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 Donation Rituals and Terms
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)
Vocabulary
အလှူ / အလှူဒါန donation
အလှူလုပ်တယ် to make a donation
ဘာသာရေး religion
လူမှုရေး social affairs
ရှင်ပြုတယ် to novitiate, to become a novice monk
ရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ novitiation ceremony
နားသတယ် / နားထွင်းတယ် to pierce ears
နားသမင်္ဂလာ ear piercing ceremony
နားတောင်း / နားကပ် earring
ကွယ်လွန်သူ the deceased, the departed
ရည်စူးတယ် to dedicate an act of merit to someone
မိဘမဲ့ဂေဟာ orphanage
စတုဒိသာ general feast
ဖောဖောသီသီ generously
ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း monastery
သီလရှင်ကျောင်း nunnery
မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to be unimportant, to be neglected or overlooked
ဆွမ်း alms (food for monks and nuns)
ဆွမ်းကပ်တယ် to offer alms
အရုဏ်ဆွမ်း dawn meal for monks and nuns
နေ့ဆွမ်း midday meal for monks and nuns
လူနေရပ်ကွက် residential district
စည်ကားတယ် to be lively
ဝိနည်း monastic rules
နဝကမ္မ general use
ဝေယျာဝစ္စ general tasks
ရေစက်ချတယ် to ritualistically pour water after a donation
ငါးပါးသီလ five precepts
ရှစ်ပါးသီလ eight precepts
ကုသိုလ်ကောင်းမှု meritorious deeds
နတ်ကောင်းနတ်မြတ် divinities
သာဓုခေါ်တယ် to proclaim an act of merit
ခေါင်းလောင်းထိုးတယ် to strike a bell
ပွဲတော်ရက် festival day
လပြည့်နေ့ full-moon day
သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut festival
ဆွမ်းဆန်စိမ်း nonperishable goods for the monks
ကထိန်သင်္ကန်း robes offered during the period of Kahtein
အခြောက်အခြမ်း dry goods
ပဒေသာပင် a makeshift structure to attach donated objects
ထွေးအင် spittoon
အဘိဓမ္မာစာမေးပွဲ monastic exam
ဒုက္ခသည် refugee, those in need
လေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် storm refugee
ရေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် flood refugee
မီးဘေးဒုက္ခသည် fire refugee
စစ်ဘေးဒုက္ခသည် war refugee
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