On Witches, Wizzard, and Nats

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Hello everyone!

It’s my pleasure to bring you the debut episode of a new podcast series for intermediate Burmese learners. My cohost is Mol Mol (မိုမို), a teacher from the Burmese Language Academy of Yangon, also known as BLAY.

Our goal here is not to offer formal instructions and practice drills, but rather, to expose you to how people talk in real life. Natural conversations are not always grammatical or orderly. They're often punctuated with hesitations, interjectons, diversions, sighs, laughter, and all kinds of utterances. No textbook can possibly cover their richness.

In each episode, Mol Mol and I will discuss a specific topic that's seasonal, timely, and relevant to Burmese culture. Our talk will be unscripted, in natural language. This way, intermediate learners can become familiar with the type of exclamations, interjections, expressions, and modes of speaking that reflect how people talk.

At the end each episode, we’ll give you the meanings of some key words and phrases. We welcome your input and suggestions for this new series, and hope this will be helpful to your Burmese studies.

Just in time for Halloween, our debut episode is on Witches, Wizards, and Nats. (Music clips courtesy of Uppbeat.)

Vocabulary
တိုင်းရင်းသူ female member of an ethnic minority

တိုင်းရင်းသား member of an ethnic minority

အချက်အချာကျတယ် to be central, to be significant

ကျင်းပတယ် to hold, as in to hold a festival or event

ဆက်စပ်တယ် to be associated with

စုန်း witch

ကဝေ witch

မှော် wizardry, wizard

ထွင်းတယ် to carve

သရဲ ghost

တစ္ဆေ ghost

နတ် animist spirit, deity

နတ်ကတော် spirit medium

ကိုးကွယ်တယ် to believe in, to worship

ပူဇော်တယ် to worship, to make an offering

ကန်တော့ပွဲပေးတယ် to pay homage with a celebration

ထွန်းကားတယ် to proliferate, to become widespread

ပူးတယ် to possess, as in a spirit possesses a human

ယူဆတယ် to believe

အယူအဆ belief

ဟောတယ် to predict

ရိုးရာနတ် traditional spirit

လက်ဆင့်ကမ်းပေးတယ် to hand down

ထူးဆန်းတယ် to be strange, to be mysterious

လိပ်သားသုပ် turtle meat salad

တောင်ပြုန်းပွဲတော် Taungbyone Nat Festival

ကတိပေးတယ် to make a promise

စောင့်ရှောက်တယ် to protect

ကတိမတည်ဘူး to fail to keep a promise

ဒဏ်ခတ်တယ် to punish

Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.