Learn Burmese from Natural Talk
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, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY), some guest speakers, 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. You can reach BLAY from its Facebook page: BurmeseLanguageAcademyofYangon. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/
Learn Burmese from Natural Talk
On Burmese Movies, from the Black-and-White Era to the Age of Surround Sound
In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese language academy of Yangon) and I discuss the movie-going experiences in our own times. In my boyhood in the 80s, movie theaters in Yangon were weather-beaten colonial buildings, with only a few offering air condition -- a luxury confined to the embassies and high-end hotels. On the other hand, Mol Mol grew up with multiplex theaters in megamalls like Junction Square, where surround sound and air condition were a given. But the films that we both fondly remember happen to be the same: Cultural phenomena like မှုန်ရွှေရည် (Hmone Shwe Yi) and သင်္ကြန်မိုး (Thingyan Moe), to name but two. So silent your cellphones, grab your popcorn, and join us in the theater of nostalgia. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
ကြိတ်ကြိတ်တိုး to be thronged with people
ရုံတင်တယ် to screen a film in a theater
ဇိမ်ကျတယ် / ဇိမ်ခံတယ် to indulge in luxury
ဖလင် film
သည်းခံပါ please be patient
ပိတ်ကား the silver screen
ခေတ်ပြိုင် contemporary, from the same era or period
မင်းသမီးတစ်လက် an actress (လက် is a counting word for actors)
နောက်ခံဘဝ backstory
အဓိကဇာတ်ကောင် the main character
စိတ်နာတယ် to be deeply wounded (emotionally); to become resentful
အရက်စွဲသွားတယ် to become addicted to alcohol
ဇာတ်ဝင်တေး/ဇာတ်ဝင်သီချင်း movie theme song
စိတ်ပြေသွားတယ် to lose one’s anger or resentment, to thaw (emotionally)
ခပ်ဆင်ဆင် similar
ကိုလိုနီခေတ် the colonial era
လုံးချင်းဝတ္ထု full-length novel
မှီငြမ်းတယ်/မှီတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by
စာတည်းမှူး editor
နားလည်ရခက်တယ် to be difficult to understand
လျှို့ဝှက်ချက် secret
နှိပ်ကြယ်သီး press button
မခေဘူး not bad at all, can measure up
ဂန္တဝင် classic
အတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ (pronounced အထုပ်ပတ်တိ / အတ်ထုပ်ပတ်တိ) biography
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ memorably
ကလဲ့စားချေတယ်/လက်စားချေတယ် to take revenge, to avenge
နောက်ဆက်တွဲ sequel
ရုပ်ပြကာတွန်း illustrated comic
သရုပ်ဆောင်တယ် to perform, to act
အထင်ကရ renown
ဂိုဏ်းခေါင်းဆောင် gang leader
သွေးထွက်သံယို bloody, violent
အရောင်စိုပြည်တယ် to be rich in colors
ရုပ်လုံးပေါ်တယ် to be vivid
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