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 Reading Burmese Books
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)
Vocabulary
စာပေ literature
ဆွေးနွေးတယ် to discuss
လေကန်တယ် to chitchat, to shoot the breeze
အာဘောင်အာရင်းသန်သန် (argue, talk, or debate) vociferously, in an animated fashion
ငြင်းခုန်တယ် to argue, to debate
သိုင်းဝတ္ထု martial arts novels
စာကြီးပေကြီး great literature
အိပ်ရာဝင်ပုံပြင် bedtime story
မူကြို kindergarten
အချစ်ဝတ္ထု romance novel
အမွှာညီအမ twin sisters
ကြွေတယ် slang, to be infatuated with someone, to fall for someone
တလွဲတချော်ဖြစ်တယ် to make a blunder, to make a mess of things
ရှိမဲ့စုမဲ့ very limited in quantity or volume to spare
ဂန္တဝင်စာပေ classic literature
ပေါ့ပေါ့ပါးပါး lightheartedly
စိတ်ပြေလက်ပျောက် as a distraction
ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ် life-depiction, a literary genre
လုံးချင်းဝတ္ထု full-length novel
ရသစာပေ fiction
သည်းထိတ်ရင်ဖို thriller
စုံထောက်ဝတ္ထု detective novel
ရာဇဝင်နောက်ခံဝတ္ထု historical novel
ဟာသဝတ္ထု humorous novel
ရေသန့်သမား purified water delivery person
အဆောင် dormitory
အချစ်သူရဲကောင်း romantic hero
မတတ်သာလို့ because it cannot be helped
သနားမိတယ် to feel sorry for
ဘယ်နှစ်ခေါက်ဖတ်ဖတ်မရိုးဘူး doesn’t get old no matter how many times you read
အမြင်ကျယ်စေတယ် to expand one’s horizon
ခရစ်ယာန်အသိုင်းအဝိုင်း Christian community
တောင်ပြုံးပွဲတော် Taungbyone spirit festival
လျှောလျှောရှူရှူ willingly, freely
အသံတည်းဖြတ်တယ် to edit audio
ပုံနှိပ်လောက the publishing world
အပျော်ဖတ်တဲ့စာပေ light reading, in other words, not serious literature
လေးနက်တဲ့စာပေ serious literature
နှိုက်နှိုက်ချွတ်ချွတ်မေးတယ် to ask intrusive questions
လှို့ဝှက်အသံရှင် secret voice, unidentified v
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