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, a guest speaker 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. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/
Learn Burmese from Natural Talk
On Love and Life According to Forrest Gump
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"Life's like a box of chocolate; you never know what you're gonna get," says Forrest Gump, the title character played by Tom Hanks in the 1994 film. In Burmese, the saying roughly translates to "ဘဝဆိုတာ ချောကလက်ဘူးလေးလိုပါပဲ။ ဘာပါလဲဆိုတာ ဘယ်သူမှ မသိကြပါဘူး။"
In this episode, my cohost Su, a Burmese language teacher from Chiang Mai, and I discuss Forrest Gump's attitude toward life's tragedies and challenges, war's toll on the human psyche, and the bitter-sweet nature of first love. Along the way, we introduce you to the words and phrases related to childhood, unrequited love, the Vietnam war's unhealed trauma, the flower-child generation, and women's liberation. Join us as we go for a run with Forrest. (Illustration generated in ChatGPT; music courtesy of Pixabay. "Flower Power" excerpt courtesy of Alana Jordan.)
Vocabulary
ဇာတ်ကောင် character
ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main character
တစ်စေ့တစ်စောင်း to catch a glimpse
မှော်ပညာ wizardry, witchcraft
ရေသူမ mermaid
စုန်းမ witch
ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fable
တပ်စုမှူး platoon commander
တိတ်တိတ်ပုန်းချစ်တယ် to love someone secretly
လိင်အမြတ်ထုတ်တယ် to take advantage of someone sexually
အခွင့်အရေးယူတယ် to take advantage of
ဒုက္ခိတ disabled
ပြည့်တန်ဆာ prostitute
သူရသတ္တိဘွဲ့ award for bravery
စိတ်ဓာတ်ခွန်အားရတယ် to get inspiration or spiritual encouragement
အရိပ်အယောင် hint, implication
မှင်တက်သွားတယ် to be stunned, to be awe-struck
စိတ်လုံခြုံရာ space for mental security
ထိပ်တိုက်ရင်ဆိုင်တယ် to face or confront something head-on
သဟဇာတဖြစ်အောင် in order to be harmonious
နားမလည်ပါးမလည် without fully realizing or understanding something
နာတာရှည်ရောဂါ terminal disease
ရောဂါကျွမ်းနေပြီ to be incurable
ခါးစည်းခံမယ် to endure
ကဲ့ရဲ့တယ် to criticize, to condemn
ခံရသူကို အပြစ်တင်တယ် to blame the victim
လေနှင်ရာ မျောပါသွားတယ် to be carried away by the wind
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