Learn Burmese from Natural Talk kennethwongsf

Humane, inhumane, humanitarian, humanize, humanist, subhuman—there are examples of English words derived from the root word Human . In Burmese, if you want to publicize something, you have to do it so that "men would know and monks would hear (လူသိရှင်ကြား)." If you have lost your influence, you'd become someone who "men don't respect and dogs don't fear" (လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့်).   In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to some colorful Burmese praises, insults, and expressions revolving around the word လူ (lu) for Human. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary
လူဆန်တယ် to act in a human-like manner, to be humane
လူမဆန်ဘူး to act in ways unbecoming a human, to be inhumane
လူတောမတိုးဘူး to be socially awkward, to be unable to fit in
လူရာမဝင်ဘူး to fail to measure up, to be considered inferior 
လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့် men don't respect (him), dogs don't fear (him), to be subjected to disdain 
လူသိရှင်ကြား men would know and monks would hear, to publicize far and wide, to officially announce
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate based on social class
လူ့ဘောင် human society

To talk about modern-day travel means to talk about air travel primarily. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I teach you all the terms and phrases associated with airport, from custom officers and immigration officers to flight attendants and x-ray machines. We can’t help you avoid excess luggage fees or make your inflight meal taste better, but we’ll give you the words you need to talk about them. Buckle up for a short 30-min flight with us. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

လေဆိပ် airport
ရန်ကုန်အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာလေဆိပ် Yangon International Airport
... ကို အစွဲပြုပြီးခေါ်တယ် … to be named after (something)
ပြည်တွင်း domestic
ပြည်ပ abroad
အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ international 
လုံခြုံရေးအရာရှိ security personnel 
အိတ်စစ်တယ် to examine the luggage
ဓာတ်မှန်ရိုက်တယ် to x-ray 
လေကြောင်း airline 
ဒဏ်ငွေရိုက်တယ် to be charged a penalty (for excess luggage, for example)
လေယာဉ် airplane
လေယာဉ်ထွက်တယ် the airplane departs / takes off
လေယာဉ်ဆိုက်တယ် the airplane arrives / lands
စကားလုံးပွားတယ် to spawn a new word
အကောက်ခွန်အရာရှိ custom officers
လူဝင်မှုကြီးကြပ်ရေး immigration           
လဝက Burmese acronym for immigration 
နိုင်ငံကူးလက်မှတ် passport
အငှားကား taxi
ငွေလဲကောင်တာ money exchange counter
လေယာဉ်မယ် female flight attendant 
လေယာဉ်မောင် male flight attendant 
လေယာဉ်မှူး pilot 
ကပ်စေးနည်းတယ် to be penny pinching, to be stingy 
ခရီးစဉ် flight, itinerary 
တိုက်ရိုက်သွားတယ် to fly direct 
လေယာဉ်ပြောင်းတယ် to transfer plane
ခရီးသည် passenger, traveler 
… နဲ့ သိပ်မရင်းနှီးဘူး not that familiar with 
ယောင်ပြီး (adverb) absent-mindedly, unconsciously 
ခြေဟန်လက်ဟန်နဲ့ with body language, with hand gestures 
လေယာဉ်ပြေးလမ်း runway 

If you can butter up someone into doing something in English, you can also “စကားချိုသွေး” or "sweettalk" someone in Burmese. In English, you might describe someone as “a foul mouth”; in Burmese it takes the verb form: “ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ်” or his or her “mouth is foul." If you need to fish for information, you might “စကားချူ” or “siphon words." Some people might siphon more than words. They'll give you a sob story to "မျက်ရည်ချူ" or "siphon tears." But what does it mean to “စကားပလ္လင်ခံ” or “use a throne to raise your words”? That is what you do when you start off with a prelude to get to something else that really matters. For example, you start off talking about the bad economy, your low wages, and eventually you ask to borrow money. In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to a list of Burmese expressions that describe the manners and strategies of speaking. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
စကားများတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be of excessive words)
စကားနည်းတယ် to be of few words, to speak very little
စကားကြမ်းတယ် / အပြောကြမ်းတယ် / ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ် to be a foul mouth, to speak harshly or rudely
စကားချိုတယ် / အပြောချိုတယ် to be a persuasive, eloquent, or gentle speaker
စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk
စကားပြေ prose
စကားပြန် interpreter 
စကားချူတယ် to fish for information (lit. to siphon words)
မျက်ရည်ချူတယ် to give a sob story (lit. to siphon tears)
စကားလွန်သွားပြီ / အပြောလွန်သွားပြီ to over-speak, to speak too much, to overpromise 
စကားမှားသွားပြီ / အပြောမှားသွားပြီ to misspeak
စကားလွဲသွားပြီ / အပြောလွဲသွားပြီ to misspeak 
စကားပလ္လင်ခံတယ် / စကားချီတယ် / စကားပျိုးတယ် to use a prelude or preliminary words to get to something else
စကားကောင်းနေတယ် to be having a lively conversation 
စကားဖြတ်တယ် to cut off or terminate a conversation
 

You have probably heard the Burmese phrase မင်္ဂလာပါ Mingalah bah--typically used by hotel receptions and restaurant staff to greet you. Derived from Pali, the word roughly means to be auspicious, to have good omen, and to have good tidings -- a general word of positivity. But do you know that you can also spawn other compound words with it, like an auspicious new year, a blessed birthday, an auspicious donation ceremony, and so on? Also, if you must count your blessings, what is the classifier required?
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss how you can use the word မင်္ဂလာ Mingalah as more than a simple "Hello!" Talking about getting married, becoming a novice, or piercing your ears? You’ll need this word for just about every special occasion.

Vocabulary

 မင်္ဂလာ (noun) blessings, good tidings, auspiciousness
နှစ်သစ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious new year
ရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ auspicious novitiation 
ဖန်တီးတယ် to create
မွေးနေ့မင်္ဂလာ auspicious birthday
ကင်ပွန်းတတ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious child-naming ceremony
နားသမင်္ဂလာ / နားထွင်းမင်္ဂလာ auspicious ear-piercing ceremony
မင်္ဂလာဆောင်တယ် to get married
မင်္ဂလာဆောင် wedding
မင်္ဂလာစကားပြောတယ် to speak auspicious words, to gave a wedding speech
စုလျားရစ်ပတ်တယ် to get married (literally, to bind with a towel)
ဘိသိတ်ဆရာ traditional orator, storyteller, speaker
မင်္ဂလာဦး eve of wedding
မင်္ဂလာဆွမ်း alms donated to monks to mark a wedding
မင်္ဂလာရှိတယ် to be auspicious 
မင်္ဂလာမရှိဘူး to be inauspicious 
အမင်္ဂလာ that which is inauspicious, that which invites bad luck
အကုသိုလ် bad deeds
နိမိတ်မကောင်းဘူး the omen is no good
မင်္ဂလာတစ်ပါး one type of blessing (note the use of ပါး as the counting word)
တံမြတ်စည်း broom
လာဘ်ပိတ်တယ် to invite bad luck

In Burmese, the face is a great way to express your helplessness, pride, shame, or outrage--figuratively. When you’re feeling awkward, you might say, your face is burning (မျက်နှာပူတယ်). When you’re feeling insecure, your face is small (မျက်နှာငယ်တယ်). And when you favor someone, you give them face time (မျက်နှာပေးတယ် or မျက်နှာသာပေးတယ်). By the same token, if you get special treatment, people begrudge you for getting face time (မျက်နှာရတယ် or မျက်နှာသာရတယ်). Why say, “Don’t dishonor me” when you can say “Don’t rub soot on my face” (မျက်နှာကို အိုးမည်းမသုတ်နဲ့)? For more, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese about face-related expressions.
(Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary

အခြေခံတယ် to be based on
မျက်နှာပူတယ် to feel awkward, to feel embarrassed 
မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to feel small, insecure
အားငယ်တယ် to feel insecure, helpless 
အားကိုးတယ် to rely on, to depend on 
အကြွေး debt
မျက်နှာပေးတယ် / မျက်နှာသာပေးတယ် to give favorable treatment 
မျက်နှာရတယ် / မျက်နှာသာရတယ် to receive favorable treatment 
မျက်နှာပျက်တယ် to lose prestige 
မျက်နှာကို အိုးမည်းနဲ့သုတ်တယ် to bring shame, dishonor on someone
လှောင်ပြောင်တယ် to mock, to make fun of someone
စော်ကားတယ် to insult someone
မျက်နှာပြောင်တိုက်တယ် to act with a bold face 

What is your favorite bedtime story? Cinderella? Snow White? For Burmese kids, most likely it’s a story associated with a proverb, like Maung Po and the Tiger, or one of the jatakas, a retelling of the Buddha’s past lives that brought him to enlightenment. In this episode, I speak to A Zun Mo, the coauthor of Burmese Stories for Language Learners, published by Tuttle. Want to know why people pray for the angle May Khalar when they’re in a pinch? Want to know why the Burmese say, Maung Po and the Tiger should go back to the way they were? A Zun Mo is here to explain these. (Photo licensed from Shutterstock: Girl reading with light inside a pagoda in Bagan, by Nuttavut Sammongkol; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

ပုံပြင် fable, story
ဘုရားလောင်း Boddhisatva, someone destined to become buddha
မဟာဇနက္က / မဟာဇနက Maha Zanaka, a prince in a Buddhist parable
ရွှေသွေး Shwe Thway, a weekly journal for children 
ဇာတ်တော်ကြီးဆယ်ဘွဲ့ Ten Jatakas based on Buddha’s past lives
ခြုံငုံပြီး to sum up, to speak to summary
နတ်သမီး goddess, female deity
သမုဒ္ဒရာ ocean
ပန်းတိုင် goal
ဇွဲ / လုံ့လ determination, perseverance 
ကုန်သည် merchant
စာသင်သားတွေအတွက် ရည်ရွယ်တယ် intended for language learners
မဏိမေခလာကို တမ်းတတယ် to long for the goddess May Khala 
ပိုနေမြဲ ကျားနေမြဲ Maung Po and the tiger are back to where they were, a proverb
စကားပုံ proverb
ထောင်ချောက် trap
ကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful 
ရုပ်ပြစာအုပ် graphics novel, illustrated book
ကျန်စစ်သား Kyansittha, the name of a king from the Bagan Dynasty 
ရာဇကုမာရ် Rajakumar, the name of a prince from the Bagan Dynasty 
ခိုင်ခိုင်မာမာ solidly, firmly
ဘာသာဗေဒ linguistics 
ကောက်ကာငင်ကာ suddenly, spontaneously 
ကျွတ်သွားတယ် to have found salvation (used when discussing ghosts and spirits)