Bite-Size Burmese: A Word on Words to Describe How People Speak

If you can butter up someone into doing something in English, you can also “စကားချိုသွေး” or "sweettalk" someone in Burmese. In English, you might describe someone as “a foul mouth”; in Burmese it takes the verb form: “ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ်” or his or her “mouth is foul." If you need to fish for information, you might “စကားချူ” or “siphon words." Some people might siphon more than words. They'll give you a sob story to "မျက်ရည်ချူ" or "siphon tears." But what does it mean to “စကားပလ္လင်ခံ” or “use a throne to raise your words”? That is what you do when you start off with a prelude to get to something else that really matters. For example, you start off talking about the bad economy, your low wages, and eventually you ask to borrow money. In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to a list of Burmese expressions that describe the manners and strategies of speaking. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

စကားများတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be of excessive words)

စကားနည်းတယ် to be of few words, to speak very little

စကားကြမ်းတယ် / အပြောကြမ်းတယ် / ပါးစပ်ကြမ်းတယ် to be a foul mouth, to speak harshly or rudely

စကားချိုတယ် / အပြောချိုတယ် to be a persuasive, eloquent, or gentle speaker

စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk

စကားပြေ prose

စကားပြန် interpreter 

စကားချူတယ် to fish for information (lit. to siphon words)

မျက်ရည်ချူတယ် to give a sob story (lit. to siphon tears)

စကားလွန်သွားပြီ / အပြောလွန်သွားပြီ to over-speak, to speak too much, to overpromise 

စကားမှားသွားပြီ / အပြောမှားသွားပြီ to misspeak

စကားလွဲသွားပြီ / အပြောလွဲသွားပြီ to misspeak 

စကားပလ္လင်ခံတယ် / စကားချီတယ် / စကားပျိုးတယ် to use a prelude or preliminary words to get to something else

စကားကောင်းနေတယ် to be having a lively conversation 

စကားဖြတ်တယ် to cut off or terminate a conversation