On Mon Language and Culture

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

The Mons, an ethnic group with its own distinct language and culture, exist in both Burma and Thailand. The Mon script is considered a source of the current Burmese script. The conventional view is Bagan’s conquest of the Mons in 1057 reshaped the character of Bagan, the first Burmese empire, as a Buddhist kingdom.

Mon also happens to be the mother tongue of my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon). In this episode, we discuss the link between Mon and Burmese words, Mon dishes and Burmese dishes, and traces of Mon names that can be seen in contemporary place names like Kamayut, a township in Yangon. (Photo licensed from Shutterstock: Mon girls on a bridge in Sangklaburi, Kanchanaburi, Thailand; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)
Vocabulary

ဘာသာစကား language
ဆရာခေါ်တယ် to treat someone as a teacher or mentor
အဆက်အစပ်ရှိတယ် to be related
အက္ခရာ alphabet, letters
ဗျည်း consonant letters
အပိတ်ဗျည်းသံ end-consonant sound
သရ vowel
နှုတ်ဆက်တယ် to greet, to bid farewell
အဓိပ္ပာယ် meaning
အဓိပ္ပာယ် တူတယ် to have the same meaning
အသံထွက်ဆင်တယ် pronunciation is similar
ကွာခြားတယ် to be dissimilar, to be different
ရန်အန္တရာယ်တွေချုပ်ငြိမ်းပြီ danger and strife have been extinguished
ရာမညဒေသ Ramanya Daytha, old Mon name lower Burma
ဟံသာဝတီ Hanthawady, old name for present day Bago (Pegu)
ကမာရွတ်မြိုနယ် Kamayut, a township in Yangon (Rangoon)
ကျိုက်ထီးရိုး Kyaiktiyo Pagoda
ဟင်းရည်ပျစ်တယ် the soup is thick
ခေါင်ရည် sweet ale, available in certain ethnic regions
ထန်းရည် palm ale
တစ်သွေမတိမ်း to strictly adhere to something
သံဖြူဇရပ် Thanphyu Zayat, a city in lower Burma
ရေး Yay/Ye, a city in lower Burma
စကားဝဲတယ် to have an accent, to deviate from standard pronunciation
ပိဿာ peittha, traditional weight measurement unit, roughly 3.6LB
ဈေးသက်သက်သာသာ with affordable price
စော Sao, Karen male name prefix
စိုင်း Sai, Shan male name prefix
မင်း Min, Mon male name prefix
ယဉ်ကျေးမှု culture
ရွာလုံးကျွတ် the entire village

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