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
Bite-Size Burmese: Oh, the Humanity!
Humane, inhumane, humanitarian, humanize, humanist, subhuman—there are examples of English words derived from the root word Human . In Burmese, if you want to publicize something, you have to do it so that "men would know and monks would hear (လူသိရှင်ကြား)." If you have lost your influence, you'd become someone who "men don't respect and dogs don't fear" (လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့်). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I introduce you to some colorful Burmese praises, insults, and expressions revolving around the word လူ (lu) for Human. (Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
လူဆန်တယ် to act in a human-like manner, to be humane
လူမဆန်ဘူး to act in ways unbecoming a human, to be inhumane
လူတောမတိုးဘူး to be socially awkward, to be unable to fit in
လူရာမဝင်ဘူး to fail to measure up, to be considered inferior
လူမလေး ခွေးမခန့် men don't respect (him), dogs don't fear (him), to be subjected to disdain
လူသိရှင်ကြား men would know and monks would hear, to publicize far and wide, to officially announce
လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate based on social class
လူ့ဘောင် human society
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