In Myanmar or Burma, October is the month of Thadingyut, the festival of light. For the children, it's a rare excuse to play with fireworks, sparkles, and even firecrackers. For young people and couples, it’s a chance to take a stroll along the bright-lit streets and the festival market, to sample the crispy fritters and grilled meat in the food stalls, and to buy handmade crafts and toys, like fish-shaped paper lanterns and demon figurines with movable limbs. In this episode, my friend Su, a Thailand-based Burmese languge teacher, and I share our favorite things to do during Thadingyut, and explain the words, phrases, and expressions related to the festival. So grab your sparkles and celebrate the festival of light from our childhood. Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

သီတင်းကျွတ် Thadingyut, the festival of light

ဖယောင်းတိုင်ထွန်းတယ် to light candles

နည်းနည်းနောနောမဟုတ်ဘူး not trivial, not insignificant

ကျင်းပတယ် to celebrate, to hold (an event or festival)

မိုးလေကင်းလွတ်တယ် to be free of rain and wind, to have temperate weather

အငြင်းပွားစရာ debatable

ဘီလူးရုပ် demon figure

ယမင်းရုပ် figure of a dancing maiden

ချားရဟတ် Ferris wheel

ရင်တလှပ်လှပ်ဖြစ်တယ် the heart beats erratically from excitement

အသည်းငယ်တယ် to have a weak heart, to be easily frightened

မအီမသာဖြစ်တယ် to feel uncomfortable, to be queasy

အူ၊ ကလီစာ intestines and internal organs

အဘိဓမ္မာ Abhidharma

ကျေးဇူးဆပ်တယ် to return a favor, to repay a debt of gratitude

အထွတ်အမြတ် paragon, pinnacle

စောင်းတန်း corridor

ဗြဟ္မာ a type of heavenly spirits

အလေ့အထ tradition

ဒေဝါလီ Diwali, Hindu festival of light

နွယ်တယ် to be intertwined, to be related

မီးရှူးမီးပန်း fireworks

မီးပန်းဆော့တယ် to play with sparkles

ဗျောက်အိုး firecracker

ကာလသား young men, especially unmarried

ငရဲမီး flame from burning acid

အိမ်စောင့်နတ် guardian spirit of the home

ဆီမီး cup-shaped oil lamp

မျှောတယ် to float something in the water

ကန်တော့တယ် to pay homage

ဝပ်တွား to crouch

ဆွေမျိုးမိတ်သဟာ kinsmen and friends

ဆင်နွှဲတယ် to join the festivities

ဆွမ်း၊ ဘောစဉ် alms (for monks and nuns)

ပြိုးပြိုးပြက်ပြက် to be sparkling, bright

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