Tag: language

The fear of a female tiger, and other language lessons.

The last two weeks passed in a blur of confusion and panic, as I pitted my wits against a somewhat-too-advanced Burmese course and won lost survived. It was very good for my Burmese and I learned an overwhelmingly large amount, although my biggest realisation is just how much I still have to learn. There has been a big shift from my “unknown unknowns” into my “known unknowns”.

And now I shall regale you with some things that I have learnt. Mostly in the “humorous literal translation” category.

Continue reading The fear of a female tiger, and other language lessons.

One hundred thousand diamonds.

One of the nice things about learning Burmese is discovering that words you have known for a long time* have other meanings. In this case, the (as of last week**) former president U Thein Sein’s name, which literally translates as Mr One Hundred Thousand Diamonds. Which is a pretty strong leader-of-the-country type name. Also probably a good rap name. Continue reading One hundred thousand diamonds.

Hniq’, or “please love me again”.

Burmese is a tonal language, where subtle differences in pronunciation completely change the meaning of a word. But it’s also a language where the same word, spelled and pronounced the same, can have completely different meanings. For example, I give you hniq’ (နှစ်)* which means, variously, ‘immerse’, ‘year’, or ‘two’.**

This is a story about me learning Burmese, and being very far from the smartest person in the room. Continue reading Hniq’, or “please love me again”.

ဘယ်လောက်လဲ

Or as John Okell would romanicize it, “beh-lauq-lèh”. Which is to say “how much?”, which is what I said when I started on my first all-Burmese language interaction. It went a little bit like this (translated for the English speakers amongst us):

Me, pointing at a bowl: “How much?”
Stall holder: “600”
Me: “600?”
Stall holder nods, I hand him 500 Kyat (not in any ham-fisted attempt at bargaining, I heard him say 600 and I know the word for 600, I just had a minor brain explosion).
Stall holder, in a slightly exasperated voice: “600”
Me, handing him an extra 100 Kyat note: “sorry”
Stall holder hands me the bowl and I thank him. His friend starts laughing uproariously, no doubt partly at my apparent inability to count to six, but I think mostly because I massively overpaid for the bowl. But 600 Kyat is about 60c, so I did ok.

Since then I have unsuccessfully tried to barter with taxi drivers (mainly saying “it’s expensive” then “much lower price x”), misunderstood the lady I was trying to buy limes from (three limes for 20c!), and said a lot of “sorry” and “thank you”. My language study is very much a work in progress.