#burmese language

[helenstudies]

burmese puns can be so funny like the word "fashion queen" is used in slang to describe someone who really cannot dress well. The pun is "someone who's being avoided by fashion" because queen is the exact sound of "ကွင်း" meaing "avoid". my friend just used that slang and it tickled me so much I had to post is here. I love it when the languages line up so that a joke can exist.

[fandoomed-len]

တချို့လူတွေ transandrophobia အကြောင်း တင်ထားတဲ့စာဖတ်ပြီး "ဒီတစ်ယောက်က ဗမာမဟုတ်ပါဘူး" တို့၊ "သူ့ကြည့်ရတာ မြန်မာမှာရှိနေတာ မဟုတ်ပါဘူး" တို့ ဇွတ်ဘလိမ်းချင်နေမှာ ကြိုသိလို့ မြန်မာလို post လေး ရေးတင်ပေးလိုက်ပါတယ်နော် :3

Translation: I know some people are going to see my posts about transandrophobia and about to start blaming me and spouting nonsense like "oh, this one isn't burmese" or "I don't think they're in Myanmar" so this is a obligatory post in burmese :3

[helenstudies]

I don't talk a lot about Burmese language, huh? I just realized that some Burmese insults are so good they're insta-kill one liners. (I mean those which aren't racist/sexist etc of course because insults can be like that in ANY language)

Anyway, here's a few insults I enjoy!

အုတ်ကြားမြက်ပေါက် (Oat kyar myat pout) that translates literally to "grass that grows in between bricks." The meaning is pretty close to a "bastard" because the grass isn't supposed to be there. Idiot grass, trying to grow in the bricks smh.

ဆန်ကုန်မြေလေး (San kone myay lay) the literal translation is "spent rice, heavy ground" but it means "you're a waste of rice and the only thing you've ever done in your life is making the ground heavy" which is so sick 😭

လျှာအရိုးမရှိ (Shar a yoe ma shi) lit. translation being "tongue doesn't have a bone" and it means "you can't keep saying bullshit just because your tongue doesn't have a bone in it!"

Of course, there are MANY others but these are my top three contenders.

[helenstudies]

My handwriting in five languages

English | Burmese | Korean | Chinese | Japanese

I don't have the most beautiful handwriting but I love writing on paper with a pen!! my fav is black in because I feel cooler. The sentences are from books I had around.

my fav handwriting is definitely my Burmese handwriting. Look at those round things go!!!

my favorite language to practice writing in is Chinese. The hanzi (or kanji/hanja) feels so nice. It's like meditation

my favorite language to actually write things in is Korean. Maybe because now I'm fluent in a language other than Burmese and English. While writing long essays in Korean, I can FEEL my brain unlocking things.

least favorite language to write in is japanese. My brain has to switch gears from simplified chinese characters to traditional chinese characters to japanese chinese characters. maybe it'll get easier if I get to like N1 but right now, it's ugh. I love hiragana but I'm going to have an enemies to lovers arc with katakana. I can feel it.

[helenstudies]

One of the Burmese sayings I keep thinking about nowadays is this: ဆင်လည်း ဆင့်အထွာနဲ့၊ ဆိတ်လည်း ဆိတ်အထွာနဲ့ (my translation of this: the elephant measures by the elephant measurements and the goat measures by the goat's measurements). This phrase is used in many contexts but the core meaning of the saying is "it is different for everyone."

Of course, an elephant might look at a tree and think it small while a goat may look at the same tree and think it big. An elephant might eat a colossal amount of food compared to the goat, but for the elephant it is a normal amount of food.

During these worrying and turbulent times, it is imperative that we realize all of us are going through life but we are not going through the same life. We have to have empathy and sympathy for fellow humans. You have to be kind to yourself as well. If you're a very productive person because you have a lot of energy, you can't blame someone who isn't energetic as you are. Their achievements might look small to you, but for them it's big. For you, an insult might be easy to shake off, but for others it might be a life-long traumatic memory.

This must apply to any sort of comparison and criticism you make in the world. Are you sure that person is the same as you are? Maybe you are an elephant to their goat? Are you a goat compared to that elephant? And does it matter if you can't measure up to someone else's expectations?

An elephant will never turn into a goat. You just have to make peace with the fact that everyone is living their own version of life. Understand this, apply this to as many things as you can and take life in stride (in your own pace of course)

[helenstudies]

I don't think I've ever said it here but my area of interest in linguistics is etymology, actually! I love reading about words and how they came to be. Unfortunately, since each and every word has their own little garden path they took in the course of history, it's hard for a person to keep track of them. At least etymology of words in my target languages are well-documented but that's not really the case with Burmese.

Burmese is a Tibeto-Burman language and like most other languages, it is a beautiful entangled mess. Old Burmese is a mix of Mon, Pyu and Pali languages. Modern Burmese is heavily influenced by languages of our neighbouring countries: which if you don't know are China, India, Thai, Bangladesh and Laos. [Side note: I think people have a general idea of where those five countries are but most people have no clue where Myanmar is. We're squarely in the middle of those five.] Anyway, I've been looking for etymology books on Burmese but they're not widely available to the public. The only source you can easily look up is Wikitionary but they're not that credible and also wikipedia is banned in Myanmar. And yes, you should be mad about that. Other than that, I love comparative studies about languages but I've never thought about what languages do I want to compare and study about. It'll come to me one day, I hope? For now, my thing is learn languages and read a lot about etymology.

[helenstudies]

Burmese/Myanmar 1st Person Pronouns

Talking about burmese yet AGAIN. I promise I'm not a nationalist, it is just a deeply interesting language and no one else is talking about it.

Let's talk pronouns. Burmese is a status-centered language. Who you are and what you do is incredibly important in conversations. I'm here to talk about first person pronouns. (btw if you're a mandarin chinese speaker, these rules might be very familiar to you!)

Equivalent of "I" (1st person singular pronoun)

ငါ (ngar) - informal. Used only for friends or people younger than the speaker. Incredibly rude to refer to yourself like this to older people or strangers. ကျွန်တော် (kya-naw) - formal. Mostly used by men or masculine people but it was very commonly used by women from Mandalay or upper Myanmar. Now women from other regions use it as well. Age of the person you're speaking to does not matter but it is implied that the speaker thinks you're older or deserving of respect. ကျွန်မ (kya-ma) - formal. Used by women or feminine people. Queer men or effeminate men will use this ironically or sincerely. Age of the person you're speaking to does not matter but it is implied that the speaker thinks you're older or deserving of respect. ကျုပ် (kyote) - formal. When used by older people, it's neutral but if it's used by people of your age or younger, it's only a little bit less rude than ငါ (ngar) ကိုယ် (ko) - formal but intimate. It is a gender neutral pronoun but if you're a masculine person, it hints you really care about the other person and sometimes have romantic connotations. If you're a feminine person though, it is similar to အိုင် (I). This is pronounced the same as ကို (ko) which means older brother OR someone's male/masculine lover but it is not the same word. အိုင် (I) - informal. Yes, the English word "I" has been adopted into the language but it is only used by women who are talking to people of their age or younger. As you can see, masculine pronouns are actually also gender neutral pronouns. Now, we're gonna talk about status-centred 1st person and 2nd person pronouns. Like I said, it is important to be aware of your own age and your status or occupation when you're conversing with someone. Burmese people will use family pronouns or their occupations to refer to themselves. And the person you're talking to will repeat the 1st person pronoun you used and also use it as the 2nd person pronoun during your conversation. The family pronouns can be used even on complete strangers. It's just a way to be polite.

သား (thar) and သမီး (tha-mee) - it means "son" or "daughter." သား (thar) or son is used by both masculine and feminine people but သမီး (thamee) or daughter is only used by women or feminine people. Instead of "I'll do that" they'll say "(this) son/daughter will do that." It is implied that the speaker things the other party is older than them, if not as old as their parents at least as old as their aunts or uncles.

Just like son and daughter, any role of a family member can be used here. You can call yourself many words including but not limited to အမေ (amay - mom) အ‌ဖေ (aphay - dad) အန်တီ (aunty) အန်ကယ် (uncle) အစ်မ (ama - older sister) အစ်ကို (ako - older brother) ညီ/ညီလေး (nyi/nyi lay - younger brother) ညီမ/ညီမလေး (nyima/nyima lay - younger sister) and so on. And yes, just like mandarin chinese, we do have words for uncle on mother's side or aunt on father's side et cetera but it's mostly in Upper Myanmar regions.

So then how does occupational 1st/2nd person pronouns work? It is exacty what you think it is. If you're a teacher or a mentor you use the word ဆရာ/ဆရာမ (sayar/sayarma - teacher (male)/(female) for yourself. တီချယ် (which is pronounced teacher and meand teacher) is a word solely reserved for female teachers and educators, and by that I mean school teachers. But ဆရာ/ဆရာမ (sayar/sayarma - teacher (male)/(female) can be used in any occupation as long as you're a mentor or a boss of the person you're speaking to. There are occupational and personal pronouns for monks/nuns as well.

So let's say you're going up to a stranger to ask for directions. You have to look at a person and decide how old you think they are, what gender you think they are and how polite you think you need to be before saying anything. Because you can be saying "older brother, (this) younger brother wants to know where x is" or "uncle, (this) niece wants to know where x is." As you might have guessed by now, it is easy to offend people in Burmese, intentionally or not.

And another feature of Burmese language: you can use your name or your nickname for yourself. It would be like speaking about yourself in 3rd person if you're in another language. Since my name is Helen, I can say "Helen's not hungry. Helen just ate" and it's completely normal. Although using your own name as a 1st person pronoun is a statement in itself. It is normally used by younger people talking to an older person.

I can go on and on about pronouns, especially the way it interacts with queer community at large. You can immediately get someone's personality by just hearing the pronouns they use for themselves in various settings. People will change their 1st person pronouns at a whim to better suit the situation at hand. It is amazing to see people code-switching pronouns in real time, and even more so when they come out. This is also why "pronouns are who you are" thing never made sense to me.

On a personal note, I use ကျွန်တော် (kya-naw) for myself on nearly all occasions except at home where I use my nickname instead. In English, my pronouns are they/them/he/him but in Burmese, my pronoun is simply my name. I always tell people to call me "Helen" instead of "You" or other gendered/status-oriented terms. Calling someone by their name is considered rude so people struggle with this a bit because they feel like they're being mean but I always insist on it because I don't wanna be called gendered pronouns.

[fandoomed-len]

this is just a rant but like yeah, a lot of things in Myanmar and Burmese culture are bad. A lot of Bamar people are bad. A lot of Buddhists are bad. But so is any other demographic. I've never said anything like "oh Myanmar is the BEST! I love being Bamar and Buddhists" and I will never say it because the military junta is literally trying to build a ethnoreligious state all the time. Burmese people have a phrase we say to each other ironically and that is "ဗုဒ္ဓဘာသာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်" (Buddhist Myanmar country) and it's always used ironically like "wow! we're not getting electricity today! Isn't it wonderful to live in this BUDDHIST MYANMAR COUNTRY!??? 😍" like we know. Everyone knows about the rohingya genocide. Everyone knows about the discrimination and the displacement the minorities were facing for the last 70 years even before the military coup in 2021. This civil war is happening exactly because people know about this and are trying to course-correct it. But that doesn't mean I have to go "Ugh, the Burmese people are so backward and ugh, the buddhists are awful" like that's not how it works. And yet, a lot of burmese diaspora do that. I understand. I understand the urge to assimilate into the new country and the culture you're in. I understand the urge to reject everything about your origins to become more like the foreign country you're in right now. But because of that, Myanmar had stayed invisible and had been ignored by the world at large. When I was 18, I felt really disconnected from my identity as well, and was able to only reconcile with myself after the coup happened. And one of my take away is that instead of feeling shame and anger about everything happening here, I have to speak out. Because I have the ability to do so. If someone who can speak stay silent, the people who cannot speak will not be heard. And if I'm going to run away and stay silent, the people who cannot run away will have to suffer more. The fact is whether I like it or not, I'm part Bamar and I'm (barely) Buddhist. I will have to deal with my ancestors' skeletons in the closet. I'm willing to do the work, to educate myself. But that doesn't mean I won't talk about the culture and the country and the people that I love. Also, it's just easy to talk about positive or neutral facts about Myanmar and Burmese language as a way to "educate" people while also treating it as a form of escapism for me. I am able to get out of my anxiety and fear of my situation and go "oh, I need to look up these facts and talk about these things." So I'm doing that. Please don't take my writings as trying to sugarcoat or embellish Myanmar in an attempt to make it more exciting or palatable or anything. It's just hard to write about the bad things while bad things are happening, and I applaud people who can talk about news and politics and explain the delicate situations here. but I'm not one of them. I'm a language nerd and I like to talk about niche or neat facts about customs or festivals. So if I have to talk about Myanmar, I tend to orient towards burmese language and customs. That's about it.