Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Why are many Burmese men reluctant to walk under a clothesline where women’s sarongs are hanging? Why are women forbidden to enter certain sections of the pagodas in Burma? Why do you need to remove your shoes when entering sacred places? Many of these practices may puzzle and bewilder those unfamiliar with Burmese culture. Others might wonder if these practices still make sense in modern times. In this episode, Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher Su (Burmese Chatter Talk) and I dissect these long-held practices and traditions and offer our own personal thoughts on them. (Illustration generated in ChatGPT; music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

အံ့ဩတယ် to be surprised, shocked, puzzled

ဘုန်းကံ invisible power, inherent sacredness 

ဘုန်းကြီးတယ် to be sacred

ဘုန်းနိမ့်သွားမယ် to become less sacred

မဟာဖိုဝါဒ / ဖိုဝါဒီ male superiority doctrine 

ရှေးရိုးစွဲ conservative

ဘဝင်မကျဘူး to be dissatisfied

ဓမ္မတာလာတယ် to be menstruating 

သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze, to examine

ပရဝုဏ် / ပရိဝုဏ် territory, interior (of a pagoda, for example)

မုခ်ဝ gate (usually of a pagoda)

စေတနာ့ဝန်ထမ်း volunteer

ဦးဦးဖျားဖျား as a priority

ဦးချတယ် to pay homage

အနန္တော အနန္တ ငါးပါး the five sacred entities (father, mother, sangha, dharma, Buddha)

အိမ်ဦးနတ် lord of the house, head of the household 

အမြင်ကျယ်တယ် to be open-minded 

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

If you pronounce Burmese words exactly the way they're written, you might not sound like a native speaker at all. That's because Burmese speakers tend to voice many suffixes, particles, auxiliary verbs, and compound words differently from how they're spelled.

For example, the affirmative verb suffix တယ် (tae) is always written the same way. But the verb "စားတယ် (to eat)" is usually pronounced စားဒယ် (sar dae). On the other hand, the verb "သောက်တယ် (to drink)" is pronounced သောက်တယ် (thauk tae). The phrase "သွားချင်တယ် (want to go)" is pronounced သွာဂျင်ဒယ် (thwar jin dae), but for "ချက်ချင်တယ် (want to cook)," it's ချက်ချင်ဒယ် (chet chin dae). 

The phenomenon -- called "tone shifting" by some, "consonant shifting" by others -- is not random. Most native speakers execute the shift in the same way. Yet, if you ask them to explain it, many may not be able to, because they learned to do it by example, not by rules.

In this special episode, Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teachers Zin Mar (Akkhaya) and Su (Burmese Chatter Talk) join me to untangle this Gordian knot. First, we give you examples in everyday speech where it commonly occurs. Next, we spell out the rules -- how the shift is done, what triggers it, and what cancels it. Finally, we offer some suggestions on how you, as a learner, might deal with this.

Want your Burmese to sound more natural? Then let us help you do the consonant shift. (Illustration generated in ChatGPT; music courtesy of Pixabay.)

Examples in the episode

Note that standard pronunciations reflecting consonant shifts are provided in parentheses. 

စားချင်တယ် (စားဂျင်ဒယ်) want to eat

သွားချင်တယ် (သွားဂျင်ဒယ်) want to go

သောက်ချင်တယ် (သောက်ချင်ဒယ်) want to drink

ချက်ချင်တယ် (ချက်ချင်ဒယ်) want to cook

စားဖူးတယ် (စားဘူးဒယ်) have eaten

သွားဖူးတယ် (သွားဘူးဒယ်) have gone

သောက်ဖူးတယ် (သောက်ဖူးဒယ်) have drunk

ချက်ဖူးတယ် (ချက်ဖူးဒယ်) have cooked

ကောင်းကောင်း (ကောင်းဂေါင်း) well, adverb

လေးလေးစားစား (လေးလေးစားဇား) respectfully, adverb

မြန်မြန်ဆန်ဆန် (မြန်မြန်ဆန်ဇန်) swiftly, adverb

တိတိကျကျ (တိဒိကျဂျ) precisely, adverb

ပေါ့ပေါ့ပါးပါး (ပေါ့ဘော့ပါးဘား) light-heartedly, adverb

Note that သှ represents the th sound as in English words like "they, though, them."

သိသိသာသာ (သိသှိသာသှာ) obviously, adverb

ကျောင်းသား (ကျောင်းသှား) student

စစ်သား (စစ်သား) soldier

မင်းသား (မင်းသှား) actor, prince

အရပ်သား (အရပ်သား) civilian 

ထမင်းချက် (ထမင်းဂျက်) chef

ကလေးထိန်း (ကလေးဒိန်း) babysitter

မင်္ဂလာဆောင် (မင်္ဂလာဇောင်) wedding

တစ်ကျပ် (ဒဂျပ်) one kyat

နှစ်ကျပ် (နှကျပ်) two kyats

သုံးကျပ် (သုံးဂျပ်) three kyats

လေးကျပ် (လေးဂျပ်) four kyats

ငါးကျပ် (ငါးဂျပ်) five kyats

ခြောက်ကျပ် (ခြောက်ကျပ်) six kyats

Glottal stop diacritics in Burmese

-က်, -စ်, -တ်, -ပ်

When tone shifting occurs

က, ခ (k, kh) consonants shift to ဂ (g)

စ, ဆ (s, hs) consonants shift to ဇ (z)

တ, ထ (t, ht) consonants shift to ဒ (d)

ပ, ဖ (p, ph) consonants shift to ဘ (b)

သ (th, like in think) consonant shifts to သှ (th, like in they)

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

Nervous? Excited? Happy? Sad? In this episode, my regular cohost Su, a Chaing Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I introduce you to a series of commonly used emotion-related words. You might notice many of them are derived from the root word စိတ် (the mind) or ဝမ်း (womb, belly), as if your emotions stem from your head or your belly. 

Even though ချမ်းသာတယ် and ဆင်းရဲတယ် mean "to be prosperous" and "to be impoverished," when attached to စိတ် (the mind), the resulting compounds become "to be content, to be delighted," and "to be miserable."

We dissect these expressions and many others and give you example sentences so that you can express how you feel, whether you're excited about meeting someone, nervous about giving a speech, or overwhelmed with work. After listening to the episode, perhaps you can tell us how you feel with a newly learned phrase. (Image generated with ChatGPT. Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay) 

Vocabulary

စိတ်လှုပ်ရှားတယ် to be excited, anxious, nervous
မိန့်ခွန်း speech
စိတ်မကောင်းဘူး to be sad
စိတ်ကောင်းတယ် to be good-natured, to be kind
ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် to be sad
ဝမ်းသာတယ် to be glad, happy
ကြားရတာ စိတ်မကောင်းဘူး I’m sorry to hear that.
ကြားရတာ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ် I’m glad to hear that.
ဝမ်းချုပ်နေတယ် to be constipated 
ဝမ်းလျှောနေတယ် to have diarrhea 
ပျော်တယ် to be happy
လခထုတ်တယ် to get paid
စိတ်ညစ်တယ် to be depressed
စိတ်ရှုပ်တယ် to be frustrated, annoyed, distracted, overwhelmed 
စိတ်ဆတ်တယ် to be easily offended, to be grumpy, to be impatient 
စိတ်ရှည်တယ် to be patient 
စိတ်တိုတယ် to be angry
စိတ်ဆိုးတယ် to be angry
စိတ်ဓာတ်ကျတယ် to be discouraged, to be depressed
စာမေးပွဲ ကျတယ် to fail an exam
စိတ်ဆင်းရဲတယ် to be sad, miserable
စိတ်ချမ်းသာတယ် to be cheerful, joyous, content
စိတ်နာတယ် to resent, to be embittered 
ကျေနပ်တယ် to be satisfied
မကျေနပ်ဘူး to be dissatisfied 

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

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.