Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

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 ပျားရည်စမ်းခရီး 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 Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

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) Vocabulary ကောင်းကျိုး 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 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, good intention 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.

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 Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

What do you do when you’re in a pinch, out of options, and 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 နဂါး Naga, a mythical serpent ကမ္ဘာရန်သူ mortal enemy မတတ်နိုင်လို့ because it cannot be helped သေသေကြေကြေ live or die မထူးဘူး makes no difference ကတုတ်ကျင်း ditch သမ္မာကျမ်းစာ Bible မယ်တော်မာရိ Mother Mary ယျေဘုယျအားဖြင့် generally speaking လူယောင်ဖန်ဆင်း to transform into a human, to take the human shape ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fable အလွတ်ကျက် to learn by heart Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

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 Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.