Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

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Hello! Greetings from the Burmese corner! I'm Kenneth Wong, a Burmese language instructor, author, and translator. This is a podcast series for intermediate and advanced Burmese language learners who want to learn Burmese by listening to natural conversation. Every two weeks or so, a guest speaker and I record and upload an episode on a specific topic. At the end of each episode, you'll find the keywords and phrases with their meanings. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/ 

  1. Bite-Size Burmese: Twitchy Eyebrow, Itchy Heart

    4D AGO

    Bite-Size Burmese: Twitchy Eyebrow, Itchy Heart

    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.

    6 min
  2. On Christmas Festivities

    12/14/2025

    On Christmas Festivities

    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.

    36 min
  3. On Diplomacy and Language

    11/28/2025

    On Diplomacy and Language

    Imagine this. You’re a diplomat, and in the middle of an embassy cocktail party, you suddenly switch language and speak to your counterpart from the host country in his or her mother tongue, with the kind of fluency that only comes from years of dedicated learning. With that display of earnest interest in the host country's culture, you’re bound to impress those in attendance. Who knows? The favorable impression you’ve made might even help you broker a peace deal or a trade agreement in the future.  My special guest for this episode is linguist, teacher, and translator Ye Min Tun, who has spent more than a decade teaching Burmese to the diplomats heading to Burma. For this episode, we discuss how language and culture knowledge facilitate diplomatic relationships. See if you can pick up a few Burmese words and phrases to help you sound more diplomatic. (Musical excerpts courtesy of Pixabay) Vocabulary အထူးဧည့်သည်တော် special guest နိုင်ငံခြားရေးဝန်ထမ်း foreign service officer, foreign office staff ... [အဖြစ်] တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်တယ် to perform duties [as], to serve [in the capacity of], to work [as] သံတမန် diplomat အမျိုးသားအကျိုးစီးပွား national & economic interest ကာကွယ်တယ် to protect မြှင့်တင်တယ် to promote မိတ်ဆွေနိုင်ငံ ally nation ရန်သူနိုင်ငံ enemy nation / hostile nation ထမင်းစားရေသောက်အဆင့် functional fluency (literally, fluency sufficient for eating and drinking) ကျွဲကူးရေပါ (figure of speech) when accomplishing the main objective, minor objectives are also accomplished (literally, the water follows when a buffalo swims) ဖိဖိစီးစီး (adverb) strenuously, intensely နိုင်ငံရေး politics စီးပွားရေး economics သိပ္ပံ science စိုက်ပျိုးရေး agriculture  ကောင်စစ်ဝန် counsellor / senior diplomat သင်္ကြန် Thingyan festival, Burmese new year festival စတုဒိသာ a general feast where anyone is welcome သံအမတ် ambassador  ဝင်စားတယ် to reincarnate  ကွမ်းသီးကြိုက်သူကိုတောင်ငူပို့ to send a betelnut lover to Taungoo (known for the best betelnut) ဖုတ်ပူမီးတိုက် (adverb) hurriedly, speedily ပုံရိပ် impression, image နေ့ကောင်းရက်သာ special days တရားဝင် (adverb) officially ဗမာဆန်တယ် to be Burmese centric ကိုးလိုးကန့်လန့် (adverb) awkwardly ယုန်ထင်ကြောင်ထင် (figure of speech) to cause confusion (literally, to mistake something for a rabbit or a cat) Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    29 min
  4. Bite-Size Burmese: Choking on Happiness, Flattened by Sadness

    11/14/2025

    Bite-Size Burmese: Choking on Happiness, Flattened by Sadness

    Many Burmese words describing how you feel—happy, sad, depressed, and so on—are constructed with the root words ဝမ်း for "belly" or "womb," and စိတ် for "the mind." The phrase ဝမ်းသာတယ် "to be glad, to be happy" literally translates to "the belly is pleasant, favorable." The opposite phrase ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် "to be sad or unhappy" is "the belly is deficient."  To feel an overwhelming happiness is ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ်, a picturesque phrase that means "to be choking on a ball of happiness." And to be overtaken by sadness or grief is ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် , an adverb describing someone grieving in a horizontal, face-up position.  In this episode, I introduce you to words and phrases to describe feelings and emotions—with melodramatic, hyperbolic options if you so desire.  (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay) Vocabulary ဝမ်းသာတယ် to be happy, gladဝမ်းနည်းတယ် to be unhappy, sadဝမ်းသာအားရ happily, with great happiness (adverb)ဝမ်းမြောက်ဝမ်းသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)ဝမ်းပန်းတသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)ဝမ်းသာအယ်လဲ happily, with great happiness (adverb)ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ် to be overwhelmed with happiness (lit. to be choking on a ball of happiness)ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် to be unhappy (lit. sad and flat)စိတ်ကောင်းတယ် to be kind, good-naturedစိတ်မကောင်းဘူး to be sadစိတ်ထားမကောင်းဘူး to be of spiteful, malicious temperament စိတ်ပုတ်တယ် to be spiteful, malicious (lit. to have a rotten mind)စိတ်ဆင်းရဲတယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is impoverished)စိတ်ညစ်တယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is tainted, dirty)စိတ်ချမ်းသာတယ် to be content, satisfied, delighted (lit. the mind is luxurious)  Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    8 min
  5. On Burmese Poetry

    09/20/2025

    On Burmese Poetry

    My first introduction to Burmese poetry was through the children’s nursery rhymes and classic verses scattered throughout the government-prescribed school textbooks. These were usually in the traditional four-syllable rhyme scheme, called လေးလုံးစပ် (lay lone zat), often depicting the charm of pastoral life or the longing of royal courtiers. Later, I’d come across rhymeless or freeform modern poetry, in the front pages of popular lifestyle and literary magazines.  In this episode, my guest Zue, the founder of Akkhaya Burmese Language Institute, and I recite and discuss our favorite poems, like ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (the Guest) by တင်မိုး (Tin Moe ), a succinct three-line poem open to many different interpretations, and သင်သေသွားသော် (When You’re Gone) by ဇော်ဂျီ (Zawgyi), a poem about the legacy we leave behind. We also highlight modern poetry’s symbolism, its use of everyday language and more relatable subjects, like conversations in teashops and housewives scouring the market for affordable fish or poultry, and the English words that make cameo appearances in the works of တာရာမင်းဝေ (Taya Min Wai) and မောင်ချောနွယ် (Maung Chaw Nwe).  Vocabulary တစေ့တစောင်း at a glance  မီးတောက်ရစ်သမ် (တာရာမင်းဝေ) The Rhythm of the Flame by Taya Min Wai ပြဋ္ဌာန်းတယ် to prescribe [a piece of writing] in a textbook ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (တင်မိုး) "The Guest" by Tin Moe ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ်  life-portrayal [literary genre] ကံကုန်တယ် to pass away ထင်ဟပ်တယ် to reflect, to mirror စာပေဟောပြောပွဲ literary talk သင်သေသွားသော် (ဇော်ဂျီ) "When You Are Gone" by Zaw Gyi ဂန္ထဝင် classic အဝဝအစစ everything, all-encompassing ညှပ်ပြီးသုံးတယ် to interject [English words]  ထောင့်ချိုးများ (မောင်ချောနွယ်) "Corners" by Maung Chaw Nwe သင်္ကေတ symbols  ဥရောပ Europe မှီငြမ်းတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by  အငွေ့အသက် signs, remnants, characteristics  ပုံရိပ် image ရူး (မြကျေး) "Crazy" by Mya Kyay စီးမျောပြီးဖတ်တယ် to read with deep focus, to be swept up in reading တစ်ကိုယ်တော် solo ဖန်တီးမှု creation ခေါင်းပါးတယ် / ချို့တဲ့တယ် to diminish, to decline Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    49 min
  6. On Animal Farm, Part II

    09/05/2025

    On Animal Farm, Part II

    Orwell’s masterpiece, Animal Farm, was inspired by the power struggle in post-revolution Russia, where a one-party authoritarian rule slowly began to take shape under the guise of Communism. The book outlines the playbook of many dictators, past and present, from the way they use propaganda and false nationalism to sway mass opinion to the way they accuse dissidents and critics of treason to silence them. In Part II on Animal Farm, my cohost Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss which historical figures the main characters are supposed to represent, and how the plot foreshadows the rise of tyrants in Burma and other parts of the world. Tune in to hear about how the pigs and dogs hijacked a well-meaning revolution and turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. (Music courtesy of Pixabay) Vocabulary ပီပြင်တယ် to be vivid ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda  အားကောင်းမောင်းသန် full of strength  ရုပ်လုံးကြွတယ် to be three dimensional သာတူညီမျှ to be equal  မူဝါဒ policy မျက်မှောက်ခေတ် contemporary era, the present era အာဏာရတယ် to gain power အရင်းရှင်နိုင်ငံ Capitalist country အဓိဋ္ဌာန် pledge သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze စည်းစိမ်ယစ်မူးတယ် to be addicted to privilege  သရော်တယ် to mock, to satirize  မျက်ဝါးထင်ထင် to be able to visualize, to see clearly နိုင်ငံပိုင်ရုပ်သံလှိုင်း national airwave, government broadcast  အာဇာနည် martyr  မဏ္ဍပ်ထိုးတယ် to pitch a pavilion or tent  မကွဲပြားဘူး to be indistinguishable  ဖြည့်ဆွက်တယ် to fill a gap, to add, to augment  Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    34 min
  7. On Animal Farm, Part I

    08/12/2025

    On Animal Farm, Part I

    Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm shows how a revolution could lead to the rise of opportunists, power struggles, infighting, fake news, and ultimately a new breed of authoritarians. Even though Orwell was looking at the rise of Joseph Stalin in post-revolution Russia as the model for his animal farm, we would later see the same sequence of events in Communist Cuba, Chairman Mao’s China, and other places. In this episode, my cohost Su and I discuss Thakin Ba Thaung’s translation of Animal Farm, titled ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး (The Four-Legged Revolution), and how some of the chapters are chillingly similar to what has happened, and is still happening in present day Burma, our homeland. Along the way, we give you the Burmese words and phrases you can use to talk about dictator pigs and dogs in the book, and in the world we live in. (Music courtesy of Pixabay) Vocabulary ဂန္ထဝင် classic သခင်ဘသောင်း Thakhin Ba Thaung, a Burmese translator of Animal Farm ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး The Four-Legged Revolution, name of a Burmese translation of Animal Farm လေရူးသုန်သုန် Wild Gust Blowing, Burmese name for a translation of Gone with the Wind ဘာသာပြန်တယ် to translate လက်ထောက်ပုလိပ်အုပ် assistant superintendent of police မူရင်း original အနှစ်သာရ essence အဓိကဖြစ်ရပ် main events အာဏာရှင်စနစ် authoritarianism  ဖိနှိပ်တယ် to oppress အာဏာယစ်မူးတယ် to be drunk with power အာခံတယ် to defy သုတ်သင်တယ် to execute, to eliminate  လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate by class စည်းရုံးတယ် to persuade others to join ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characters မျက်မှောက်ကာလ current age ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလ contemporary era စင်ပြိုင်ပါတီ rival party ဗန္ဓုလ Bandoola, name of a historical general, also the Burmese name for Napoleon in the Burmese version of Animal Farm  သံကြောင် squeaky voice, name of the character Squealer in a Burmese translation of Animal Farm အသံပြာပြာနဲ့ with scratchy, raspy voice ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda  ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to embody လူမှုကွန်ရက် social media  ဝါဒမှိုင်းမိတယ် to be swept up in propaganda  ခို pigeon သာတူညီမျှ to be equal ဘုရားမြှောက်တယ် to turn someone into a God ပဋိညာဉ် pledge, oath, agreement သားရေကွင်းဥပဒေ rubber band regulation, meaning it bends to serve a group ကျုံ့တယ် to shrink ဆန့်တယ် to expand  အခွင့်ထူးခံလူတန်းစား the privileged class ဇာတ်ကွက် dramatic scene သစ္စာဖေါက် traitor  သွေးညှီနံ့ the stench of blood လက်နက်ကိုင် armed, weapon carrying Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    36 min
  8. Bite-Size Burmese: Let's Talk About "You" and "I"

    07/16/2025

    Bite-Size Burmese: Let's Talk About "You" and "I"

    In English, when you’re talking about yourself, your choice of pronoun is a solitary “I.” Not so in Burmese. There’s a variety of ways to refer to yourself, based on your gender, profession, age, and your relationship towards the other person. And the same is true of ways to refer to the person you’re speaking to. You can refer to him or her by name, a kinship term, or an honorific associated with his or her profession or field of expertise. In fact, there are situations where using what is technically the polite way to say "you" – ခင်ဗျား (khamyar) or ရှင် (shin)—could be considered rude. How many ways can you say "You" and "I" in Burmese? Too many, as you'll discover in this episode. (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay) Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    11 min
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About

Hello! Greetings from the Burmese corner! I'm Kenneth Wong, a Burmese language instructor, author, and translator. This is a podcast series for intermediate and advanced Burmese language learners who want to learn Burmese by listening to natural conversation. Every two weeks or so, a guest speaker and I record and upload an episode on a specific topic. At the end of each episode, you'll find the keywords and phrases with their meanings. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/ 

Information

  • Creator
    kennethwongsf
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Learn Burmese from Natural Talk
  • Show Website
    Learn Burmese from Natural Talk