Bite-Size Burmese: Between Heaven and Earth

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince of Denmark told his trusted friend Horatio, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." In this episode, I introduce you to Burmese phrases that stemmed from the word မိုး (sky, heaven) and မြေ (ground, earth). You might say "someone is on cloud nine" in English. We say in Burmese "he or she can neither see the sky nor feel the wind" (မိုးမမြင်လေမမြင်). You might complain that someone is not dependable because he or she shows up "only once in a blue moon," but in Burmese, you might accuse the same person of being "a golden spirit dropped out of heaven" (မိုးကျရွှေကိုယ်). For the definitions and example usages of these and a few more heavenly, earthy words, listen to this episode. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary

မိုးမဆုံး မြေမဆုံး endless sky, endless earth; figuratively, to go on and on, infinitely

မိုးမမြင် လေမမြင် to neither see the sky nor feel the wind; figuratively, to be on cloud nine

ဘဝင်မြင့်တယ် to think highly of oneself

မိုးကျရွှေကိုယ် someone who fell from the sky; figuratively, someone with special talent, or someone who appears once in a blue moon

မြေကြီးလက်ခတ်မလွဲ as sure as the ground you can pat

မုချ for sure, certainly

မြေတောင်မြှောက်တယ် to make the soil fertile; figuratively, to nurture someone, to help someone succeed

ဥပဇာ simile, a figure of speech