On Pagoda Fairs and Fortunetellers

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

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3y ago 23:02

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What might you expect to find at a Burmese pagoda fair? What kind of food, souvenirs, and attractions would you likely encounter? Aside from cotton candy stands, Ferris wheel rides, and souvenir shops with paper tigers and paper demons, the fair might also give you a chance to have your fortune read by a fortuneteller. There may also be gambling going on, where you can bet on different animals on a chart, picked by a dice roll. In today’s episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my cohost Mol Mol and I share our fond memories from the pagoda fairs. Grab your parasol and come along. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

ဘုရားပွဲ pagoda fair
ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel
ပင်လယ်ဓါးပြ pirates
မူးပြီးအန်တယ် to get dizzy and throw up
မုခ် the entrance to a pagoda
စောင်းတန်း the climb or walkway to a pagoda
စင်္ကြန် corridor
စေတီ shrine
ပရိဝုဏ်/ပရဝုဏ် the pagoda’s precinct
တံခွန်၊ ကုက္ကား folded, layered paper banners, typical shrine offerings
နိဗ္ဗာန်ကုန် merchandize related to pagodas and shrines
လမ်းတစ်လျှောက် along the way
ပုတီး rosary
ဆင်းတု sacred statue or figure
ဗေဒင်ဆရာ fortuneteller
ဗေဒင်ယုံတယ် to believe in fortunetelling
... ကိန်းရှိတယ် to be destined to ... / fated to ...
ဒီနှစ်ငွေဝင်ကိန်းရှိတယ် This year, you're destined to receive some money.
ဗေဒင်ဟောတယ် to read someone’s fortune
စူးစမ်းတယ် to investigate
ယေဘုယျ generally
ဇာတာချတယ် to draw up someone’s birth chart with planetary alignments
လက္ခဏာကြည့်တယ် to tell someone’s fortune from palmistry
အကြားအမြင်ပေါက်တယ် to have foresight
မွေးနေ့သက္ကရာဇ် birthday and birth year
မုန့်လင်မယား savory fried cakes sold in pairs (hence the name "couple cake")
အာတာပူစီ cotton candy
ဝါးနံရံ / ဝါးထံရံ bamboo walls
အိုးပုတ် clayware, miniature cooking utensils made of clay
လောင်းကစား gambling
လေးကောင်ဂျင် a gambling game where people bet on the animals on a chart
တောင်ပြုန်းဘုရားပွဲ Taungpyone/Taungbyone festival
မန်းရွှေစက်တော်ဘုရားပွဲ Mandalay Shwe Set Taw Pagoda festival
အလောင်းတော်ကဿပဘုရား ပွဲ Alaungdaw Kathapa Pagoda festival
မော်တင်စွန်းဘုရားပွဲ Maw Tin Soon Pagoda festival
ဖဲရိုက်တယ် to play cards
ကြိတ်ကြိတ်တိုး to be impenetrably crowded
နိဂုံးချုပ်တယ် to conclude

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