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.
A Year in Language, Day 360: Burmese
Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language. It is spoken in Myanmar by some 43 million people, about 10 million of which acquired it as a second language.
Myanmar was formerly known as Burma, and the choice is an issue of some political tension. Both terms are derived from the Burmese word for the Bamar ethnicity, whose language and culture are dominant. The official English terminology used within the government of Myanmar refer to the language as "Myanmar language", though within the native Anglosphere "Burmese" is still the most common term.
The Bamar people and their language originally dominated only what is now northern Myanmar, with the southern half of the region being dominated by the Austroasiatic Mon people and language, but between 1750 and 1830 there was a mass of migration, intermarriage, and assimilation that has resulted in the ongoing spread of Bamar language at the expense of the now vulnerable Mon.
Excluding the Sinitic (Chinese) half of the Sino-Tibetan family, Burmese is the most widespread. It is impressively monosyllabic, and what little disyllabic vocabulary is largely a result of reduplication. Burmese script is distinctively round (ex. မြန်မာဘာသာ) and tends to utilize a non-unicode font. This has caused ongoing compatibility issues as the worlds languages move into digital space.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Hey i know burmese is your native language but do you have any resources on where I could learn it?
I've been sitting on this for a while because I know there aren't a lot of good resources for Burmese. Look, if you want to learn Burmese, you should get books by John Okell. He's a very famous expert linguist in Burma Studies and his books are so good. I'm reading one of his books on Burmese Grammar and it's very good.
I should point out that there's a significant barrier to learning Burmese that everyone faces is that WE DON'T HAVE GOOD RESOURCES. The Burmese movies and songs are shitty at best, and they're so unnatural that people learning Burmese will never benefit from that. But our literature is so good. So I suggest if you're just learning for fun, you should start learning consonants and vowels and throw yourself into reading and writing. Only a burmese tutor will be able to properly teach you listening and speaking. If you know Thai, Korean, Japanese or Chinese, they do have Burmese language books made for their people but English resources, with the exception of John Orkell's books, are pretty useless by now because no one is updating them.
Gotta say, wikipedia page about Burmese language is a VERY good one. I go and read that page from time to time just because it's so fascinating. You can start there!
A typical day of being Nonbinary and Burmese living in Myanmar. This is about misgendering or gender stuff but still, people might learn something about the language.
Burmese words aren't gendered, but we have a very status-centered language. So I can't just be "I" when I am being polite. I have to refer to myself in feminine or masculine pronouns. Furthermore, you have to state if you're older or younger than the person you're talking to OR if you're more high status or low status than the person you're talking to. (Status just means like how a teacher is higher status than their pupil.)
What do I mean? Well, when I refer to myself in a polite way, I have to either use ကျွန်တော် (I but masculine) or ကျွန်မ (I but feminine) or say ဆရာ (teacher/masc) ဆရာမ (teacher/fem) I mostly use my own name (referring to myself in 3rd person) or masculine pronouns for myself. Because since my name is Helen and I use masculine pronouns, it confuses people. That's much more fun than using feminine pronouns and having to guess if people are misgendering me on purpose. Most people who know I'm Nonbinary just calls me "Helen" instead of pronouns. Some people don't want to call me Helen because they're younger than me and it sounds rude. But the other option is misgendering so they do inspite of the cultural implications and I LOVE them for it.
Said language complication: a client keeps referring to herself as "older sister" even though she's younger than me. So I tell her I'm older than her (but I don't explain my gender because she's just a client) She immediately asks me "should I call you older brother or younger brother then?" I absolutely DO NOT want to be misgendered in other way round (or have to choose which gender do I want to be misgendered in. My God.) So I just told her to call me Helen. After all, my professional name is Helen.
I think it's all fine now. Then she immediately ignored every single thing I've said and continued speaking like she's older than me. Sigh.
Some of you might ask "well, why do you even try to tell her that you're older? What's the point?" but trying to not talk about a status-pronoun in the status-pronoun language is like trying to speak English without using articles. You can only dance around pronouns for so long until you get caught in it.
