Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

kennethwongsf
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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. On Burmese Poetry

    9월 20일

    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.

    49분
  2. On Animal Farm, Part II

    9월 5일

    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.

    34분
  3. On Animal Farm, Part I

    8월 12일

    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.

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

    7월 16일

    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.

    11분
  5. On Dowry

    7월 2일

    On Dowry

    As singles with no marital experience, my cohost Su and I are under-qualified to discuss this episode's theme: dowry. In Burmese context, it usually means what the groom and his family offer to the bride’s parents as gifts when asking for the girl’s hand in marriage. The so-called gifts could be cows for ploughing, a plot of farm to live on, a new bed, furniture for the newly weds' room, a luxury car, a home, or even cold, hard cash. When the wealth and social status of the two families involved are unequal, dowry could become a source of headache and heartache, a serious roadblock to the couple’s happy union. In modern times, the practice is not as popular as it was in the past, but it still exists in some form. In this episode, Su and I discuss a classic poem by Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing that refers to the practice, and share out own personal thoughts on it.  Vocabulary ငါတွေ့မဟုတ်၊ စာတွေ့ not from personal experience but from books ခန်းဝင်ပစ္စည်း gifts to help the newly weds establish a home / dowry လက်ဖွဲ့ gifts for the newly weds / dowry ပရိဘောဂ furniture ကြောင်အိမ် cabinet for temporarily storing food, usually not refrigerated တင်တောင်းတယ် to offer something as dowry to ask for permission to marry someone (in Burmese culture, traditionally, what the groom offers to the bride’s family) ပမာဏ amount လုပ်ကျွေးတယ် to feed and take care of someone နွားတစ်ရှဉ်း a pair of cows စပါးကျီ a plot of farm စရိတ် expense ကန်တော့ပွဲ ceremonial offering ကြွက်မြီး literally, rat tail; figuratively, it refers to the stem of a coconut မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to lose face လက်ဖွဲ့ခြင်းသည်းခံပါ request to come without gift (a phrase that appears on some wedding invitations) ဝါတွင်း during the Buddhist Lent  ကူငွေ literally monetary help; donation at funeral, given to the surviving family  လက်သံပြောင်တယ် (1) skilled at musical performance; (2) to have a very powerful slap, strike, or punch ချိုလိမ် pacifier ဘိုးဘွားရိပ်သာ home for the elderlies ပျားရည်ဆမ်းခရီး honeymoon    Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    35분
  6. On Burmese Slangs, from Being Broke to Having a Crush

    5월 15일

    On Burmese Slangs, from Being Broke to Having a Crush

    If you’re going out to lunch with a Burmese friend who says he’s running low on water (ရေခမ်းနေတယ်), be prepared to pay for the meal. That means he’s broke. On the other hand, if you’re running low on water yourself, but he is overflowing, so to speak (ရေလျှံနေတယ်), you can probably ask him to pay for the meal.  In English, if you need some type of permit or approval from a government office or an institution, you may need to grease the wheel. In Burmese, you may need to offer the clerk or the boss some tea money (လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး) to get your application on the top of the pile. And if you’re single, dressed in your best outfit, sitting in a conspicuous spot in a café, doing something cute or sexy to attract the attention of romantic prospects, you are displaying your goods on a tray (ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ်).  In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the colorful phrases and slangs the young people are using, and what they actually mean. Join us as we shoot the breeze, as you might say in English, or bake potatoes (အာလူးဖုတ်), as we might say in Burmese. (Illustration AI generated, Microsoft Designer; music courtesy of Pixabay) Vocabulary ဗန်းစကား slang နယ်ပယ် territory, sector, segment အနုပညာလောက the creative sector အနုပညာလောကသား members of the creative sector ရေလောင်းပေးတယ် to bribe (lit. to pour water) စကားဝှက် code word လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး bribe (lit. tea money) လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးထိုးတယ် / ပေးတယ် to offer bribe (lit. to offer tea money) မိုက်တယ် to be stylist / hip ဆယ်လဖီဆွဲတယ် to take selfie ဓာတ်ဖမ်းတယ် to take photo (lit. to capture electricity) ရေလျှံတယ် to have money to spend (lit. to be overflowing)  ရေခမ်းတယ် / ရေပြတ်တယ် to be broke (lit. to be low on water, to run out of water) ဘိုင်ပြတ်တယ် to be broke ကြွေတယ် to develop a crush Crush တယ် to develop a crush ကြူးတယ် to show off, to publicize someone’s virtues excessively  ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ် to attract attention, especially in the romantic sense (lit. to display goods on a tray)  အိုဗာတင်းတယ် to overact, to be melodramatic (from close pronunciation of “over” from “Ovaltine”)  Drama ခင်းတယ် to cause drama အာလူးဖုတ်တယ် to be talkative (lit. to bake potatoes)  လေပေါတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be windy) ရွှီးတယ် to lie, to make up stuff, to exaggerate ပေါက်ပေါက်ဖေါက်တယ် to be talkative, to pester, to scold incessantly (lit. to pop popcorn)  ပွားတယ် to pester, to scold incessantly စိတ်လေတယ် to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down ဘူတယ် to be at a loss, to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down ဟွန်ဒီ unofficial money transferring agent လန်းတယ် to be stylish, hip (lit. to be fresh) အထာကျတယ် to be impressive, attractive ဘိုးတော် / ဘွားတော် dad, mom ချောင်တယ် / ပေါက်တယ် to lose one’s mind, to be crazy ပလပ်ကျွပ်တယ် to lose one’s mind (lit. to be unplugged)  ယောက်ဖ / သားကြီး good friend (lit. son, brother-in-law) Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    35분
  7. Bite-Size Burmese: Drink a Cigarette, Strike a Photo, Dream a Dream

    4월 23일

    Bite-Size Burmese: Drink a Cigarette, Strike a Photo, Dream a Dream

    Would you ever drink a cigarette or a cigar? In English, you wouldn't, but in Burmese, you must. To describe smoking a cigarette or cigar, you must use the verb သောက်တယ် , the same verb for drinking coffee, tea, or Coca Cola. It may seem counterintuitive to use the verb to describe consuming liquid for smoking, but that's the correct form: ဆေးလိပ်သောက်တယ် , quite literally, to drink a cigarette.  When talking about having a dream, you cannot just use the single-word verb "dream," as you do in English. Instead, you have to use a noun-verb combo -- အိပ်မက်မက်တယ် meaning, to dream a dream -- the way Ella Fitzgerald did, when she sang "Dream a Little Dream Of Me." And the standard way to say "take a photo" is ဓာတ်ပုံရိုက်တယ် , with the verb that means "to strike" or "to hit," as if you're trying to defeat your photo with a punch or a blow in a boxing match. In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to the standard choices of verbs in Burmese that might perplex or confound you if you're a foreigner. (Photo of old lady smoking in Bagan by Oneinchpunch, licensed from Shutterstock; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.) Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    6분
  8. On Thingyan and Thaan Jaat

    4월 16일

    On Thingyan and Thaan Jaat

    Mid-April is when Burmese people celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of another one with a water festival, similar to the people of Thailand and several other neighboring countries. In modern times, young people driving around in open pickup trucks and shooting water through high-pressure tubes and cannons is the standard practice, but in the old days, people dipped laurel leaves into silver goblets of fragrant water and dabbed them on one another-- a practice that seems quaint now.  Also, in Thingyan in bygone times, street performers and dance troupes would come up with call and response routines, called သံချပ် Than Jaat, that celebrate life, welcome the new year, and also take jabs at the authorities’ hypocritical behaviors and corruption.  In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my regular guest Su, a Burmese teacher based on Chiang Mai, and I discuss these and more.  Vocabulary သင်္ကြန် Burmese water festival  သင်္ကြန်ကျပြီ Thingyan has arrived ပြက္ခဒိန် calendar  ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate  နံ့သာရည် aromatic water ရင်ဖုံး / ရင်စေ့ bosom-covered / bosom-buttoned blouse style  အကြိုနေ့ the pre-arrival, the precursor (to a festival) အကျနေ့ the day of arrival (of a festival) အကြတ်နေ့ the in-between day အတက်နေ့ the day preceding the end (of a festival) နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ first day of new year ရေသေနတ် / ရေပြွန် water gun / water canon  ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to perform good deeds မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion  အတိုင်အဖေါက် call and response အတိုင်အဖေါက်ညီတယ် the call and response are in sync သံချပ် a call-and-response routine ပူဆာတယ် to pester, to repeatedly request  အာဏာသိမ်းတယ် to stage a coup သီလယူတယ် to pledge to observe certain precepts  အတာအိုး a well-wishing pot with flowers and leaves ၇ရက်သားသမီးအတွက် for those born on each of the weekday ခွက်စောင်းခုတ်တယ် to slap a cup of water down with force ဥပုသ်သည် those observing precepts ညိုမြမလုပ်နဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested  မူမနေနဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested  ဈေးကိုင်တယ် to be holding out  မုန့်လုံးရေပေါ် sweet rice balls, a specialty of Thingyan Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

    33분
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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/ 

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