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.