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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For the most part, people associate Burma, or Myanmar, with pagodas and Buddhist monks, but in reality, the country is much more diverse. Its multi-faith population comprises Christians, Hindus, and Muslim communities in addition to the majority Buddhist Burmans. The population's ethnic makeup also includes Shan, Karen, Kachin, Kayah, Mon, and Chin peoples, among others. In this episode, special guest LungLunng Kutza, a Christian Chin based in Thailand, discusses the Matupi Chin group's customs, traditions, food, and the thriving Christian community he belongs to. He also teaches us basic Chin greetings and the Burmese equivalent of common Biblical terms and phrases. (Photo of LungLunng Kutza and wife, Kate, courtesy of LungLunng); Music clips from Uppbeat.io)

Vocabulary

ချင်း ethnic Chin people
ထုံးစံ customs
ရိုးရာ traditions
မြန်မာမှုပြုတယ် to Burmanize
ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်း honestly
မျိုးနွယ်စု groups
လေယူလေသိမ်း accent
နှာသံ nasal sound
ကိုးကွယ်တယ် to worship, to believe in
နှစ်ခြင်းအသင်းတော် Baptist Church
ခြုံပြောတယ် to speak generally
အခြောက်လှန်းတယ် to dry something
ပြာမှုန့် ash powder
ကတော့ cone
စာဗူးသီး shredded, dried corn
ကလီစာ intestines
နူးသွားတယ် to become soft from cooking
ဝဥ / ပိန်းဥ taro
နုပ်နုပ်စင်းတယ် to mince
ပြည်မ mainland
အစေး sap
ကောက်သစ်စားပွဲ new harvest festival
နွားနောက် a special breed of buffalo-like cow
ခေါင်ရည် alcoholic drinks from the ethnic region
ဒိုင်း shield
ခရစ်ယာန် Christian
လည်လည်ဝယ်ဝယ် fluently
တရားဟောတယ် to preach
သိက္ခာတော်ရဆရာ reverend
သင်းအုပ်ဆရာ chief pastor
သမ္မာကျမ်းစာ The Bible
နှုတ်ကပါဌ်တော် the Words of God
ယေရှု Jesus Christ
အသက်သာပြောင်းလဲလာတယ် to be born again
ဆယ်ဖို့တစ်ဖို့ a tithe / one-tenth
ခရစ်တော်၌အိပ်ပျော်ခြင်း to sleep in the House of Christ, to pass away
ဘုရားဘုန်းတော်ဝင်စားသွားတယ် to went to the Eternal Lord, to pass away
ဘုရားရင်ခွင်ခိုနားသွားတယ် to take refuge in the bosom of God
ဓမ္မဟောင်း old testament
ဓမ္မသစ် new testament
တမန်တော် a term for the Apostles
သုံးပါးတစ်ဆူ Holy Trinity
လောက်စာလုံး pellets for the slingshot
နိဂုံးချုပ် conclusion
အိပ်မက်ကောင်းပါစေ Have a nice dream

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What do you do when you’re in a pinch, out of options, and desperate? In English, you might make a Last-Ditch Effort. If you’re a football player, you might throw a Hail Mary Pass. But in Burmese, you might do what the mythical bird Garuda did: cook salt. To understand the Burmese expression အကြံကုန် ဂဠုန်ဆားချက် (when the Garuda runs out of ideas, it cooks salt), you need to know the legend about the Garuda (ဂဠုန်) and its mortal enemy, the serpent Naga (နဂါး). For more on the legend, and on ways to use this expression, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

Vocabulary

အကြံ idea

ကုန်ပြီ to be depleted, to run out, to exhaust

ဂဠုန် Garuda, a mythical bird

နဂါး Naga, a mythical serpent

ကမ္ဘာရန်သူ mortal enemy

မတတ်နိုင်လို့ because it cannot be helped

သေသေကြေကြေ live or die

မထူးဘူး makes no difference

ကတုတ်ကျင်း ditch

သမ္မာကျမ်းစာ Bible

မယ်တော်မာရိ Mother Mary

ယျေဘုယျအားဖြင့် generally speaking

လူယောင်ဖန်ဆင်း to transform into a human, to take the human shape

ဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fable

အလွတ်ကျက် to learn by heart

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