စင်္ကြန် corridor
စေတီ shrine
ပုရဝုဏ် the pagoda’s precinct
တံခွန်၊ ကုက္ကား folded, layered paper banners, typical shrine offerings
နိဗ္ဗာန်ကုန် merchandize related to pagodas and shrines
လမ်းတစ်လျှောက် along the way
ပုတီး rosary
ဆင်းတု sacred statue or figure
ဗေဒင်ဆရာ fortuneteller
ဗေဒင်ယုံတယ် to believe in fortunetelling
... ကိန်းရှိတယ် to be destined to ... / fated to ...
ဒီနှစ်ငွေဝင်ကိန်းရှိတယ် This year, you're destined to receive some money.
ဗေဒင်ဟောတယ် to read someone’s fortune
စူးစမ်းတယ် to investigate
ယေဘုယျ generally
ဇာတာချတယ် to draw up someone’s birth chart with planetary alignments
လက္ခဏာကြည့်တယ် to tell someone’s fortune from palmistry
အကြားအမြင်ပေါက်တယ် to have foresight
မွေးနေ့သက္ကရာဇ် birthday and birth year
မုန့်လင်မယား savory fried cakes sold in pairs (hence the name couple cake)
အာတာပူစီ cotton candy
ဝါးနံရံ / ဝါးထံရံ bamboo walls
အိုးပုတ် clayware, miniature cooking utensils made of clay
လောင်းကစား gambling
လေးကောင်ဂျင် a gambling game where people bet on the animals on a chart
တောင်ပြုန်းဘုရားပွဲ Taungpyone/Taungbyone festival
မန်းရွှေစက်တော်ဘုရားပွဲ Mandalay Shwe Set Taw Pagoda festival
အလောင်းတော်ကဿပဘုရား ပွဲ Alaungdaw Kathapa Pagoda festival
မော်တင်စွန်းဘုရားပွဲ Maw Tin Soon Pagoda festival
ဖဲရိုက်တယ် to play cards
ကြိတ်ကြိတ်တိုး to be impenetrably crowded
နိဂုံးချုပ်တယ် to conclude
If your conscience or your courage were an insect, what might it be? In Burmese imagination, it’s a butterfly. There are some Burmese expressions where the delicate creature represents your conscience, confidence, courage, or life. Do you have a clear conscience or a troubled conscience? Are you a timid, faint-hearted soul? Are you scared out of your wits? In this Bite-Size Burmese lesson, I'll teach you how to say these. The key is to select the correct butterfly-centric phrase.
Vocabulary:လိပ်ပြာလုံတယ် to have a clear conscience
လိပ်ပြာသန့်တယ် to have a clear conscience
လိပ်ပြာငယ်တယ် to be easily frightened, to be timid, to be faint of heart
ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to represent
သင်္ကေတ symbol, icon
လိပ်ပြာလွင့်တယ်၊ လိပ်ပြာစဉ်တယ် to be frightened, to be scared out of one's wits
စဉ်တယ် to scatter, to spill out, to be tossed out, to fall out
လိပ်ပြာလန့်တယ် to be scared
လုံလုံခြုံခြုံ securely, safely
ဖုန် dust
သဲ sand
အမှိုက် trash, toxins
အပြစ်မရှိဘူး to be free of guilt
သတ္တိရှိတယ် to be brave, to have courage
အသက်ရှူရပ်မလောက် nearly forgetting to breathe
မေ့မလောက် nearly losing consciousness, nearly fainting
မျက်မှန် glasses
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese language academy of Yangon) and I discuss the movie-going experiences in our own times. In my boyhood in the 80s, movie theaters in Yangon were weather-beaten colonial buildings, with only a few offering air condition -- a luxury confined to the embassies and high-end hotels. On the other hand, Mol Mol grew up with multiplex theaters in megamalls like Junction Square, where surround sound and air condition were a given. But the films that we both fondly remember happen to be the same: Cultural phenomena like မှုန်ရွှေရည် (Hmone Shwe Yi) and သင်္ကြန်မိုး (Thingyan Moe), to name but two. So silent your cellphones, grab your popcorn, and join us in the theater of nostalgia. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ကြိတ်ကြိတ်တိုး to be thronged with people
ရုံတင်တယ် to screen a film in a theater
ဇိမ်ကျတယ် / ဇိမ်ခံတယ် to indulge in luxury
ဖလင် film
သည်းခံပါ please be patient
ပိတ်ကား the silver screen
ခေတ်ပြိုင် contemporary, from the same era or period
မင်းသမီးတစ်လက် an actress (လက် is a counting word for actors)
နောက်ခံဘဝ backstory
အဓိကဇာတ်ကောင် the main character
စိတ်နာတယ် to be deeply wounded (emotionally); to become resentful
အရက်စွဲသွားတယ် to become addicted to alcohol
ဇာတ်ဝင်တေး/ဇာတ်ဝင်သီချင်း movie theme song
စိတ်ပြေသွားတယ် to lose one’s anger or resentment, to thaw (emotionally)
ခပ်ဆင်ဆင် similar
ကိုလိုနီခေတ် the colonial era
လုံးချင်းဝတ္ထု full-length novel
မှီငြမ်းတယ်/မှီးတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by
စာတည်းမှူး editor
နားလည်ရခက်တယ် to be difficult to understand
လျှို့ဝှက်ချက် secret
နှိပ်ကြယ်သီး press button
မခေဘူး not bad at all, can measure up
ဂန္တဝင် classic
အတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ (pronounced အထုပ်ပတ်တိ / အတ်ထုပ်ပတ်တိ) biography
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ memorably
ကလဲ့စားချေတယ်/လက်စားချေတယ် to take revenge, to avenge
နောက်ဆက်တွဲ sequel
ရုပ်ပြကာတွန်း illustrated comic
သရုပ်ဆောင်တယ် to perform, to act
အထင်ကရ renown
ဂိုဏ်းခေါင်းဆောင် gang leader
သွေးထွက်သံယို bloody, violent
အရောင်စိုပြည်တယ် to be rich in colors
ရုပ်လုံးပေါ်တယ် to be vivid
Theatrical performances, dance drama, and shows are such an integral part of Burmese culture that quite a number of everyday expressions can be traced back to them. In this episode, I'll introduce you to two such sayings:
ဆိုင်းမဆင့် ဗုံမဆင့် (to show up without a musical prelude)
မီးစင်ကြည့်ကတယ် (to dance wherever the spotlight falls)
The first one has to do with the theatrical practice of synchronizing the entrance of certain characters with the appropriate musical cues. For instance, to announce the ogre's appearance with a fittingly menacing music; to announce the prince's entrance with a princely song; and so on. As an expression, "to show up without a musical prelude" means "to show up unannounced."
There may also be times when you are required to play by ears, as you might say in English. The Burmese equivalent of that is, "to dance according to the spotlight." Listen to the mini-lesson for further explanations and usage examples. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Sounddroll, Upbeat.io)
Vocabulary
တူရိယာပစ္စည်း musical instruments
ဇာတ်ကောင် character
ညှိထားတယ် to synchronize, to negotiate beforehand
ဘီလူး demon, ogre
ဘီလူးဆိုင်း the musical cue for the ogre
မီးစင် spotlight
သင့်တော်သလိုလုပ် to act as one sees fit
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol and I discuss the joy of travel. Mol Mol has just returned from a trip to Tarchileik, a city in the Shan State bordering the notorious Golden Triangle region. While I have not been back in Burma recently, I still have fond memories of my last pilgrimage to the temple-dotted ancient city of Bagan. Mol Mol recounts the taste of a local delicacy--grilled fish wrapped in banana leaf--and the oral history of a tree supposedly planted by the Konbaung Dynasty’s founder U Aung Zeya; I discuss the Bagan pagoda associated with a prophesy that foreshadows the fall of the first Burmese empire. For those and more, listen to our latest episode. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
အချိန်သက်သာတယ် it saves time
မိုးသီး hailstone, ice pellets
မိုးသီးကြွေတယ် hails rain down
ရွှေတြိဂံနယ်မြေ The Golden Triangle
စာကြမ်းပိုး (pronounced စာဂျဘိုး) bookworm
နယ်စပ် border region
စေတီလေးဆူ four pagodas (ဆူ is the counting word for sacred objects)
မြင်းလည်းဆရာ horse carriage driver
နေ့ကြေး day rate
ခလောက် bells for animals
လှုပ်တုပ်လှုပ်တုပ် to move in a jerky, shaky, wobbly fashion
ရှုခင်း scenery
နာရီပိုင်းနဲ့ငှားတယ် to rent by the hour
သစ်တစ်ပင်တောင် One-Tree Hill, a local attraction located in Kyaingtong (Kengtung)
လုံးပတ် circumference (of a tree or a pillar)
ဦးအောင်ဇေယျ U Aung Zeya, founder of the Konbaung Dynasty
အယုဒ္ဒယ ancient name of Thailand, Burmanized version of Ayutthaya
ကျိန်စာ curse
ကျိန်စာတိုက်တယ် to put a curse on something or someone
ပါးစပ်ရာဇဝင် oral history
အတည်ပြုတယ် to verify, to confirm
တစ်ဆင့်စကားတစ်ဆင့်နား stories transmitted by mouth, oral history
ရွာသူကြီး village headman
ကုန်းဘောင်မင်းဆက် Konbaung Dynasty
တဘောင် prophesy
ဘုရားလည်းပြီး ပြည်ကြီးလည်းပျက် when the pagoda is done, the kingdom will be ruined (a prophetic verse foretelling the fall of Bagan)
တိုက်ဆိုင်တယ် to coincide
ကျူးကျော်တိုက်ခိုက်တယ် to invade
ငှက်ပျောဖက် banana leaf
တစ်ခါပြင် a fixed meal for one customer (a way of calculating payment in some Burmese restaurants)
ပွဲတော်တည်တယ် to have a feast
အရံဟင်း side dishes
လေယာဉ်မူးတယ် to get sick from air travel
လေယာဉ်အစုပ် crappy planes
နားအူတယ် the ears are ringing
ခါးခါးသီးသီးငြင်းတယ် to refuse bitterly
ခရီးပမ်းတယ် to be worn out by a trip (to be jetlagged)
မြိတ် (also pronounced ဘိတ်) Myeik, a city in the Tanintharyi Region
တောင်ခြေ the foot of a hill
နတ် animist spirits
စကားပုံ proverb
ကျားကြောက်လို့ရှင်ကြီးကိုး၊ ရှင်ကြီးကျားထက်ဆိုး Threatened by the tiger, I turned to the spirit lord, but the lord turns out to be worse than the tiger (Burmese proverb)
Hello!
My cohost Mol Mol is on vacation this week. Rest assured, when she returns, we will resume our Learn Burmese from Natural Talk series, but in this episode, I'll give you a bite-size lesson.
This is the first of what will become a series of mini lessons sandwiched between our regular talks. I’ll call it Bite-Size Burmese. It’s intended for intermediate and advanced Burmese learners, so I’ll be speaking in a mix of English and Burmese. In it, I'll focus on introducing you to the classic, quirky, and quintessential Burmese phrases that local people use daily but won’t expect foreigners learning Burmese to know, let alone use them correctly.
Today's phrases are:
အရိပ်သုံးပါး နားမလည် (to be oblivious to the three types of shadows); and
အရိပ်ပြရင် အကောင်မြင်တယ် (to recognize the beast from its shadow).
The former describes people who lack certain social skills; the latter is the opposite. To find out what these expressions mean, how you might use them, and which kind you should aspire to be, listen to the very first bite-size Burmese lesson. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Sounddroll, Upbeat.io)
Vocabulary
လူမှုရေးနယ်ပယ် the realm of social interaction
မပါးနပ်ဘူး not clever, not sophisticated
သွယ်ဝိုက်ပြောတယ် to speak indirectly
မသိမသာပြောတယ် to drop casual hints
ဒဲ့ဒိုးပြောတယ် to speak directly
ခန့်မှန်းတယ် to guess, to deduce
ဆင်ခြင်တွေးတောတယ် to think through, to reason
ကောက်ချက်ချတယ် to draw conclusion
Anyeint, Zat, Pwe: these are terms associated with classical music, dance, and drama, sometimes performed in respected public halls but more often in open spaces and fields, under makeshift tents and on temporary stages lit with torches or dangling lightbulbs. What kind of instruments can you expect to hear in these performances? What is the role of the comedians dressed in large gaung baungs, or headdresses? And what is the proper protocol for summoning a dancer to the stage?
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I talk about B-Drama -- Burmese drama. For the key words and phrases in our chat, please check the vocabulary below.
Vocabulary
ဇာတ်၊ ဇာတ်သဘင်၊ ဇာတ်ပွဲ drama, theatrical performance
အငြိမ့် a mixture of song and dance performed by a theatrical group
ကိုယ်တွေ့ အတွေ့အကြုံ personal experience
အမျိုးသားပြဇာတ်ရုံ national theater
ရာမဇာတ် the epic of Rama
ဘုရားပွဲ pagoda festival
ဇာတ်စင်ထိုးတယ် to put up a stage for a performance
ညလုံးပေါက် all-night long
တူရိယာပစ္စည်း musical instrument
ပတ်ဝိုင်း drum circle
ဆိုင်းဝိုင်း gong circle
နှဲ a Burmese wind instrument
ဗုံ drum
လင်းကွင်း၊ လကွင်း၊ ယကွင်း၊ ခွက်ခွင်း shell
လူရွှင်တော်၊ လူပျက် comedian
ပျက်လုံး joke
ပျက်လုံး ပျက်တယ်၊ ပျက်လုံးထုတ်တယ် to crack a joke
မင်းသမီးခေါ်တယ် to summon the dancer
တစ်ခန်းရပ်ပြဇာတ် one-act play
ဗုဒ္ဓဝင်ဇာတ်လမ်း a Buddhist fable
လေးချိုး a four-syllable verse
လေးချိုး ချိုးတယ် to recite a four-syllable verse
မင်းသား leading male dancer
မင်းသမီး leading female dancer
တစ်ပင်တိုင်အက a solo dance
နှစ်ပါးသွားအက a duet dance
ဆီမီးခွက်အက a dance with small oil lamps
ဇာဂနာ a renowned political activist and comedian
တိုက်ပုံ man’s formal jacket
တောင်ရှည်ပုဆိုး man’s formal sarong
ခေါင်းပေါင်း headdress
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
ယိမ်းအက synchronized group dance
အင်္ကျီဆင်တူ in matching outfits
သံချပ်ထိုးတယ် to put on a call-and-response routine
ထမင်းချိုင့် a multi-tiered food carrier, a tiffin
အိပ်ချင်ပြေတယ်၊ အိပ်ငိုက်ပြေတယ် to prevent sleepiness
၅၅၀ ဇာတ်နိပါတ် stories rooted in Buddhist teaching
ဇော်ဂျီ the alchemist
ဝေဿန္တရာဇာတ် the story of Prince Waythandaya (Vessantara)
ဇာတ်တော်ကြီး ဆယ်ဘွဲ့ the ten birth stories of Buddha
ကွမ်းယာ betel quid
ဘီလူး mythical demon, ogre
ဘီလူးဆိုင်းတီးတယ် to announce the demon’s entrance with music
ဗျော a drum-focused composition
ဇာတ်ရုံ a theater
ပန်းကုံးစွပ်တယ် to place a wreath on someone
ချိတ် a clip, a pin
ကဗျာလွတ်အက a dance repertoire for learners
စည်းနဲ့ဝါး beat counting in Burmese music, a bamboo clapper and a pair of shells for keeping time in music
Time to talk about food!
From Ramen bowls that rival the best in Tokyo to Kayah sausages stuffed with spiced minced meat, Burma’s big cities and small towns offer a rich variety of dishes to tickle your fancy and palate. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I discuss fritters from the roadside stalls, homemade dishes that stir up childhood memories, the special meals our parents made during festival days, and Korean and Thai dishes that have found a following among the adventurous local foodies.
If we’re tuning in with an empty stomach, better grab some snacks to munch or be prepared to drool throughout the episode. At the end of the chat (while wiping your mouth), be sure to pick up some new words and phrases introduced in the episode.
(Intro and end music courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabulary
တိုင်းရင်းသား အစားအစာ ethnic cuisine
ဖန်တယ် to be acidic and bitter
ကြက်ခြေနီသုပ် a spicy, sour variety of tealeaf salad
အညာ upper Burma
တစ်ခါပြင် a single serving for a patron, a payment calculation system used in some traditional Burmese dining places
ပုတ်ပြတ် an all-inclusive fee
ငါးသလောက်ဥကြော် fried salmon fish egg
ပျဉ်းတော်သိမ်ရွက် curry leaf
မြင်းခွာရွက် Indian pennywort
ဆန်နှစ် dipped in rice batter
ဆာဘူးသီး a traditional ethnic Chin dish made with shredded corn and minced meat
စတုဒီသာ offering free meals to the general public
ရေပေါလော floating in water
မြုပ်မြုပ်ကလေး somewhat submerged in liquid
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
တိုဟူးနွေး soft tofu in a bowl
နှစ်ပြန်ကြော် twice-fried tofu, an ethnic Shan snack
ကယားဝက်အူချောင်း Kayah sausage
မက်ခါသီး a numbing spice seed
ခေါင်ရည် alcohol made in the ethnic regions
ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular, to become a trend
တုန်ယန်း Tom Yum soup
ခေါက်ဆွဲအေး cold noodle
ကုလားပဲ chickpea
Hello everyone!
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the dating and courtship rituals in Burma. How does a man express his romantic interest? What are the protocols for serenading a girl? How might a girl reveal to a suitor that she, too, is interested? How have technology and social media changed some of these customs? What are the typical and not-so-typical objects offered as dowry?
Mol Mol was surprised to learn that in the U.S., the bride's parents are often expected to pay for the cost of the wedding. On the other hand, I discovered that a special breed of cow (with a buffalo's features) is the customary dowry among certain ethnic minorities.
We hope this episode is informative and helpful to your Burmese language studies. (Music clips courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabularyသမီးရည်းစား couple
ပိုးတယ် / ပိုးပမ်းတယ် to court, to hit on someone romantically
ရည်းစားစာပေးတယ် to give a love letter
ရည်းစားစကားပြောတယ် to confess one’s love
ကဗျာဆန်တယ် to be poetic
အလေ့အထ custom, tradition
များသောအားဖြင့် generally, mostly
တုန့်ပြန်တယ် to respond
အဆောင်မှာနေတယ် to live in a dormitory
ကာယကံရှင် the parties involved, the people concerned
မိဘမောင်ဖွား parents and kin
အလားတူ similar
မှတ်ပုံတင် government-issued ID
ပွင့်လင်းမြင်သာ to be transparent, open, progressive
တစ်ဖက်လှည့်နည်းလမ်း with indirect means
လူသိရှင်ကြား publicly
မောင်းထုကြေညာ to publicize, announce, declare
ရိပ်မိတယ် to get the hint
အရိပ်အယောင်ပြတယ် to give a hint, to show a sign
ခိုးပြေးတယ် to elope, to run away as a couple
ထိမ်းမြားလက်ထပ် to get married
တင်တောင်းတယ် to offer something as dowry
လက်ဝတ်ရတနာ accessories, precious jewels
အိမ်ထောင်ရပ်သားပြုတယ် to start a family
နွားတစ်ရှဉ်း a pair of cows (old usage)
စေ့စပ်ကြောင်းလမ်း to get engaged
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ memorably
နွားနောက် (pronounced နနောက်) a breed of cow with characteristics of a buffalo
စာချုပ်ချုပ်တယ် to sign a contract
အကောက်ခွန် tax
ကုန်ကျစရိတ် expenses, cost
သဝန်ကြောင်တယ် to be jealous
အရွှမ်းဖေါက်တယ် to be humorous
Welcome to another episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk!
In Burmese teashops, have you ever listened closely to how regular customers order tea, and how the waiters and waitresses relay these orders to the kitchen? What do people mean when they ask for cho pawt, pawt kya, pawt seint, kyauk badaung or see lone tea? What type of people tend to frequent curbside teashops, set up under leafy tress at the busy intersections? And what about the more modern cafes with the air-conditioned, colorful interiors, ideal for your Instagram selfies? What type of people do they attract?
To find out, listen to our third episode, where Burmese teacher Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discussed Burma’s teashop culture. At the end of our chat, we gave you the meanings of the key words and phrases we used in our chat. Join us or a cup of tea! (Music clips courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabulary for talking about teashop culture
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင်ထိုင်တယ် to hang out in a teashop
အလေ့အကျင့် habit
ကျတယ် to be heavily caffeinated
စိမ့်တယ် to be rich in flavor
ပေါ့တယ် to be lightly flavored
ကျစိမ့် caffeinated and richly flavored
ချိုပေါ့ lightly sweetened
ကျောက်ပတောင်း name of an extremely sweet and thick tea
နှပ်တယ် to brew (tea or coffee)
စီလုံတီး a special type of tea made with boiled milk (instead of condensed milk)
မလိုင် milk cream
လူလတ်တန်းစား middle class
လမ်းဘေးလက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင် curbside teashop
နေရာထိုင်ခင်း setup, interior
ဝန်ဆောင်မှု services and amenities
အီကြာကွေး fried donut sticks (Chinese origin)
လူတန်းစား social class
selfie ဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ရင်ဖွင့်တယ် to open up emotionally
လေကန်တယ် to chitchat
အာလာပ သလ္လာပ general conversation topics
အာဘောင်အာရင်းသန်သန် vociferously, energetically
ငြင်းကြခုန်ကြတယ် to debate
ထွေရာလေးပါး general topics
အတင်းအဖျင်း gossips
အာနိသင် essence
ရေနွေးကြမ်း plain tea
မျက်စောင်းထိုးတယ် to give a dirty look
မကြည်ဘူး to be disgruntled
နှပ်ကော်ဖီ slow-brewed coffee
လေအေးစက် air conditioner
Happy new year, Burmese learners!
In this episode, Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I share our new year resolutions. Mol Mol is determined to expand her social circle, to make new friends, and to go scuba diving—something she’s always wanted to do. For the past two years, I’ve had to cancel my trips to Yangon and Kyoto because of COVID-related travel hassles, so I’m feeling the urge of my wanderlust, the itch to pack my bag for an exotic destination. To my envy, Mol Mol has just returned from a trip to the Shan highlands, where she savored soft tofu bowls and pickled sour leaves.
The Burmese new year, called Thingyan, usually falls on April. While Burmese people typically don't make resolutions as westerners do, they tend to mark the occasion by washing away the sins of the old year, and releasing animals to acquire merit.
What are your new year resolutions? To lose weight? To pen a literary masterpiece? Or to set out to some farflung places? Can you be sure you won't lose steam a few months into the year? We can't teach you how to steel your resolve or reach your goals, but if you listen to our chat, you can at least pick up the phrases you need to talk about them in Burmese. (Intro and end music courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabulary
အဓိဋ္ဌာန် / သန္နိဋ္ဌာန် decision, vow, pledge, promise, resolution
အဓိဋ္ဌာန်ချတယ် / ပြုတယ် / လုပ်တယ် to make a pledge, a vow, a resolution
နှစ်သစ်အဓိဋ္ဌာန် new year resolution
ရေငုပ်တယ် to dive underwater
သန္တာကျောက်တန်း coral reef
ငွေဆောင် Ngwe Saung (or) Ngwesaung Beach
အသက်အောင့်တယ် to hold one’s breath
သင်္ကြန် Thingyan, Burmese new year
နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ new year day
အကြိုနေ့ the preceding day
အကျနေ့ the arrival day
အကြတ်နေ့ the day between the arrival and conclusion
အတက်နေ့ the concluding day
Notes: အကြို၊ အကျ၊ အကြတ်၊ အတက် is how festival days are counted in Burmese.
ရက်ထပ်နှစ် leap year
ဘေးမဲ့လွှတ်တယ် to release animals to cultivate karma
ကောင်းမှုကုသိုလ် good deeds
ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် / ပြုတယ် / ယူတယ် to perform good deeds to acquire merit
နှစ်ဟောင်းကအညစ်အကြေး the sins from the previous year
တိုဟူးနွေး soft tofu served in a bowl
ရှမ်းရိုးရာအစားအစာ traditional Shan food
ဝက်သားချဉ် (pronounced ဝက်သချင်) pickled sour pork
မုန်ညင်းပေါင်း steamed sour leaves, condiment
ကပ်ရောဂါ pandemic
ခြေဖဝါးယားတယ် to feel an itch in the sole, to feel like going on a trip (the expression is linked to the superstition that if you feel an itch in your sole, you are bound to go on a journey)
သွားရည်ယိုတယ် to salivate, to grow hungry
အဖျားရှူးသွားတယ် to taper off, to lose steam midway
စိတ်အားထက်သန်တယ် to be enthusiastic, motivated, eager
ကျွန်တော်/ကျွန်မကိုယ်တိုင်ပဲ myself included; I am an example of that
ရေဆေးပန်းချီ watercolor painting
ဝိတ်ချတယ် to lose weight
အပြစ်တင်တယ် to blame someone or something
Hello everyone!
It’s my pleasure to bring you the debut episode of a new podcast series for intermediate Burmese learners. My cohost is Mol Mol (မိုမို), a teacher from the Burmese Language Academy of Yangon, also known as BLAY.
Our goal here is not to offer formal instructions and practice drills, but rather, to expose you to how people talk in real life. Natural conversations are not always grammatical or orderly. They're often punctuated with hesitations, interjectons, diversions, sighs, laughter, and all kinds of utterances. No textbook can possibly cover their richness.
In each episode, Mol Mol and I will discuss a specific topic that's seasonal, timely, and relevant to Burmese culture. Our talk will be unscripted, in natural language. This way, intermediate learners can become familiar with the type of exclamations, interjections, expressions, and modes of speaking that reflect how people talk.
At the end each episode, we’ll give you the meanings of some key words and phrases. We welcome your input and suggestions for this new series, and hope this will be helpful to your Burmese studies.
Just in time for Halloween, our debut episode is on Witches, Wizards, and Nats. (Music clips courtesy of Uppbeat.)
Vocabularyတိုင်းရင်းသူ female member of an ethnic minority
တိုင်းရင်းသား member of an ethnic minority
အချက်အချာကျတယ် to be central, to be significant
ကျင်းပတယ် to hold, as in to hold a festival or event
ဆက်စပ်တယ် to be associated with
စုန်း witch
ကဝေ witch
မှော် wizardry, wizard
ထွင်းတယ် to carve
သရဲ ghost
တစ္ဆေ ghost
နတ် animist spirit, deity
နတ်ကတော် spirit medium
ကိုးကွယ်တယ် to believe in, to worship
ပူဇော်တယ် to worship, to make an offering
ကန်တော့ပွဲပေးတယ် to pay homage with a celebration
ထွန်းကားတယ် to proliferate, to become widespread
ပူးတယ် to possess, as in a spirit possesses a human
ယူဆတယ် to believe
အယူအဆ belief
ဟောတယ် to predict
ရိုးရာနတ် traditional spirit
လက်ဆင့်ကမ်းပေးတယ် to hand down
ထူးဆန်းတယ် to be strange, to be mysterious
လိပ်သားသုပ် turtle meat salad
တောင်ပြုန်းပွဲတော် Taungbyone Nat Festival
ကတိပေးတယ် to make a promise
စောင့်ရှောက်တယ် to protect
ကတိမတည်ဘူး to fail to keep a promise
ဒဏ်ခတ်တယ် to punish