On Burmese Slangs, from Being Broke to Having a Crush

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

If you’re going out to lunch with a Burmese friend who says he’s running low on water (ရေခမ်းနေတယ်), be prepared to pay for the meal. That means he’s broke. On the other hand, if you’re running low on water yourself, but he is overflowing, so to speak (ရေလျှံနေတယ်), you can probably ask him to pay for the meal.

In English, if you need some type of permit or approval from a government office or an institution, you may need to grease the wheel. In Burmese, you may need to offer the clerk or the boss some tea money (လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး) to get your application on the top of the pile. And if you’re single, dressed in your best outfit, sitting in a conspicuous spot in a café, doing something cute or sexy to attract the attention of romantic prospects, you are displaying your goods on a tray (ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ်).

In this episode, my cohost Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese language teacher, and I discuss the colorful phrases and slangs the young people are using, and what they actually mean. Join us as we shoot the breeze, as you might say in English, or bake potatoes (အာလူးဖုတ်), as we might say in Burmese. (Illustration AI generated, Microsoft Designer; music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ဗန်းစကား slang
နယ်ပယ် territory, sector, segment
အနုပညာလောက the creative sector
အနုပညာလောကသား members of the creative sector
ရေလောင်းပေးတယ် to bribe (lit. to pour water)
စကားဝှက် code word
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုး bribe (lit. tea money)
လက်ဖက်ရည်ဖိုးထိုးတယ် / ပေးတယ် to offer bribe (lit. to offer tea money)
မိုက်တယ် to be stylist / hip
ဆယ်လဖီဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ဓာတ်ဖမ်းတယ် to take photo (lit. to capture electricity)
ရေလျှံတယ် to have money to spend (lit. to be overflowing)
ရေခမ်းတယ် / ရေပြတ်တယ် to be broke (lit. to be low on water, to run out of water)
ဘိုင်ပြတ်တယ် to be broke
ကြွေတယ် to develop a crush
Crush တယ် to develop a crush
ကြူးတယ် to show off, to publicize someone’s virtues excessively
ဈေးဗန်းခင်းတယ် to attract attention, especially in the romantic sense (lit. to display goods on a tray)
အိုဗာတင်းတယ် to overact, to be melodramatic (from close pronunciation of “over” from “Ovaltine”)
Drama ခင်းတယ် to cause drama
အာလူးဖုတ်တယ် to be talkative (lit. to bake potatoes)
လေပေါတယ် to be talkative (lit. to be windy)
ရွှီးတယ် to lie, to make up stuff, to exaggerate
ပေါက်ပေါက်ဖေါက်တယ် to be talkative, to pester, to scold incessantly (lit. to pop popcorn)
ပွားတယ် to pester, to scold incessantly
စိတ်လေတယ် to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down
ဘူတယ် to be at a loss, to be distracted, to be unmotivated, to feel down
ဟွန်ဒီ unofficial money transferring agent
လန်းတယ် to be stylish, hip (lit. to be fresh)
အထာကျတယ် to be impressive, attractive
ဘိုးတော် / ဘွားတော် dad, mom
ချောင်တယ် / ပေါက်တယ် to lose one’s mind, to be crazy
ပလပ်ကျွပ်တယ် to lose one’s mind (lit. to be unplugged)
ယောက်ဖ / သားကြီး good friend (lit. son, brother-in-law)
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