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
Burmese Insults: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
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.)
Vocabulary
ဖရုဿဝါစာ curse words, indecent words
ငပျင်း lazybones
ငတုံး a numbskull
လူပေါ်ကြော့ a frivolous, wasteful person
စော်ကားတယ် to insult
အထင်သေးတယ် to look down on
ငါးစိမ်းသည်မ a fishmonger, fish seller
စွာတယ် to be feisty
ပက်ခနဲ ပြန်ပြောတတ်တယ် to talk back swiftly
ဆန်ကုန်မြေလေး a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing
ပေါက်လွှတ်ပဲစား undisciplined, unprincipled
ပညာတတ်လူတန်းစား the educated class
လက်လွတ်စပယ် frivolously, carelessly
ဗျောက်သောက် / လူဗျောက်သောက် riffraff
ဘုကလန့်တိုက်တယ် to be difficult, to be argumentative
လူ့ဂွစာ a difficult person
ဂွကျတယ် 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 parents
သေခြင်းဆိုး someone doomed to die a horrible death
ကျိန်ဆဲတယ် to put a curse on
နလပိန်းတုံး a dumb person
စကား တန်ဆာဆင်တယ် to add linguistic flourishes, to add padding words
တင်းမပြည့်ကျပ်မပြည့် 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
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