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
What's in a Burmese Name? Destiny, for a Start.
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.)
Vocabulary
နေ့နံ weekdays and names, part of Burmese astrology
တနင်္လာ Monday
အင်္ဂါ Tuesday
ဗုဒ္ဓဟူး Wednesday
ရာဟု Period between Wednesday and Thursday
ကြာသပတေး Thursday
သောကြာ Friday
စနေ Saturday
တနင်္ဂနွေ Sunday
တိရစ္ဆာန် animal
ကျား tiger, Monday planet’s animal
ခြင်္သေ့ lion, Tuesday planet’s animal
ဆင် elephant, Wednesday planet’s animal
ဟိုင်းဆင် tuskless elephant, Rahu planet’s animal
ကြွက် rat, Thursday planet’s animal
ပူး guinea pig, Friday planet’s animal
နဂါး mythical serpent, Saturday planet’s animal
ဂဠုန် Garuda, Sunday planet’s animal
အက္ခရာ alphabet
ဗျည်း consonant letters
စနေသား Saturday-born male
အင်္ဂါသမီး Tuesday-born female
ဂြိုဟ် planet
ဂြိုဟ်မွှေတယ် to suffer the ill effects of a planet
ဦးသာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ / ဥဿာ စိန်ပန်း ဒန်းလှ ကိုရှာ variations of a verse describing the compatible nuptial pairs
ဓမ္မာ သောက အင်းဝ ရာဇာ a verse describing the incompatible nuptial pairs
ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to do meritorious deeds
စိတ်ကြီးတယ် to be sensitive, to have a tendency to hold a grudge
စိတ်ကောက်တယ် to be offended, to hold a grudge
မိတ်ဘက် ally, compatible forces
ရန်ဘက် foe, incompatible forces
အရပ်မျက်နှာ the cardinal directions
ယတြာချေတယ် to perform rituals to ward off ill fate
ဗေဒင်ဆရာ fortuneteller
ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်းပြောရရင် to speak honestly
ပြောင်းပြန်ဖြစ်နေတယ် to be the opposite
စကားများတယ် to be talkative
အမောက်ထောင်တယ် to show off, to raise one’s comb
မာနကြီးတယ် to be proud or aloof
မျက်စောင်း glance
ကြားဖူးနားဝ hearsay
နက္ခတ် astrology
ကိန်းဂဏန်း number
ဝှက်စာ coded message
တစ်စိတ်တစ်ဒေသ a part, a portion
မရေရာဘူး uncertain
ရေသပ်ပယ်တယ် to purify a sacred object with water
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
