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 Thingyan and Thaan Jaat
Mid-April is when Burmese people celebrate the end of the old year and the beginning of another one with a water festival, similar to the people of Thailand and several other neighboring countries.
In modern times, young people driving around in open pickup trucks and shooting water through high-pressure tubes and cannons is the standard practice, but in the old days, people dipped laurel leaves into silver goblets of fragrant water and dabbed them on one another-- a practice that seems quaint now.
Also, in Thingyan in bygone times, street performers and dance troupes would come up with call and response routines, called သံချပ် Than Jaat, that celebrate life, welcome the new year, and also take jabs at the authorities’ hypocritical behaviors and corruption.
In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my regular guest Su, a Burmese teacher based on Chiang Mai, and I discuss these and more.
Vocabulary
သင်္ကြန် Burmese water festival
သင်္ကြန်ကျပြီ Thingyan has arrived
ပြက္ခဒိန် calendar
ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate
နံ့သာရည် aromatic water
ရင်ဖုံး / ရင်စေ့ bosom-covered / bosom-buttoned blouse style
အကြိုနေ့ the pre-arrival, the precursor (to a festival)
အကျနေ့ the day of arrival (of a festival)
အကြတ်နေ့ the in-between day
အတက်နေ့ the day preceding the end (of a festival)
နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ first day of new year
ရေသေနတ် / ရေပြွန် water gun / water canon
ကုသိုလ်လုပ်တယ် to perform good deeds
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
အတိုင်အဖေါက် call and response
အတိုင်အဖေါက်ညီတယ် the call and response are in sync
သံချပ် a call-and-response routine
ပူဆာတယ် to pester, to repeatedly request
အာဏာသိမ်းတယ် to stage a coup
သီလယူတယ် to pledge to observe certain precepts
အတာအိုး a well-wishing pot with flowers and leaves
၇ရက်သားသမီးအတွက် for those born on each of the weekday
ခွက်စောင်းခုတ်တယ် to slap a cup of water down with force
ဥပုသ်သည် those observing precepts
ညိုမြမလုပ်နဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested
မူမနေနဲ့ do not play coy, do not pretend to be disinterested
ဈေးကိုင်တယ် to be holding out
မုန့်လုံးရေပေါ် sweet rice balls, a specialty of Thingyan
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