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 Thadingyut (or) Festival of Light
In Myanmar or Burma, October is the month of Thadingyut, the festival of light. For the children, it's a rare excuse to play with fireworks, sparkles, and even firecrackers. For young people and couples, it’s a chance to take a stroll along the bright-lit streets and the festival market, to sample the crispy fritters and grilled meat in the food stalls, and to buy handmade crafts and toys, like fish-shaped paper lanterns and demon figurines with movable limbs. In this episode, my friend Su, a Thailand-based Burmese languge teacher, and I share our favorite things to do during Thadingyut, and explain the words, phrases, and expressions related to the festival. So grab your sparkles and celebrate the festival of light from our childhood. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary
သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut, the festival of light
ဖယောင်းတိုင်ထွန်းတယ် to light candles
နည်းနည်းနောနောမဟုတ်ဘူး not trivial, not insignificant
ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate, to hold (an event or festival)
မိုးလေကင်းလွတ်တယ် to be free of rain and wind, to have temperate weather
အငြင်းပွားစရာ debatable
ဘီလူးရုပ် demon figure
ယမင်းရုပ် figure of a dancing maiden
ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel
ရင်တလှပ်လှပ်ဖြစ်တယ် the heart beats erratically from excitement
အသည်းငယ်တယ် to have a weak heart, to be easily frightened
မအီမသာဖြစ်တယ် to feel uncomfortable, to be queasy
အူ၊ ကလီစာ intestines and internal organs
အဘိဓမ္မာ Abhidharma
ကျေးဇူးဆပ်တယ် to return a favor, to repay a debt of gratitude
အထွတ်အမြတ် paragon, pinnacle
စောင်းတန်း corridor
ဗြဟ္မာ a type of heavenly spirits
အလေ့အထ tradition
ဒေဝါလီ Diwali, Hindu festival of light
နွယ်တယ် to be intertwined, to be related
မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks
မီးပန်းဆော့တယ် to play with sparkles
ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker
ကာလသား young men, especially unmarried
ငရဲမီး flame from burning acid
အိမ်စောင့်နတ် guardian spirit of the home
ဆီမီး cup-shaped oil lamp
မျှောတယ် to float something in the water
ကန်တော့တယ် to pay homage
ဝပ်တွား to crouch
ဆွေမျိုးမိတ်သဟာ kinsmen and friends
ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to join the festivities
ဆွမ်း၊ ဘောစဉ် alms (for monks and nuns)
ပြိုးပြိုးပြက်ပြက် to be sparkling, bright
Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
