You might have noticed that, in Chinatown, red lanterns are going up, and lion dancers and dragon dancers are coming out, ready to parade the street. Mid-February is usually Chinese New Year, so both the Chinese community in Yangon, and the Chinese diaspora around the world are decked out in red dresses and new outfits, ready to welcome the new year. In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the new year festivities we can see around us. (Photo by Maritxu, licensed from Shutterstock, Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ချစ်သူများနေ့ Valentine’s Day

ထုံးတမ်းအစဉ်အလာ tradition

ပြန့်နှန့်တယ် to spread

သည်းခံတယ် to tolerate, to put up with

တရုတ်နှစ်သစ်ကူး Chinese New Year

မြန်မာပြည်ဖွားတရုတ် Chinese born and raised in Burma

တိုးနယား mythical creature with features of lion, dragon, and phoenix

ဘုံကျောင်း Chinese clan house

အံပေါင်း red envelope with spending money (Burmese loan word from Chinese 红包 Hongbao)

ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, myth

တရုတ်တန်း Chinatown

မီးပုံး lantern

ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker

ဗျောက်အိုးဖေါက်တယ် to set off firecrackers

အမွှေးတိုင် incenses

မျက်စိစပ်တယ် to get itchy eyes

လမ်းသလားတယ် to stroll around

မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks

ကလန်ကဆန်လုပ်တယ် to act rebelliously, to defy

နှစ်ဆန်းတစ်ရက်နေ့ New Year Day

လူပျိုဟိုင်း old bachelor (slang)

ဝက်သား သုံးထပ်သား pork belly meat

အိတယ် to be soft, tender (in meat texture)

ဘဲကင် roast duck

ခေါက်ဆွဲ noodle

စုတ်ချက် brushstroke

ဗန်းစကား slang

ရေပန်းစားတယ် to be popular

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If a politician speaks ambiguously without committing to one side or the other on an issue, you might call it political doublespeak in English, and accuse him or her of being wishy-washy. In Burmese, you might say he or she is "straddling the sides of two boats," လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် or လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်ခွတယ်. On the other other hand, if you can resolve a conflict by satisfying the two opposing sides, your solution may be praised as ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ , meaning "the chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it"; or မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး "neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break." To learn how to use these phrases correctly, listen to the latest episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary

• လှေနံ the edge of a boat
• လှေနံနှစ်ဖက်နင်းတယ် / ခွတယ် to straddle on the sides of two boats (to play both sides, to be noncommital)
• ဝေ့လည်ကြောင်ပတ် to be wishy-washy
• သောင်မတင် ရေမကျ neither stranded on the beach, nor going back into the water (to be in a stalemate, to be a deadlock)
• ရှဉ့်လည်းလျှောက်သာ ပျားလည်းစွဲသာ The chipmunk can tread on the branch; so can the bees build a hive on it.
• မြွေမသေ တုတ်မကျိုး Neither the snake shall die, nor the stick shall break.
• ပြန်လည်သင့်မြတ်သွားတယ် to reconcile

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In the 1980s, when I was growing up in Rangoon under Ne Win's Socialist Government, I remember how foreigners were shocked by, among other things, local people chewing betel quid and spitting out splashes of red betel juice all over the sidewalks. Today, if you come from a place like Japan, where nobody expects you to tip, you’re in for a shock when visiting the U.S., where tipping is expected everywhere, from coffee shops to fine-dining restaurants (15-20% of your bill is the norm, in case you’re wondering). In both Thailand and Burma, travelers are expected to remove their footwear when entering temples and shrines, but there’s a notable difference between the two countries. In Japan, you can generally enter temple grounds with your shoes on, but must remember to remove them if you’re entering someone’s home, especially a traditional home with tatami mats.

In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher, and I discuss the culture shocks we have experienced at home and abroad. (Photo by Jirawatfoto, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

မျက်နှာချင်းဆိုင် face to face (adverb)
ခြေချတယ် to settle
မြေအောက်ရထား underground train, subway
မိုးပျံတံတား / မိုးပျံလမ်း overhead bridge or walkway (lit. flying bridge or walkway)
ညဈေး night market
ကျတ်ရွာ village of the lost souls / ghost village
သရဲတ‌စ္ဆေ ghosts
အလာကျဲတယ် to come infrequently (used with trains and buses)
အလာစိပ်တယ် to come frequently (used with trains and buses)
ဖိုမဆက်ဆံရေး intimate relationships (lit. male-female interaction)
ပွင့်လင်းတယ် open, progressive, liberal (socially)
ပရဝဏ် pagoda precinct
အများသုံးအိမ်သာ public bathroom
ကွမ်း betel quid
ကွမ်းတံတွေး betel juice (liquid from chewing betel quid)
ထွေးတယ် to spit
ပက်ခနဲ in a splash
လူ့ကျင့်ဝတ် social protocol, proper manner
လိုင်းကား bus
၃၁ ဘုံ 31 planes of existence
ဖေါ်ရွေတယ် to be hospitable
နှိုးဆော်တယ် to urge, to rally
ချေလျင် on foot (adverb)
တစ်ပြ a distance equal to one furlong or 220 yards, but Burmese people also use it to refer to ill-defined distances

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