In the western culture, people often shrink from number 13. Noone wants to go out on Friday the 13th, and some businesses go so far as to skip the 13th floor's button in their elevators. In Burmese culture, people love number nine. When looking for a new place, many would look for a house address divisible by nine. And if they’re about to go on a sea journey, they summon the nat or deity known as U Shin Gyi, and offer a special meal to him, because he’s believed to rule over the sea, never mind that, in the story of his origin, he died from drowning.

Logic doesn’t explain these beliefs, but superstition might. In this episode, my cohost Mol Mol from Burmese Language Academy of Yangon (BLAY) and I discuss long-held superstitions and what might have been the logical reasons for these outlandish beliefs. In the spirit of curiosity, join us for a talk on invisible spirits and unlucky numbers. (Photo by Patchanokk, a worshiper with Bo Bo Gyi at Botahtaung Pagoda, licensed from Shutterstock; Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

အင်တာနက် လိုင်းကျတယ် the internet connection dropped
အယူသီးတယ် to be superstitious
တူတူပုန်းတယ် / တူတူပုန်းတမ်းကစားတယ် to play hide-and-seek
နတ်ဖွက်တယ် to be kidnapped by the spirits
လက်တွေ့ကျတယ် to be pragmatic
စေတနာ goodwill, good intention
တားမြစ်တယ် to forbid
ဂမုန်းပင် Chinese evergreen, spilt milk, Aglaonema
ဥစ္စာစီးပွား material wealth, prosperity
လာဘ်ရွှင်တယ် to be lucky
ကိုးနဝင်းကျေတယ် / ကိုးနဝင်းအောင်တယ် to be divisible by nine, to total up to nine
ဂြိုဟ်မွှေတယ် to be oppressed by a planet
ရာသီခွင် the zodiac circle
နတ်ယုံတယ် to believe in animistic spirits
(သင်္ဘောသား) သင်္ဘောထွက်တယ် (a sailor) travels by trip
ဦးရှင်ကြီး U Shin Gyi, a spirit known for protecting seafarers
တူကိုတည့်တည့်စိုက်တယ် to stick the chopsticks straight up
အသုဘ funeral
တလျော်ကင်ပွန်း roots used for washing away bad luck
အသုဘပို့တယ် to attend a funeral
သုသာန် burial ground, cemetery
ယုတ္တိရှိတယ် to be logical
ဘုန်းနိမ့်တယ် to lose one’s aura
ထဘီလှန်းတယ် to dry women’s sarongs in the sun
တဘောင် prophetic songs and verses
နတ်စာကျွေးတယ် to offer something to a spirit
အထအနကောက်တယ် to read the prophetic signs
အတိတ်နမိတ်ကောက်တယ် to read the prophetic signs
မင်းဆက်ပြတ်တယ် the dynasty ended
ဓာတ်ခွဲခန်း laboratory
အထောက်အထား evidence
နောက်မီးလင်းတယ် to have an affair
ကပ်ကြေး scissors
ဗေဒင်ကြည့်တယ် to see a fortuneteller

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