Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm shows how a revolution could lead to the rise of opportunists, power struggles, infighting, fake news, and ultimately a new breed of authoritarians. Even though Orwell was looking at the rise of Joseph Stalin in post-revolution Russia as the model for his animal farm, we would later see the same sequence of events in Communist Cuba, Chairman Mao’s China, and other places. In this episode, my cohost Su and I discuss Thakin Ba Thaung’s translation of Animal Farm, titled ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး (The Four-Legged Revolution), and how some of the chapters are chillingly similar to what has happened, and is still happening in present day Burma, our homeland. Along the way, we give you the Burmese words and phrases you can use to talk about dictator pigs and dogs in the book, and in the world we live in. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ဂန္ထဝင် classic

သခင်ဘသောင်း Thakhin Ba Thaung, a Burmese translator of Animal Farm

ခြေလေးချောင်းတော်လှန်ရေး The Four-Legged Revolution, name of a Burmese translation of Animal Farm

လေရူးသုန်သုန် Wild Gust Blowing, Burmese name for a translation of Gone with the Wind

ဘာသာပြန်တယ် to translate

လက်ထောက်ပုလိပ်အုပ် assistant superintendent of police

မူရင်း original

အနှစ်သာရ essence

အဓိကဖြစ်ရပ် main events

အာဏာရှင်စနစ် authoritarianism

ဖိနှိပ်တယ် to oppress

အာဏာယစ်မူးတယ် to be drunk with power

အာခံတယ် to defy

သုတ်သင်တယ် to execute, to eliminate

လူတန်းစားခွဲခြားတယ် to discriminate by class

စည်းရုံးတယ် to persuade others to join

ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characters

မျက်မှောက်ကာလ current age

ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလ contemporary era

စင်ပြိုင်ပါတီ rival party

ဗန္ဓုလ Bandoola, name of a historical general, also the Burmese name for Napoleon in the Burmese version of Animal Farm

သံကြောင် squeaky voice, name of the character Squealer in a Burmese translation of Animal Farm

အသံပြာပြာနဲ့ with scratchy, raspy voice

ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda

ကိုယ်စားပြုတယ် to embody

လူမှုကွန်ရက် social media

ဝါဒမှိုင်းမိတယ် to be swept up in propaganda

ခို pigeon

သာတူညီမျှ to be equal

ဘုရားမြှောက်တယ် to turn someone into a God

ပဋိညာဉ် pledge, oath, agreement

သားရေကွင်းဥပဒေ rubber band regulation, meaning it bends to serve a group

ကျုံ့တယ် to shrink

ဆန့်တယ် to expand

အခွင့်ထူးခံလူတန်းစား the privileged class

ဇာတ်ကွက် dramatic scene

သစ္စာဖေါက် traitor

သွေးညှီနံ့ the stench of blood

လက်နက်ကိုင် armed, weapon carrying

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

In English, when you’re talking about yourself, your choice of pronoun is a solitary “I.” Not so in Burmese. There’s a variety of ways to refer to yourself, based on your gender, profession, age, and your relationship towards the other person. And the same is true of ways to refer to the person you’re speaking to. You can refer to him or her by name, a kinship term, or an honorific associated with his or her profession or field of expertise. In fact, there are situations where using what is technically the polite way to say "you" – ခင်ဗျား (khamyar) or ရှင် (shin)—could be considered rude. How many ways can you say "You" and "I" in Burmese? Too many, as you'll discover in this episode. (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.

As singles with no marital experience, my cohost Su and I are under-qualified to discuss this episode's theme: dowry. In Burmese context, it usually means what the groom and his family offer to the bride’s parents as gifts when asking for the girl’s hand in marriage. The so-called gifts could be cows for ploughing, a plot of farm to live on, a new bed, furniture for the newly weds' room, a luxury car, a home, or even cold, hard cash. When the wealth and social status of the two families involved are unequal, dowry could become a source of headache and heartache, a serious roadblock to the couple’s happy union. In modern times, the practice is not as popular as it was in the past, but it still exists in some form. In this episode, Su and I discuss a classic poem by Thakhin Ko Daw Hmaing that refers to the practice, and share out own personal thoughts on it.

Vocabulary

ငါတွေ့မဟုတ်၊ စာတွေ့ not from personal experience but from books

ခန်းဝင်ပစ္စည်း gifts to help the newly weds establish a home / dowry

လက်ဖွဲ့ gifts for the newly weds / dowry

ပရိဘောဂ furniture

ကြောင်အိမ် cabinet for temporarily storing food, usually not refrigerated

တင်တောင်းတယ် to offer something as dowry to ask for permission to marry someone (in Burmese culture, traditionally, what the groom offers to the bride’s family)

ပမာဏ amount

လုပ်ကျွေးတယ် to feed and take care of someone

နွားတစ်ရှဉ်း a pair of cows

စပါးကျီ a plot of farm

စရိတ် expense

ကန်တော့ပွဲ ceremonial offering

ကြွက်မြီး literally, rat tail; figuratively, it refers to the stem of a coconut

မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to lose face

လက်ဖွဲ့ခြင်းသည်းခံပါ request to come without gift (a phrase that appears on some wedding invitations)

ဝါတွင်း during the Buddhist Lent

ကူငွေ literally monetary help; donation at funeral, given to the surviving family

လက်သံပြောင်တယ် (1) skilled at musical performance; (2) to have a very powerful slap, strike, or punch

ချိုလိမ် pacifier

ဘိုးဘွားရိပ်သာ home for the elderlies

ပျားရည်ဆမ်းခရီး honeymoon

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.