Burmese Insults: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

My students -- not all, but the rowdy and curious ones -- often ask me, how do you curse in Burmese? What is the Burmese version of the F-word or the C-word? Since this is supposed to be a G-rate podcast, I won’t be going anywhere near those. But there are well-worn insults, acceptable forms of name calling for the deserving ones. The terms range from wishing someone a horrible death to calling somebody a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing, to comparing them to the film of oil floating on the water -- a useless impurity, a surface-only type of being. So, for those rare occasions when you need to hurl abuses at someone in Burmese, my cohost Mol Mol and I will share some delicious insults: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
ဖရုဿဝါစာ curse words, indecent words
ငပျင်း lazybones
ငတုံး a numbskull

လူပေါ်ကြော့ a frivolous, wasteful person

စော်ကားတယ် to insult

အထင်သေးတယ် to look down on

ငါးစိမ်းသည်မ a fishmonger, fish seller

စွာတယ် to be feisty

ပက်ခနဲ ပြန်ပြောတတ်တယ် to talk back swiftly

ဆန်ကုန်မြေလေး a rice-wasting, earth-burdening thing

ပေါက်လွှတ်ပဲစား undisciplined, unprincipled

ပညာတတ်လူတန်းစား the educated class

လက်လွတ်စပယ် frivolously, carelessly

ဗျောက်သောက် / လူဗျောက်သောက် riffraff

ဘုကလန့်တိုက်တယ် to be difficult, to be argumentative

လူ့ဂွစာ a difficult person

ဂွကျတယ် to be difficult

လိုက်လျောညီထွေ to be harmonious

ရေပေါဆီ oil floating on the water (corrupted, fake, disingenuous, surface only)

မိ မဆုံးမ ဖ မဆုံးမ someone without proper upbringing (lit. unschooled by mom, unschooled by dad)

ကောက်ကျစ်တယ် / စဉ်းလဲတယ် / ကောက်ကျစ်စဉ်းလဲတယ် to be wicked, to be devious

သားသမီးမကောင်းမိဘခေါင်း proverb, the failure of the children reflects poorly on the parents

သေခြင်းဆိုး someone doomed to die a horrible death

ကျိန်ဆဲတယ် to put a curse on

နလပိန်းတုံး a dumb person

စကား တန်ဆာဆင်တယ် to add linguistic flourishes, to add padding words

တင်းမပြည့်ကျပ်မပြည့် to be incomplete, to be substandard (lit. neither a full kyat nor a full bucket)

ဉာဏ်ရှည်မပြည့်ဘူး to be short of intelligence

လူပါးဝတယ် / လူဝါးဝတယ် to be arrogant

ရင့်သီးတယ် to be harsh in speech

တင်တင်စီးစီးဆက်ဆံတယ် to treat others as underlings

ကျေးဇူးကန်းတယ် to be ungrateful

ထမင်းတစ်လုတ် a mouthful of rice

စောက် / သောက် damn / darn

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