On Burmese Donation Rituals and Terms

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

What might inspire someone in Burma to donate? The reasons can range from celebrating a birthday or remembering a loved one who has passed away to supporting a monastery or nunnery. A rite of passage, such as a young man becoming a novice monk or a young woman getting her ears pierced, could also prompt a community to hold a general feast, where everyone is welcome. For Burmese language learners, describing a donation might be much harder than making a donation. The meals you offer to the monks and nuns are called ဆွမ်း (alms); and when you donate money to them, it’s marked as ဝတ္ထုပစ္စည်း (material goods) for the purpose of နဝကမ္မ (general use). A feast where anyone—invited or not—is welcome, is called စတုဒိသာ, meaning “open to those from the four cardinal directions” in Pali. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the donation rituals and the proper terms to describe them. (Thumbnail image by by NattapolStudio, licensed from Shutterstock, a novitiation ceremony in Burma. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

အလှူ / အလှူဒါန donation

အလှူလုပ်တယ် to make a donation

ဘာသာရေး religion

လူမှုရေး social affairs

ရှင်ပြုတယ် to novitiate, to become a novice monk

ရှင်ပြုမင်္ဂလာ novitiation ceremony

နားသတယ် / နားထွင်းတယ် to pierce ears

နားသမင်္ဂလာ ear piercing ceremony

နားတောင်း / နားကပ် earring

ကွယ်လွန်သူ the deceased, the departed

ရည်စူးတယ် to dedicate an act of merit to someone

မိဘမဲ့ဂေဟာ orphanage

စတုဒိသာ general feast

ဖောဖောသီသီ generously

ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း monastery

သီလရှင်ကျောင်း nunnery

မျက်နှာငယ်တယ် to be unimportant, to be neglected or overlooked

ဆွမ်း alms (food for monks and nuns)

ဆွမ်းကပ်တယ် to offer alms

အရုဏ်ဆွမ်း dawn meal for monks and nuns

နေ့ဆွမ်း midday meal for monks and nuns

လူနေရပ်ကွက် residential district

စည်ကားတယ် to be lively

ဝိနည်း monastic rules

နဝကမ္မ general use

ဝေယျာဝစ္စ general tasks

ရေစက်ချတယ် to ritualistically pour water after a donation

ငါးပါးသီလ five precepts

ရှစ်ပါးသီလ eight precepts

ကုသိုလ်ကောင်းမှု meritorious deeds

နတ်ကောင်းနတ်မြတ် divinities

သာဓုခေါ်တယ် to proclaim an act of merit

ခေါင်းလောင်းထိုးတယ် to strike a bell

ပွဲတော်ရက် festival day

လပြည့်နေ့ full-moon day

သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut festival

ဆွမ်းဆန်စိမ်း nonperishable goods for the monks

ကထိန်သင်္ကန်း robes offered during the period of Kahtein

အခြောက်အခြမ်း dry goods

ပဒေသာပင် a makeshift structure to attach donated objects

ထွေးအင် spittoon

အဘိဓမ္မာစာမေးပွဲ monastic exam

ဒုက္ခသည် refugee, those in need

လေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် storm refugee

ရေဘေးဒုက္ခသည် flood refugee
မီးဘေးဒုက္ခသည် fire refugee

စစ်ဘေးဒုက္ခသည် war refugee

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