"Pyimma Ngote Toe (ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို)" by Min Thu Wun (1909 to 2004), written in the four-syllable rhyme scheme typical of classic Burmese poetry, is an ode to a tree stump, the surviving fragment of a pyimma tree standing on a mound. The common name for this specimen in English is Queen's Crape Myrtle or Queen's Flower, giving off the unavoidable stench of colonialism. The original Burmese name pyimma, however, is quite different. It invokes the image of a sturdy, leafy tree offering refuge from Southeast Asia's cruel midday Sun. (With a lack of standardized Romanization for Burmese, pyima, pyinma, or pyimma can serve as an approximation of the Burmese name ပျဉ်းမ.)

The opening line, "ဖုထစ်ရွတ်တွ၊ ငှက်ဠင်းတသို့" is strung together with textured, aspirated, plosive words, allowing us to feel the bumps, ridges, knurls, and knots of the trunk as we pronounce them. The simile that follows compares the stump to a vulture, associated with burial grounds and death.

Written with stacked rhymes in the fourth, third, and second syllables of subsequent lines (the 4-3-2 pattern), the poem describes how the old pyimma has endured the termite's swarm, the sun's flames, the wind's wrath, and even warfare. The final stanza gives us hope and inspiration, depicting how the stump "ရွက်ဟောင်းညှာကြွေ၊ ရွက်သစ်ဝေ (sheds old stems and springs new leaves)" with the return of summer.

In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese (more a bowl than a bite, due to its length), I break down the first stanza of the poem, explain the rhyme scheme, and the post-independence sociopolitical climate of 1949 that gave birth to the poem. (Image: AI-generated in ChatGPT; Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)

ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို (မင်းသုဝဏ်)

"The Pyimma Stump" by Min Thu Wun (translated by Kenneth Wong)

ဖုထစ်ရွတ်တွ၊ ငှက်ဠင်းတသို့
ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို၊ သက်ကြားအိုသည်
ကုန်းမိုထက်တွင် တပင်တည်း။

Gnarled, knotted, with humps and ridges,
Like a vulture on a mound
Stood the lonely pyimma stump.

ခွဆုံအကွေး၊ သစ်ခေါင်းဆွေးလည်း
အဖေးတက်လှာ၊ အိုင်းအမာသို့
ကျယ်စွာဟက်ပက် ခြအိမ်ပျက်။

The bending bough at the split
Is a hollowed, rotten termite shelter,
A scab-encrusted gaping wound.

ကုန်းမိုကမ်းပါး၊ မြေပတ်ကြားတွင်
စစ်သားခမောက်၊ ပိန်ခြောက်ခြောက်လည်း
စစ်ရောက်စခန်း လက်ပြညွှန်း။

A soldier’s shriveled war helmet,
Resting on the mound’s edge,
Points to a battle’s reach.

ထိုပင်ငုတ်တို၊ ပျဉ်းမအိုသည်
စစ်ကိုလည်းကြုံ၊ ခြအုံလည်းဖြစ်
ဓားထစ်လည်းခံ၊ နေလျှံလည်းတိုက်
လေပြင်းခိုက်လျက်၊ မငိုက်ဦးခေါင်း
နွေသစ်လောင်းသော်
ရွက်ဟောင်းညှာကြွေ၊ ရွက်သစ်ဝေ၍
လေပြေထဲတွင်၊ ငယ်ရုပ်ဆင်သည်
အသင် ယောက်ျားကောင်းတကား။

This severed trunk, aged and withered,
Has faced warfare, endured termites,
The sword’s hack, the sun’s flames,
And the gale’s wrath, and yet,
It stands with its head held high.
When summer returns,
It sheds old stems and springs new leaves,
Youthful again in the breeze—
A mighty gallant man is he!

More on the poet Min Thu Wun here.

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

Twitchy eyebrow? Itchy sole? According to Burmese superstition, twitching eyebrows may be an omen of good fortune or financial ruin, depending the exact spot of the twitch, also on who you ask. And an itch in the sole might be a sign of imminent travel. မျက်ခုံးလှုပ်တယ် (the eyebrow twitches) and ခြေဖဝါးယားတယ် (the sole itches) are also expressions people might use to convey worry and anxiety or wanderlust and the itch to travel, so even if you don't plan on visiting a fortuneteller, it's a good idea to add them to your vocabulary and learn to use them correctly.

Sometimes the itch is not in the sole but in the heart. The expression အသည်းယားတယ် (the heart itches) is the Burmese equivalent of "I can't stand it! I can't bear it!" The sight of an adorable baby or puppy might make an English speaker feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but for a Burmese speaker, the common response is an itch in the heart.

In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, I discuss the circumstances in which you might encounter these phrases, along with examples. (Image: AI-generated in ChatGPT; Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)

Vocabulary

မျက်ခုံး eyebrow

လှုပ်တယ် to shudder, to move

မျက်ခုံးလှုပ်တယ် the eyebrow twitches

ခြေဖဝါး sole, the underside of the foot

လက်ဖဝါး palm, the underside of the hand

ယားတယ် to itch

ခြေဖဝါးယားတယ် the sole itches

အသည်း (also written အသဲ) heart

အသည်း (အသဲ) ယားတယ် the heart itches

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

In San Francisco, the city I now call home, the large Christmas tree in downtown Union Square has officially been turned on to usher in the holiday season. In Chiang Mai, Thailand, home to my guests for this episode, regular night markets have turned into Christmas markets. For this special year-end episode, I invited Su and Zue, two Chiang Mai-based Burmese teachers, to talk about Christmas, from our earliest memories of the carol singers, our favorite Christmas movies and books, and our preferred hot drinks, to the presents we might give one another if we were to have a gift exchange. So grab your eggnog or nutmeg-flavored coffee, and join us. (Photo of Wat Arun with fireworks by Prasit Rodphan, licensed from Shutterstock. Music excerpts courtesy of Pixabay.)

Vocabulary

သုံးပွင့်ဆိုင်စကားဝိုင်း a three-way conversation
ခရစ်ယာန် Christian
အဆောင် boarding house
မုန့်ဖိုးတောင်းတယ် to ask for tip / money
ယေရှု Jesus
ဘုရားသခင် God
တားမြစ်တယ် to forbid
ကားစင် / လက်ဝါးကပ်တိုင် the crucifix
ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to celebrate / to participate in festive activities
ဖျော်ရည် flavored drink / juice
ကျင်းပတယ် to hold (an event, a festival)
သောင်းသောင်းဖြဖြ energetically, earnestly
နားစွင့်တယ် to listen for a certain sound
ဂီတာကြိုး guitar string
ကောင်းချီးမင်္ဂလာ blessings
မြို့လယ်ခေါင် downtown, center of the town
မြို့တော်ဝန် mayor
ကိုယ်စားလှယ် representative
အလှဆင်တယ် to decorate
လုပ်ဖေါ်ကိုင်ဖက် coworkers
လက်ဆောင်လဲတယ် to exchange gifts
လက်မှုလုပ်ငန်း handcraft business
ရိုးရာဓလေ့ tradition / customs
အဖြူအမည်းကား black and white movie
အမွေးအကြိုင် spices
သည်းထိတ်ရင်ဖို thriller
ဝက်ဝက်ကွဲ overwhelmingly
ဘဲ boyfriend (slang)
မဖြစ်မနေ unavoidably, definitely
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ memorably
လွှမ်းမိုးတယ် to influence, to dominate
ဝိညာဏ်တော်သုံးပါး three spirits
တရားပြတယ် to give spiritual guidance, to enlighten
စာအုပ်ချုပ်တယ် to bind books
စာအုပ်ရွဲနေတယ် the book is in a bad shape (slang)
အခါသမယ auspicious period

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

Imagine this. You’re a diplomat, and in the middle of an embassy cocktail party, you suddenly switch language and speak to your counterpart from the host country in his or her mother tongue, with the kind of fluency that only comes from years of dedicated learning. With that display of earnest interest in the host country's culture, you’re bound to impress those in attendance. Who knows? The favorable impression you’ve made might even help you broker a peace deal or a trade agreement in the future.

My special guest for this episode is linguist, teacher, and translator Ye Min Tun, who has spent more than a decade teaching Burmese to the diplomats heading to Burma. For this episode, we discuss how language and culture knowledge facilitate diplomatic relationships. See if you can pick up a few Burmese words and phrases to help you sound more diplomatic. (Musical excerpts courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

အထူးဧည့်သည်တော် special guest

နိုင်ငံခြားရေးဝန်ထမ်း foreign service officer, foreign office staff

... [အဖြစ်] တာဝန်ထမ်းဆောင်တယ် to perform duties [as], to serve [in the capacity of], to work [as]

သံတမန် diplomat

အမျိုးသားအကျိုးစီးပွား national & economic interest

ကာကွယ်တယ် to protect

မြှင့်တင်တယ် to promote

မိတ်ဆွေနိုင်ငံ ally nation

ရန်သူနိုင်ငံ enemy nation / hostile nation

ထမင်းစားရေသောက်အဆင့် functional fluency (literally, fluency sufficient for eating and drinking)

ကျွဲကူးရေပါ (figure of speech) when accomplishing the main objective, minor objectives are also accomplished (literally, the water follows when a buffalo swims)

ဖိဖိစီးစီး (adverb) strenuously, intensely

နိုင်ငံရေး politics

စီးပွားရေး economics

သိပ္ပံ science

စိုက်ပျိုးရေး agriculture

ကောင်စစ်ဝန် counsellor / senior diplomat

သင်္ကြန် Thingyan festival, Burmese new year festival

စတုဒိသာ a general feast where anyone is welcome

သံအမတ် ambassador

ဝင်စားတယ် to reincarnate

ကွမ်းသီးကြိုက်သူကိုတောင်ငူပို့ to send a betelnut lover to Taungoo (known for the best betelnut)

ဖုတ်ပူမီးတိုက် (adverb) hurriedly, speedily

ပုံရိပ် impression, image

နေ့ကောင်းရက်သာ special days

တရားဝင် (adverb) officially

ဗမာဆန်တယ် to be Burmese centric

ကိုးလိုးကန့်လန့် (adverb) awkwardly

ယုန်ထင်ကြောင်ထင် (figure of speech) to cause confusion (literally, to mistake something for a rabbit or a cat)

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

Many Burmese words describing how you feel—happy, sad, depressed, and so on—are constructed with the root words ဝမ်း for "belly" or "womb," and စိတ် for "the mind." The phrase ဝမ်းသာတယ် "to be glad, to be happy" literally translates to "the belly is pleasant, favorable." The opposite phrase ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် "to be sad or unhappy" is "the belly is deficient."

To feel an overwhelming happiness is ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ်, a picturesque phrase that means "to be choking on a ball of happiness." And to be overtaken by sadness or grief is ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် , an adverb describing someone grieving in a horizontal, face-up position.

In this episode, I introduce you to words and phrases to describe feelings and emotions—with melodramatic, hyperbolic options if you so desire. (Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay)

Vocabulary

• ဝမ်းသာတယ် to be happy, glad
• ဝမ်းနည်းတယ် to be unhappy, sad
• ဝမ်းသာအားရ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
• ဝမ်းမြောက်ဝမ်းသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
• ဝမ်းပန်းတသာ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
• ဝမ်းသာအယ်လဲ happily, with great happiness (adverb)
• ဝမ်းသာလုံးဆို့နေတယ် to be overwhelmed with happiness (lit. to be choking on a ball of happiness)
• ဝမ်းနည်းပက်လက် to be unhappy (lit. sad and flat)
• စိတ်ကောင်းတယ် to be kind, good-natured
• စိတ်မကောင်းဘူး to be sad
• စိတ်ထားမကောင်းဘူး to be of spiteful, malicious temperament
• စိတ်ပုတ်တယ် to be spiteful, malicious (lit. to have a rotten mind)
• စိတ်ဆင်းရဲတယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is impoverished)
• စိတ်ညစ်တယ် to be depressed, frustrated (lit. the mind is tainted, dirty)
• စိတ်ချမ်းသာတယ် to be content, satisfied, delighted (lit. the mind is luxurious)

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

My first introduction to Burmese poetry was through the children’s nursery rhymes and classic verses scattered throughout the government-prescribed school textbooks. These were usually in the traditional four-syllable rhyme scheme, called လေးလုံးစပ် (lay lone zat), often depicting the charm of pastoral life or the longing of royal courtiers. Later, I’d come across rhymeless or freeform modern poetry, in the front pages of popular lifestyle and literary magazines.

In this episode, my guest Zue, the founder of Akkhaya Burmese Language Institute, and I recite and discuss our favorite poems, like ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (the Guest) by တင်မိုး (Tin Moe ), a succinct three-line poem open to many different interpretations, and သင်သေသွားသော် (When You’re Gone) by ဇော်ဂျီ (Zawgyi), a poem about the legacy we leave behind. We also highlight modern poetry’s symbolism, its use of everyday language and more relatable subjects, like conversations in teashops and housewives scouring the market for affordable fish or poultry, and the English words that make cameo appearances in the works of တာရာမင်းဝေ (Taya Min Wai) and မောင်ချောနွယ် (Maung Chaw Nwe).

Vocabulary

တစေ့တစောင်း at a glance
မီးတောက်ရစ်သမ် (တာရာမင်းဝေ) The Rhythm of the Flame by Taya Min Wai
ပြဋ္ဌာန်းတယ် to prescribe [a piece of writing] in a textbook
ဧည့်သည်ကြီး (တင်မိုး) "The Guest" by Tin Moe
ဘဝသရုပ်ဖေါ် life-portrayal [literary genre]
ကံကုန်တယ် to pass away
ထင်ဟပ်တယ် to reflect, to mirror
စာပေဟောပြောပွဲ literary talk
သင်သေသွားသော် (ဇော်ဂျီ) "When You Are Gone" by Zaw Gyi
ဂန္ထဝင် classic
အဝဝအစစ everything, all-encompassing
ညှပ်ပြီးသုံးတယ် to interject [English words]
ထောင့်ချိုးများ (မောင်ချောနွယ်) "Corners" by Maung Chaw Nwe
သင်္ကေတ symbols
ဥရောပ Europe
မှီငြမ်းတယ် to be based on, to be inspired by
အငွေ့အသက် signs, remnants, characteristics
ပုံရိပ် image
ရူး (မြကျေး) "Crazy" by Mya Kyay
စီးမျောပြီးဖတ်တယ် to read with deep focus, to be swept up in reading
တစ်ကိုယ်တော် solo
ဖန်တီးမှု creation
ခေါင်းပါးတယ် / ချို့တဲ့တယ် to diminish, to decline

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

Orwell’s masterpiece, Animal Farm, was inspired by the power struggle in post-revolution Russia, where a one-party authoritarian rule slowly began to take shape under the guise of Communism. The book outlines the playbook of many dictators, past and present, from the way they use propaganda and false nationalism to sway mass opinion to the way they accuse dissidents and critics of treason to silence them. In Part II on Animal Farm, my cohost Su, a Burmese teacher in Chiang Mai, and I discuss which historical figures the main characters are supposed to represent, and how the plot foreshadows the rise of tyrants in Burma and other parts of the world. Tune in to hear about how the pigs and dogs hijacked a well-meaning revolution and turn it into an authoritarian nightmare. (Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ပီပြင်တယ် to be vivid
ဝါဒဖြန့်တယ် to spread propaganda
အားကောင်းမောင်းသန် full of strength
ရုပ်လုံးကြွတယ် to be three dimensional
သာတူညီမျှ to be equal
မူဝါဒ policy
မျက်မှောက်ခေတ် contemporary era, the present era
အာဏာရတယ် to gain power
အရင်းရှင်နိုင်ငံ Capitalist country
အဓိဋ္ဌာန် pledge
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
စည်းစိမ်ယစ်မူးတယ် to be addicted to privilege
သရော်တယ် to mock, to satirize
မျက်ဝါးထင်ထင် to be able to visualize, to see clearly
နိုင်ငံပိုင်ရုပ်သံလှိုင်း national airwave, government broadcast
အာဇာနည် martyr
မဏ္ဍပ်ထိုးတယ် to pitch a pavilion or tent
မကွဲပြားဘူး to be indistinguishable
ဖြည့်ဆွက်တယ် to fill a gap, to add, to augment

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

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.