How is Burmese Different From, and Similar to, English?

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Is Burmese difficult to learn--in particular, for English speakers? What’s the difference between Burmese and English grammar and sentence structures? And how do Burmese tones affect Burmese learners? How does the Burmese expression ရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့ အသံ sum up a hurdle Burmese learners must face? To discuss these, I invited Professor Justin Watkins, who specializes in Burmese and Linguistics. His students include researchers, diplomats, and NGO staffs, among others. Listen to our chat, and pick up a few fancy grammar terms to shock or surprise your own Burmese tutors. (Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

သဒ္ဒါ grammar
စာပေ literature
ဘာသာဗေဒ linguistics
လက်ဦးဆရာ first teacher or mentor
ကိုယ်တိုင် on one’s own
ကွာခြားတယ် to be different
နီးစပ်တယ် to be similar
ဥရောပ Europe
ဖွဲစည်းထားတယ် to be constructed of
ဥပမာ example
ဝါကျ sentence
ဝါကျတည်ဆောက်ပုံ sentence structure
ကြိယာ verb
နာမ် noun
ဒုက္ခရောက်တယ် to get into trouble
သဘာဝမကျဘူး not natural
ပြောင်းပြန် reverse
စိတ်ရှုပ်တယ် to be confused, to be frustrated
ရေးတော့အမှန် ဖတ်တော့အသံ When you write, spell it correctly; when you speak, say it properly. (A reminder that, in Burmese, the way something is spelled doesn’t always match how it’s pronounced.)
မှန်းတယ် to guess
သရ vowel
ဗျည်း consonant
ပြဿနာ problem
ပြောစကား spoken style
စာစကား written style, literary style
ရှေးဆန်တယ် to be old-fashioned
ပြောဖို့ကအနိုင်နိုင် (it’s) a struggle to speak
နားရည်ဝတယ် to be exposed to the spoken language
ရလာဒ် result, outcome
မထိရောက်ဘူး not effective
နာမဝိသေသန adjective
ဧကဝဏ္ဏ monosyllabic
အတ္ထုပ္ပတ္တိ biography
မဏ္ဍပ် pavilion
ဘဏ္ဍာရေး treasury, money management
ပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict

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