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)
မြင်းလှည်းဆရာ 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)

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

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 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

Vocabulary
သမီးရည်းစား 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

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

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.)

Vocabulary

တိုင်းရင်းသူ 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

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