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

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