What do you do when you’re in a pinch, out of options, and desperate? In English, you might make a Last-Ditch Effort. If you’re a football player, you might throw a Hail Mary Pass. But in Burmese, you might do what the mythical bird Garuda did: cook salt.  To understand the Burmese expression အကြံကုန် ဂဠုန်ဆားချက် (when the Garuda runs out of ideas, it cooks salt), you need to know the legend about the Garuda (ဂဠုန်) and its mortal enemy, the serpent Naga (နဂါး). For more on the legend, and on ways to use this expression, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)Vocabularyအကြံ ideaကုန်ပြီ to be depleted, to run out, to exhaust ဂဠုန် Garuda, a mythical birdနဂါး Naga, a mythical serpentကမ္ဘာရန်သူ mortal enemyမတတ်နိုင်လို့  because it cannot be helpedသေသေကြေကြေ live or dieမထူးဘူး makes no differenceကတုတ်ကျင်း ditchသမ္မာကျမ်းစာ Bible  မယ်တော်မယ်ရီ Mother Maryယျေဘုယျအားဖြင့် generally speakingလူယောင်ဖန်ဆင်း to transform into a human, to take the human shapeဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fableအလွတ်ကျက် to learn by heart

The phrase လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး literally translates to "cost of tea" or "tea money," but in workplaces, especially in government offices known for corruption, it takes on a different meaning. လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် or "to ask for tea money," is "to demand a bribe"; and လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးပေးတယ် or "to offer tea money" is "to offer a bribe." Just like in English, the Burmese phrases for "applying for a job / posting a job vacancy / getting a job" all revolve around the noun အလုပ် or "job." But do you know the right verbs to express them? In this episode dedicated to work-related vocabulary, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, or Burmese language academy of Yangon, and I talk about getting our first office jobs, and introduce you to words and phrases related to office life. Let’s go to work!(Illustration generated in AI with Microsoft Designer; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)Vocabularyအလုပ်လျှောက်တယ် to apply for a jobအလုပ်ခေါ်တယ် to announce a vacant positionအလုပ်ရတယ် to get a jobဆောက်လုပ်ရေးပစ္စည်း construction materialsအရောင်းအဝယ်မြှင့်တင်ရေး marketingအင်တာဗျူး interviewအင်တာဗျူးထိုင်တယ် / အင်တာဗျူးသွားတယ် to go to an interview, to be interviewedလုပ်ရည်ကိုင်ရည် ability, performanceကိုယ်ရည်ကိုယ်သွေး capacity, aptitude အချိန်ပြည့်ဝန်ထမ်း full-time employeeအစမ်းခန့်ကာလ trial periodဝန်ထမ်း / စာရေး staff, clerkကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး supervisor, managerလက်ထောက်ကြီးကြပ်ရေးမှူး assistant supervisor, managerအစည်းအဝေး meetingအစည်းအဝေးခေါ်တယ် / အစည်းအဝေးလုပ်တယ် to hold a meetingအစည်းအဝေးတက်တယ် to attend a meetingဆွေးနွေးတယ် to discussသုံးသပ်တယ် to analyzeချီးကျူးစကားပြောတယ် to praiseလုပ်ငန်းခွင် workplaceတာဝန်ကျေတယ် to fulfil one’s dutyရာထူးတိုးပေးတယ် to promote someoneလခတိုးပေးတယ် / လစာတိုးပေးတယ် to give someone a raiseအပိုဆုကြေး reward moneyဘောက်ဆူး bonusရုံးတက်ချိန် start of office hoursရုံးဆင်းချိန် end of office hoursဝန်ဆောင်မှုပေးတယ် to offer servicesစာရင်းပိတ်တယ် to close daily transaction records (in a bank)နေ့လယ်စာစားချိန် lunch timeနားချိန် / အားလပ်ချိန် break time ညောင်းညာလာပြီ to get tiredအလုပ်ရှင် employerသူဌေး boss, ownerလက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး / လာဘ် tea money / bribeလာဘ်ပေးတယ် / လာဘ်ထိုးတယ် to offer a bribeလက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် / လာဘ်တောင်းတယ် to demand a bribe

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.) Vocabularyလူဆန်တယ် to act in a human-like manner, to be humaneလူမဆန်ဘူး to act in ways unbecoming a human, to be inhumaneလူတောမတိုးဘူး to be socially awkward, to be unable to fit inလူရာမဝင်ဘူး 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 announceလူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate based on social classလူ့ဘောင် 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)Vocabularyလေဆိပ် airportရန်ကုန်အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာလေဆိပ် Yangon International Airport... ကို အစွဲပြုပြီးခေါ်တယ် … to be named after (something)ပြည်တွင်း domesticပြည်ပ abroadအပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ international လုံခြုံရေးအရာရှိ security personnel အိတ်စစ်တယ် to examine the luggageဓာတ်မှန်ရိုက်တယ် to x-ray လေကြောင်း airline ဒဏ်ငွေရိုက်တယ် to be charged a penalty (for excess luggage, for example)လေယာဉ် airplaneလေယာဉ်ထွက်တယ် the airplane departs / takes offလေယာဉ်ဆိုက်တယ် the airplane arrives / landsစကားလုံးပွားတယ် to spawn a new wordအကောက်ခွန်အရာရှိ custom officersလူဝင်မှုကြီးကြပ်ရေး immigration           လဝက Burmese acronym for immigration နိုင်ငံကူးလက်မှတ် passportအငှားကား taxiငွေလဲကောင်တာ money exchange counterလေယာဉ်မယ် 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 planeခရီးသည် 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 littleစကားကြမ်းတယ် / အပြောကြမ်းတယ် / ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ် to be a foul mouth, to speak harshly or rudelyစကားချိုတယ် / အပြောချိုတယ် to be a persuasive, eloquent, or gentle speakerစကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talkစကားပြေ proseစကားပြန် 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 misspeakစကားလွဲသွားပြီ / အပြောလွဲသွားပြီ to misspeak စကားပလ္လင်ခံတယ် / စကားချီတယ် / စကားပျိုးတယ် to use a prelude or preliminary words to get to something elseစကားကောင်းနေတယ် 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, auspiciousnessနှစ်သစ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious new yearရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ auspicious novitiation ဖန်တီးတယ် to createမွေးနေ့မင်္ဂလာ auspicious birthdayကင်ပွန်းတတ်မင်္ဂလာ auspicious child-naming ceremonyနားသမင်္ဂလာ / နားထွင်းမင်္ဂလာ auspicious ear-piercing ceremonyမင်္ဂလာဆောင်တယ် to get marriedမင်္ဂလာဆောင် weddingမင်္ဂလာစကားပြောတယ် to speak auspicious words, to gave a wedding speechစုလျားရစ်ပတ်တယ် to get married (literally, to bind with a towel)ဘိသိတ်ဆရာ traditional orator, storyteller, speakerမင်္ဂလာဦး eve of weddingမင်္ဂလာဆွမ်း alms donated to monks to mark a weddingမင်္ဂလာရှိတယ် to be auspicious မင်္ဂလာမရှိဘူး to be inauspicious အမင်္ဂလာ that which is inauspicious, that which invites bad luckအကုသိုလ် bad deedsနိမိတ်မကောင်းဘူး the omen is no goodမင်္ဂလာတစ်ပါး one type of blessing (note the use of ပါး as the counting word)တံမြတ်စည်း broomလာဘ်ပိတ်တယ် 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.) Vocabularyအခြေခံတယ် to be based onမျက်နှာပူတယ် to feel awkward, to feel embarrassed မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to feel small, insecureအားငယ်တယ် to feel insecure, helpless အားကိုးတယ် to rely on, to depend on အကြွေး debtမျက်နှာပေးတယ် / မျက်နှာသာပေးတယ် to give favorable treatment မျက်နှာရတယ် / မျက်နှာသာရတယ် to receive favorable treatment မျက်နှာပျက်တယ် to lose prestige မျက်နှာကို အိုးမည်းနဲ့သုတ်တယ် to bring shame, dishonor on someoneလှောင်ပြောင်တယ် to mock, to make fun of someoneစော်ကားတယ် to insult someoneမျက်နှာပြောင်တိုက်တယ် 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)Vocabularyပုံပြင် fable, storyဘုရားလောင်း Boddhisatva, someone destined to become buddhaမဟာဇနက္က / မဟာဇနက Maha Zanaka, a prince in a Buddhist parableရွှေသွေး Shwe Thway, a weekly journal for children ဇာတ်တော်ကြီးဆယ်ဘွဲ့ Ten Jatakas based on Buddha’s past livesခြုံငုံပြီး to sum up, to speak to summaryနတ်သမီး goddess, female deityသမုဒ္ဒရာ oceanပန်းတိုင် goalဇွဲ / လုံ့လ determination, perseverance ကုန်သည် merchantစာသင်သားတွေအတွက် ရည်ရွယ်တယ် intended for language learnersမဏိမေခလာကို တမ်းတတယ် to long for the goddess May Khala ပိုနေမြဲ ကျားနေမြဲ Maung Po and the tiger are back to where they were, a proverbစကားပုံ proverbထောင်ချောက် trapကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful ရုပ်ပြစာအုပ် graphics novel, illustrated bookကျန်စစ်သား Kyansittha, the name of a king from the Bagan Dynasty ရာဇကုမာရ် Rajakumar, the name of a prince from the Bagan Dynasty ခိုင်ခိုင်မာမာ solidly, firmlyဘာသာဗေဒ linguistics ကောက်ကာငင်ကာ suddenly, spontaneously ကျွတ်သွားတယ် to have found salvation (used when discussing ghosts and spirits)

The Mons, an ethnic group with its own distinct language and culture, exist in both Burma and Thailand. The Mon script is considered a source of the current Burmese script. The conventional view is Bagan’s conquest of the Mons in 1057 reshaped the character of Bagan, the first Burmese empire, as a Buddhist kingdom. Mon also happens to be the mother tongue of my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon). In this episode, we discuss the link between Mon and Burmese words, Mon dishes and Burmese dishes, and traces of Mon names that can be seen in contemporary place names like Kamayut, a township in Yangon. (Photo licensed from Shutterstock: Mon girls on a bridge in Sangklaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)Vocabulary ဘာသာစကား languageဆရာခေါ်တယ် to treat someone as a teacher or mentorအဆက်အစပ်ရှိတယ် to be relatedအက္ခရာ alphabet, lettersဗျည်း consonant lettersအပိတ်ဗျည်းသံ end-consonant soundသရ vowelနှုတ်ဆက်တယ် to greet, to bid farewell အဓိပ္ပာယ် meaningအဓိပ္ပာယ် တူတယ် to have the same meaningအသံထွက်ဆင်တယ် pronunciation is similarကွာခြားတယ် to be dissimilar, to be differentရန်အန္တရာယ်တွေချုပ်ငြိမ်းပြီ danger and strife have been extinguished ရာမညဒေသ Ramanya Daytha, old Mon name lower Burmaဟံသာဝတီ Hanthawady, old name for present day Bago (Pegu)ကမာရွတ်မြိုနယ် Kamayut, a township in Yangon (Rangoon)ကျိုက်ထီးရိုး Kyaiktiyo Pagodaဟင်းရည်ပျစ်တယ် the soup is thickခေါင်ရည် sweet ale, available in certain ethnic regionsထန်းရည် palm aleတစ်သွေမတိမ်း to strictly adhere to somethingသံဖြူဇရပ် Thanphyu Zayat, a city in lower Burmaရေး Yay/Ye, a city in lower Burmaစကားဝဲတယ် to have an accent, to deviate from standard pronunciationပိဿာ peittha, traditional weight measurement unit, roughly 3.6LBဈေးသက်သက်သာသာ with affordable priceစော Sao, Karen male name prefixစိုင်း Sai, Shan male name prefixမင်း Min, Mon male name prefixယဉ်ကျေးမှု cultureရွာလုံးကျွတ် the entire village

Gone to live in the village of the sacred spirits (နတ်ရွာစံတယ်), flown away (ပျံလွန်တော်မူတယ်), has taken up residence in Nirvana (ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် ) ... They all mean "to die," but depending on the type of person involved, some terms may be appropriate, others may not be. Then there are also monosyllabic terms you might use to describe death disdainfully or sarcastically, the Burmese equivalent of "kick the bucket" or "gone six feet under." If your life depends on it, will you be able to pick the correct verb to describe a queen's death, a monk's death, or a good-riddance death? Listen to this Bite-Size episode for a crash course the Burmese way to die. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.) Vocabularyသေတယ် to dieဆုံးတယ် to die, to pass awayကွယ်လွန်တယ် to die, to pass awayနတ်ရွာစံတယ် to die, lit. to take up residence in the realm of the spirits (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)ပျံလွန်တယ် to die, lit. to fly away (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် to die, to enter Nirvana (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)ကြွတယ် to die, disrespectfulဂန့်တယ် to die, disrespectful ကြိယာ verbအရွဲ့တိုက်တယ် to be sarcastic ရှောင်လွှဲလို့မရဘူး cannot be avoided ဒဲ့ဒိုးပြောတယ် / တဲ့တိုးပြောတယ် to speak directly, to speak bluntlyမြင့်မြတ်တယ် to be noble မင်းမျိုးမင်းနွယ် royal bloodတော်ဝင်မိသားစု royal household

Is Burmese difficult to learn--in particular, for English speakers? What’s the difference between Burmese and English grammar and sentence structures? And how do Burmese tones affect Burmese learners? How does the Burmese expression ရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့ အသံ sum up a hurdle Burmese learners must face? To discuss these, I invited Professor Justin Watkins, who specializes in Burmese and Linguistics. His students include researchers, diplomats, and NGO staffs, among others. Listen to our chat, and pick up a few fancy grammar terms to shock or surprise your own Burmese tutors. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)Vocabularyသဒ္ဒါ grammarစာပေ literatureဘာသာဗေဒ linguisticsလက်ဦးဆရာ first teacher or mentorကိုယ်တိုင် on one’s ownကွာခြားတယ် to be differentနီးစပ်တယ် to be similarဥရောပ Europeဖွဲစည်းထားတယ် to be constructed ofဥပမာ exampleဝါကျ sentenceဝါကျတည်ဆောက်ပုံ sentence structureကြိယာ verbနာမ် nounဒုက္ခရောက်တယ် to get into troubleသဘာဝမကျဘူး not naturalပြောင်းပြန် reverseစိတ်ရှုပ်တယ် to be confused, to be frustratedရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့အသံ When you write, spell it correctly; when you speak, say it properly. (A reminder that, in Burmese, the way something is spelled doesn’t always match how it’s pronounced.)မှန်းတယ် to guessသရ vowelဗျည်း consonantပြဿနာ problemပြောစကား spoken styleစာစကား written style, literary styleရှေးဆန်တယ် to be old-fashionedပြောဖို့ကအနိုင်နိုင် (it’s) a struggle to speakနားရည်ဝတယ် to be exposed to the spoken languageရလာဒ် result, outcomeမထိရောက်ဘူး not effectiveနာမဝိသေသန adjectiveဧကဝဏ္ဏ monosyllabicအတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ biographyမဏ္ဍပ် pavilionဘဏ္ဍာရေး treasury, money managementပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince of Denmark told his trusted friend Horatio, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In this episode, I introduce you to Burmese phrases that stemmed from the word မိုး (sky, heaven) and မြေ (ground, earth). You might say "someone is on cloud nine" in English. We say in Burmese "he or she can neither see the sky nor feel the wind" (မိုးမမြင်လေမမြင်). You might complain that someone is not dependable because he or she shows up "only once in a blue moon," but in Burmese, you might accuse the same person of being "a golden spirit dropped out of heaven" (မိုးကျရွှေကိုယ်). For the definitions and example usages of these and a few more heavenly, earthy words, listen to this episode. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)Vocabularyမိုးမဆုံး မြေမဆုံး endless sky, endless earth; figuratively, to go on and on, infinitelyမိုးမမြင် လေမမြင် to neither see the sky nor feel the wind; figuratively, to be on cloud nineဘဝင်မြင့်တယ် to think highly of oneselfမိုးကျရွှေကိုယ် someone who fell from the sky; figuratively, someone with special talent, or someone who appears once in a blue moonမြေကြီးလက်ခတ်မလွဲ as sure as the ground you can patမုချ for sure, certainlyမြေတောင်မြှောက်တယ် to make the soil fertile; figuratively, to nurture someone, to help someone succeedဥပဇာ simile, a figure of speech

For today’s episode, I invited a special guest – the mesmerizing voice behind the podcast စာဖတ်ပြမယ် or “I’ll read you stories.” The podcaster Win Ei regularly uploads recorded audio clips of Burmese short stories and essays to entertain us weekly with her voice. For many Burmese booklovers, her voice is what they hear before going to bed. In this episode, she discusses why and how she became addicted to books, how she chooses what to read every week, and which stories were her personal favorites. If you want to pick up some Burmese words and expressions related to Burmese literary genres, listen to our book chat here. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)Vocabularyစာပေ literatureဆွေးနွေးတယ် to discussလေကန်တယ် to chitchat, to shoot the breezeအာဘောင်အာရင်းသန်သန် (argue, talk, or debate) vociferously, in an animated fashion ငြင်းခုန်တယ် to argue, to debateသိုင်းဝတ္ထု martial arts novelsစာကြီးပေကြီး great literatureအိပ်ရာဝင်ပုံပြင် bedtime storyမူကြို kindergartenအချစ်ဝတ္ထု romance novelအမွှာညီအမ twin sistersကြွေတယ် slang, to be infatuated with someone, to fall for someoneတလွဲတချော်ဖြစ်တယ် to make a blunder, to make a mess of thingsရှိမဲ့စုမဲ့ very limited in quantity or volume to spareဂန္တဝင်စာပေ classic literatureပေါ့ပေါ့ပါးပါး lightheartedlyစိတ်ပြေလက်ပျောက် as a distractionဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ် life-depiction, a literary genreလုံးချင်းဝတ္ထု full-length novelရသစာပေ fictionသည်းထိတ်ရင်ဖို thrillerစုံထောက်ဝတ္ထု detective novelရာဇဝင်နောက်ခံဝတ္ထု historical novelဟာသဝတ္ထု humorous novelရေသန့်သမား purified water delivery personအဆောင် dormitoryအချစ်သူရဲကောင်း romantic heroမတတ်သာလို့ because it cannot be helpedသနားမိတယ် to feel sorry forဘယ်နှစ်ခေါက်ဖတ်ဖတ်မရိုးဘူး doesn’t get old no matter how many times you readအမြင်ကျယ်စေတယ် to expand one’s horizonခရစ်ယာန်အသိုင်းအဝိုင်း Christian communityတောင်ပြုံးပွဲတော် Taungbyone spirit festivalလျှောလျှောရှူရှူ willingly, freelyအသံတည်းဖြတ်တယ် to edit audioပုံနှိပ်လောက the publishing worldအပျော်ဖတ်တဲ့စာပေ light reading, in other words, not serious literatureလေးနက်တဲ့စာပေ serious literatureနှိုက်နှိုက်ချွတ်ချွတ်မေးတယ် to ask intrusive questionsလှို့ဝှက်အသံရှင် secret voice, unidentified v

What might inspire someone in Burma to donate? The reasons can range from celebrating a birthday or remembering a loved one who has passed away to supporting a monastery or nunnery. A rite of passage, such as a young man becoming a novice monk or a young woman getting her ears pierced, could also prompt a community to hold a general feast, where everyone is welcome. For Burmese language learners, describing a donation might be much harder than making a donation. The meals you offer to the monks and nuns are called ဆွမ်း (alms); and when you donate money to them, it’s marked as ဝတ္ထုပစ္စည်း (material goods) for the purpose of နဝကမ္မ (general use). A feast where anyone—invited or not—is welcome, is called စတုဒိသာ, meaning “open to those from the four cardinal directions” in Pali. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the donation rituals and the proper terms to describe them. (Thumbnail image by by NattapolStudio, licensed from Shutterstock, a novitiation ceremony in Burma.  Music clips from Uppbeat.io) Vocabularyအလှူ / အလှူဒါန donationအလှူလုပ်တယ် to make a donationဘာသာရေး religionလူမှုရေး social affairsရှင်ပြုတယ် to novitiate, to become a novice monkရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ novitiation ceremonyနားသတယ် / နားထွင်းတယ် to pierce earsနားသမင်္ဂလာ ear piercing ceremonyနားတောင်း / နားကပ် earringကွယ်လွန်သူ the deceased, the departedရည်စူးတယ် to dedicate an act of merit to someoneမိဘမဲ့ဂေဟာ orphanageစတုဒိသာ general feastဖောဖောသီသီ generouslyဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း monasteryသီလရှင်ကျောင်း nunneryမျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to be unimportant, to be neglected or overlookedဆွမ်း alms (food for monks and nuns)ဆွမ်းကပ်တယ် to offer almsအရုဏ်ဆွမ်း dawn meal for monks and nunsနေ့ဆွမ်း midday meal for monks and nunsလူနေရပ်ကွက် residential districtစည်ကားတယ် to be livelyဝိနည်း monastic rulesနဝကမ္မ general useဝေယျာဝစ္စ general tasksရေစက်ချတယ် to ritualistically pour water after a donation  ငါးပါးသီလ five preceptsရှစ်ပါးသီလ eight preceptsကုသိုလ်ကောင်းမှု meritorious deedsနတ်ကောင်းနတ်မြတ် divinitiesသာဓုခေါ်တယ် to proclaim an act of meritခေါင်းလောင်းထိုးတယ် to strike a bellပွဲတော်ရက် festival dayလပြည့်နေ့ full-moon dayသီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut festivalဆွမ်းဆန်စိမ်း nonperishable goods for the monksကထိန်သင်္ကန်း robes offered during the period of Kahteinအခြောက်အခြမ်း dry goodsပဒေသာပင် a makeshift structure to attach donated objectsထွေးအင် spittoonအဘိဓမ္မာစာမေးပွဲ monastic examဒုက္ခသည် refugee, those in needလေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် storm refugeeရေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် flood refugeeမီးဘေးဒုက္ခသည် fire refugeeစစ်ဘေးဒုက္ခသည် war refugee

Where are your hidden talents hiding? If you’re speaking Burmese, they might be hiding under the leaves. The Burmese expression for someone with a hidden talent is ရွက်ပုန်းသီး -- meaning "a fruit hidden under the leaves." And someone you might call a Plain Jane in English is ရွက်ကြမ်းရေကျို or "tea brewed with plain leaves" in Burmese. Someone who can adapt to any situation, be comfortable in any circumstance or environment is ရွက်ကျပင်ပေါက် or "a plant that regrows wherever its leaves may fall." The Burmese word for leaves on trees and sails on ships are the same. Both are referred to as ရွက်. So the Burmese version of "full sail ahead" is ရွက်စုံဖွင့် or "raise all sails." In this episode, I introduce you to some leaf-related phrases, along with example usages. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)Vocabularyရွက်ပုန်းသီး someone with a hidden talentအရည်အချင်း skill, talentမထင်ရှားဘူး not well-knownကျွမ်းကျင်တယ် to be proficient, to be skilledအလှမယ် beauty queenရွက်ကြမ်းရေကျို Plain Janeအသင့်အတင့် ordinary, fairသာမန်ကာလျှံကာ ordinary, fairအနံ့အရသာ fragrance and flavorရွက်ကျပင်ပေါက် plant that regrows from fallen leaves, someone who can thrive in different circumstances or environmentsဥပစာ metaphor, figure of speechရွက်စုံဖွင့် with all sails raised, full speed ahead, with all mightချွပ်စွပ်တူတယ် to be an exact matchခရီးဆက်တယ် to journey on

My students -- not all, but the rowdy and curious ones -- often ask me, how do you curse in Burmese? What is the Burmese version of the F-word or the C-word? Since this is supposed to be a G-rate podcast, I won’t be going anywhere near those. But there are well-worn insults, acceptable forms of name calling for the deserving ones. The terms range from wishing someone a horrible death to calling somebody a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing, to comparing them to the film of oil floating on the water -- a useless impurity, a surface-only type of being. So, for those rare occasions when you need to hurl abuses at someone in Burmese, my cohost Mol Mol and I will share some delicious insults: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io.) Vocabularyဖရုဿဝါစာ curse words, indecent wordsငပျင်း lazybones ငတုံး a numbskull လူပေါ်ကြော့ a frivolous, wasteful personစော်ကားတယ် to insultအထင်သေးတယ် to look down onငါးစိမ်းသည်မ a fishmonger, fish seller စွာတယ် to be feisty ပက်ခနဲ ပြန်ပြောတတ်တယ် to talk back swiftly ဆန်ကုန်မြေလေး a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thingပေါက်လွှတ်ပဲစား undisciplined, unprincipled ပညာတတ်လူတန်းစား the educated classလက်လွတ်စပယ် frivolously, carelessly ဗျောက်သောက် / လူဗျောက်သောက် riffraff ဘုကလန့်တိုက်တယ် to be difficult, to be argumentative လူ့ဂွစာ a difficult personဂွကျတယ် to be difficult  လိုက်လျောညီထွေ to be harmonious ရေပေါဆီ oil floating on the water (corrupted, fake, disingenuous, surface only) မိ မဆုံးမ ဖ မဆုံးမ someone without proper upbringing  (lit. unschooled by mom, unschooled by dad)ကောက်ကျစ်တယ် / စဉ်းလဲတယ် / ကောက်ကျစ်စဉ်းလဲတယ် to be wicked, to be devious သားသမီးမကောင်းမိဘခေါင်း proverb, the failure of the children reflects poorly on the parentsသေခြင်းဆိုး someone doomed to die a horrible deathကျိန်ဆဲတယ် to put a curse onနလပိန်းတုံး a dumb personစကား တန်ဆာဆင်တယ် to add linguistic flourishes, to add padding wordsတင်းမပြည့်ကျပ်မပြည့် to be incomplete, to be substandard (lit. neither a full kyat nor a full bucket) ဉာဏ်ရှည်မပြည့်ဘူး to be short of intelligence လူပါးဝတယ် / လူဝါးဝတယ် to be arrogant ရင့်သီးတယ် to be harsh in speech တင်တင်စီးစီးဆက်ဆံတယ် to treat others as underlings ကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful ထမင်းတစ်လုတ် a mouthful of rice စောက် / သောက် damn / darn

The peculiar nature of traditional Burmese names is, they usually do not have last names or family names. Instead, they’re chosen based on the day of the week a person is born. In other words, when you hear someone’s full name, you can often tell which day of the week he or she was born on.Not only that, in Burmese astrology, the weekday of your birth also determines your spiritual animal, compatible marital allies, incompatible business partners, and your lucky number. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY, Burmese language academy of Yangon, and I discuss the astrological system known as နေ့နဲ့နံ (nayt naet nane). What’s in a name? It could be your Destiny for a start. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io.)Vocabularyနေ့နံ weekdays and names, part of Burmese astrologyတနင်္လာ Mondayအင်္ဂါ Tuesdayဗုဒ္ဓဟူး Wednesdayရာဟု Period between Wednesday and Thursdayကြာသပတေး Thursdayသောကြာ Fridayစနေ Saturdayတနင်္ဂနွေ Sundayတိရစ္ဆာန် animalကျား tiger, Monday planet’s animalခြင်္သေ့ lion, Tuesday planet’s animalဆင် elephant, Wednesday planet’s animalဟိုင်းဆင် tuskless elephant, Rahu planet’s animalကြွက် rat, Thursday planet’s animalပူး guinea pig, Friday planet’s animalနဂါး mythical serpent, Saturday planet’s animalဂဠုန် Garuda, Sunday planet’s animalအက္ခရာ alphabetဗျည်း consonant lettersစနေသား Saturday-born maleအင်္ဂါသမီး Tuesday-born femaleဂြိုဟ် planetဂြိုဟ်မွှေတယ် to suffer the ill effects of a planetဦးသာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ / ဥဿာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ  variations of a verse describing the compatible nuptial pairsဓမ္မာ သောက အင်းဝ ရာဇာ a verse describing the incompatible nuptial pairsကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to do meritorious deedsစိတ်ကြီးတယ် to be sensitive, to have a tendency to hold a grudgeစိတ်ကောက်တယ် to be offended, to hold a grudgeမိတ်ဘက် ally, compatible forcesရန်ဘက် foe, incompatible forcesအရပ်မျက်နှာ the cardinal directionsယတြာချေတယ် to perform rituals to ward off ill fateဗေဒင်ဆရာ fortunetellerပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်းပြောရရင် to speak honestlyပြောင်းပြန်ဖြစ်နေတယ် to be the oppositeစကားများတယ် to be talkativeအမောက်ထောင်တယ် to show off, to raise one’s combမာနကြီးတယ် to be proud or aloofမျက်စောင်း glanceကြားဖူးနားဝ hearsayနက္ခတ် astrologyကိန်းဂဏန်း numberဝှက်စာ coded messageတစ်စိတ်တစ်ဒေသ a part, a portionမရေရာဘူး uncertainရေသပ်ပယ်တယ် to purify a sacred object with water

When are Venetian blinds not Venetian? In Burmese language, they become Chinese shutters (တရုတ်ကပ်). (Variations of the design are also known as Louvre window or Jalousie window.) The spiky chayote, called Buddha's palm in Chinese (佛手瓜) due to its shape, is called Gurkha fruit (ဂေါ်ရခါးသီး) in Burmese. Cement, even when locally made with Burmese dirt, is still called British dirt (ဘိလပ်မြေ). Today, fizzy, carbonated soft drinks like Coca-Cola or 7-Up are called Canned drinks (သံဗူး), but in the past, they were called British juice (ဘိလပ်ရည်). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to the Burmese names of some foreign objects. Who brought them to the country? The clues are in the names themselves. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)Vocabularyတရုတ်ကတ် Venetian blinds, Louvre window, Jalousie windowဘိလပ်မြေ cementသံဗူးရည် canned drink, soft drinkဘိလပ်ရည် carbonated drink, soft drinkဘိလပ်ပြန် someone who returned from Britainဂေါ်ရခါးသီး chayoteကုလားထိုင် chairပရိဘောဂ furnitureကုလားဝန် minister in charge of foreigners’ affairs (in the royal court)ဗိုလ် / ဘိုကေ western-style hairဗိုလ် / ဘိုလိုပြောတယ် to speak Englishလက်အုပ်ချီတယ် to put one’s palms together in homageအခေါ်အဝေါ် usage, term, vocabularyအတုခိုးတယ် to mimic, to copyကုန်ကူသန်းရောင်းဝယ်ရေး commerce, tradeယဉ်ကျေးမှုဖလှယ်တယ် to exchange cultureကောက်ချက်ချတယ် to conclude, to deduceယူဆတယ် to think, to believeတစ်နည်းတစ်ဖုံ in one way or anotherဆက်စပ်တယ် to be connected to, to be associated withအိန္ဒိယနွယ်ဖွား of Indian descentကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ် in the Konbaung Eraမူလအဓိပ္ပာယ် original meaningကျယ်ပြန့်တယ် to be broadသျှောင်ထုံး hairstyle with a bunစစ်ဗိုလ် army generalနိဂုံးချုပ် to conclude

Balderdash, baby talk, pillow talk, a clumsy act, a half-ass job, or a cuddly pet? Chances are, there's a four-letter, four-syllable word to describe it. They give your speech a certain meter and rhythm and make you sound musical. But many of them also sound quite similar. For language learners, the challenge is not to mix them up and use the wrong one. In this episode, I introduce you to a handful of four-letter expressions to impress or amaze your friends and tutors. Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.Vocabularyတောက်တိုမည်ရ odd jobs, errandsတိုလီမိုလီ miscellaneous itemsတော်ရိရော်ရိ (adverb) half-hearted, in a mediocre fashionတိုးလိုးတန်းလန်း (adverb) half-finished, left undoneတောက်တီးတောက်တဲ့ nonsense, balderdashကတ်သီးကတ်သတ် (adverb) to be nitpicking, to be difficultကိုးရိုးကားရား (adverb) in a clumsy, bungling fashionပိုးစိုးပက်စက် (adverb) cruelly, hurtfully, in a mean-spirited fashionပိုးလိုးပက်လက် (adverb) to be undignified, sprawled outပွတ်သီးပွတ်သတ် (adverb) to be touchy feely, to be fondlingတွတ်တီးတွတ်တာ (adverb) to speak nonstop, to speak baby talk or pillow talk

In this special Halloween episode, my cohost Mol Mol from the Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I delve into things that go bump in the night. We share stories of haunted trees, school corridors, and college dormitories. And we trade spine-chilling, goosebump-inducing urban legends. Do you know how to tell a ghost story in Burmese? If not, listen to our talk and pick up some words. And just in case, grab a glass of holy water. (Illustration by Nyan Kyal Say. Music clips from Uppbeat.io) Vocabularyစိတ်မနှံ့ဘူး to be mentally unwellပရိတ်ရွတ်တယ် to recite prayers to ward off evil or ensure safetyကောလာဟလ rumorတူတူပုန်းတယ် to play hide and seekဇဝေဇဝါ ambivalentသရဲခြောက်တယ် to be haunted by ghostsဥစ္စာစောင့် a possessive spirit attached to objects and materialsရွှေချောင်း gold bullionsဒဏ္ဍာရီ legendဆောင့်ဆွဲတယ် to yank and pullကုက္ကိုပင် lebbek treeညောင်ပင် banyan treeအဆောင် boarding houseဂါဝန် skirtအရိပ်အရောင်ပြတယ် to make an appearanceကျောင်းသားသမ္မဂ student unionမှောင်စပျိုးချိန် twilight, duskအူယားဖားယား franticallyကြွတ်ကြွတ်အိပ် plastic bagကျောချမ်းတယ် to feel a chill down the spineကြက်သီးထတယ် to get goosebumpsရင်ခွဲရုံ mortuaryဗိုလ်တစ်ထောင်မြနန်းနွယ် Botataung Mya Nan Nwe, a renowned female spiritအိပ်ရေးမဝဘူး to be sleep deprivedဘီလူးစီးတယ် to be seized by a demon, to have sleep paralysisထမင်းလုံးတစ္ဆေခြောက်တယ် to be haunted by the spirit of leftover rice grainsနတ်ဖွက်တယ် to be hidden by the spiritsနိုးနိုးကြားကြား in an awakened stateအိပ်မက်ဆိုး nightmare