Bite-Size Burmese: Green-Branch Breakup, Green Death, and Green-Faced Folks

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

In English, green is the color of jealousy, but in Burmese romance, a green-branch split (သစ်စိမ်းချိုး ချိုးတယ်) is a cruel, hurtful breakup. If a cold shoulder is the precursor to a breakup, in Burmese, the sign is a green-wind blowing (လေစိမ်းတွေတိုက်နေတယ်). Strangers and unfamiliar faces are green men (လူစိမ်း) and green faces (မျက်နှာစိမ်း). Sushi and tuna tartar could be described as green-fish dishes (ငါးစိမ်း) and violent, untimely deaths are green deaths (အစိမ်းသေ). In this episode of Bite-Size Burmese, explore and learn the green-colored expressions that might surprise or delight you.

Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io. Illustration by Nyan Kyal Say, licensed to K. Wong

Vocabulary

လူစိမ်း stranger

မျက်နှာစိမ်း an unfamiliar face

ရင်းနှီးတယ် to be familiar

သစ်စိမ်းချိုး ချိုးတယ် to break up with someone in a cruel, hurtful fashion

သဘာဝအတိုင်း in the course of nature

ရက်ရက်စက်စက် cruelly

မညှာမတာ without mercy

စိမ်းစိမ်းကားကားကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something bitterly, hatefully

စိန်းစိန်းဝါးဝါးကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something intensely

စူးစူးစိုက်စိုက်ကြည့်တယ် to look at someone or something intensely

ကြိယာဝိသေသန adverb

အစိမ်းစားတယ် to eat something raw, uncooked

အသေဆိုးနဲ့သေတယ် to die a violent, painful death

လေစိမ်းတွေတိုက်နေတယ် to give the cold shoulder

ဗန်းစကား slang

နွေးနွေးထွေးထွေးဆက်ဆံတယ် to treat warmly, affectionately

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