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Visiting a Burmese Family in Myanmar

It's party time! No, it's not. Sorry to disappoint some folks, but don't expect too much partying, alcohol drinking, and wild parties late into the night in Myanmar. Majority of Burmese families are still very conservative, and they are Buddhists as well.

Traditional Myanmar

Myanmar Traditional New Year [47 seconds]. It's party time! No, it's not. Sorry to disappoint some folks, but don't expect too much partying, alcohol drinking, and wild parties late into the night in Myanmar. Majority of Burmese families are still very conservative, and they are Buddhists as well.

Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Saturday, May 7, 2016
Po Po | ပိုပို | po2 po2

However, I must also add that the reason for lack of colorful nightlife in Myanmar is more of economic reason than religion. Except for a small percentage of wealthy privileged class and a handful of foreigners, how many of a million daily commuters in Yangon can afford to wine and dine in fancy hotels and pubs?

OK, so we are not going to a wild party. But, a decent Burmese family has invited you to an afternoon lunch at their house. Let's have some conversation in Burmese.

Welcome to our house!

ကြွပါ ... ကြွပါ | kjwa1 ba2... kjwa1 ba2Welcome, welcome... Please come in!

Welcome in Burmese

This phrase needs some explaining. You cannot directly translate, "Welcome, please come in" from English to Burmese word by word. "Welcome" is sometimes translated by the formal Burmese greeting မင်္ဂလာပါ | min2-ga1-la2 ba2. MP3 Audio File

In written language on signboards, the phrase ကြိုဆိုပါ၏ | kjo2-zo2 ba2 e1 MP3 Audio File is used, such as in "Welcome to Yangon". But those phrases are not used to the invited guests in spoken form of language.

The word kjwa1 is used for the arrival of distinguished guests, honorable persons and venerable monks.

Where to remove your footwear?

Just like other Oriental cultures in several countries including Oriental community in Canada, Burmese people have the custom of removing the footwear, shoes, and slippers at the doorstep. If you are not sure, ask,

ဖိနပ် | pfa1-nut — Footwear

ဘယ်မှာ | beare2 hma2 — where (where + at)

ချွတ် | choot — remove, take off

| ya1 — can be done

မလဲ | ma1-leare3 — ?

ဖိနပ် ဘယ်မှာ ချွတ်ရမလဲ | pfa1-nut beare2 hma2 choot ya1 ma1-leare3Where can I remove my shoes?

Please take a seat

ထိုင်ပါဦး | htine2 ba2 ome3Please take a seat! (sit + polite suggestion)

You can reply by saying:

ဪ ၊ ဟုတ်ကဲ့ | au2.. hote-keare1Oh, OK! (Oh + yes)

Meet the wife

ဒါ | da2 — this

ကျွန်တော့် | kja1-nau1 — my (male term)

အမျိုးသမီး | a-myo3-tha1-mi3 — lady (polite)

ပါ | ba2 — polite affirmative ending words

ဒါ ကျွန်တော့် အမျိုးသမီးပါ | da2 kja1-nau1 a-myo3-tha1-mi3 ba2This is my wife.

A Burmese woman would say "this is my hubby" like this:

ဒါ | da2 — this

ကျွန်မ | kja1-ma1 — my (female term)

အမျိုးသား | a-myo3-tha3 — man (polite)

ပါ | ba2 — polite affirmative ending words

ဒါ ကျွန်မ အမျိုးသား ပါ | da2 kja1-ma1 a-myo3-tha3 ba2This is my husband.

The formal word for the wife is ဇနီး | za1-ni3. MP3 Audio File This word is a loaned word from Hindi language in India. For example, you can read about Mr. so and so and his za1-ni3 in the newspaper.

The informal and casual word for the wife is မိန်းမ | main3-ma1, MP3 Audio File which means "woman".

ကျွန်တော့် မိန်းမ | kja1-nau1 main3-ma1 MP3 Audio File means "my wife".

Sometimes, polite word ကတော် | ga1-dau2 MP3 Audio File is used to address the wife of someone in high social status. For example, if the husband is a teacher, a doctor, or head of the department, people will address to him as ဆရာ | hsa1-ya2 MP3 Audio File and to his wife as ဆရာကတော် | hsa1-ya2 ga1-dau2. MP3 Audio File

OK, back to the Burmese house that we are visiting. As the wife of the host smiles and nods her head, you can say:

တွေ့ | tway1 — to meet (verb)

ရတာ | ya1 da2 — as for being able to (particle)

ဝမ်းသာ | wun3-tha2 — be glad (verb)

ပါတယ် | ba2 deare2 — polite affirmative ending words. (particle + postpositional marker)

တွေ့ရတာ ဝမ်းသာပါတယ် | tway1 ya1 da2 wun3-tha2 ba2 deare2Nice to meet you!

Meet the young daughter

ဒါ | da2 — this

ကတော့ | ga1 dau1 — as for

သမီး | tha1-mi3 — daughter

ပါ | ba2 — polite ending word

ဒါ ကတော့ သမီးပါ | da2 ga1 dau1 tha1-mi3 ba2As for this, she is the daughter.

ဟာ | ha2.. — wow!

လှ | hla1 — pretty

လို့ | lo1 — "to"; "the reason"; "the reason to look at" in this context.

ပါလား | ba2 la3 — exclamation! (Oh, like that..)

That phrase is difficult to translate into English. The speaker is commenting on the way the girl dresses, or put on the သနပ်ခါး | tha1-nut-kha3 MP3 Audio File (traditional make-up used as a protection from the sun) that makes her pretty to look at.

Usually, the word လား | la3 is an equivalent of a question mark. But, ပါလား | ba2 la3 is an exclamation. It's like the English word "what", which can be a question word, or exclamation such as "What a beautiful girl!".

ဟာ၊ လှလို့ပါလား | ha2.. hla1 lo1 ba2 la3Wow, you are so pretty!

One word of caution here if you are a man. It's quite appropriate to make this comment to a small girl, or to your girlfriend, or to someone that you know well who is about to go out with you, but not to any grown up girl or woman that you just met, and definitely not to the wife of the host that you just met.

သမီး | tha1-mi3 — Daughter

ဘယ်နှတန်း | beare hna1-tan3 — which Form/Grade (where + at + grade)

ရောက်ပြီ | yout byi2 — has reached (arrive or reach + has reached certain level, state or condition)

လဲ | leare3 — ?

သမီး ဘယ်နှတန်း ရောက်ပြီလဲ | tha1-mi3 beare hna1-tan3 yout byi2 leare3Daughter, what Grade are you in now?

၄ တန်း | lay3 dun3 — grade 4 (4 + grade)

အောင် | oun2 — pass

သွားပြီ | thwa3 byi2 — has gone through (to go + has reached certain level, state or condition)

၄ တန်း အောင်သွားပြီ | lay3 dun3 oun2 thwa3 byi2 — have passed grade 4; I just passed grade 4.

Education system in Myanmar

Perhaps, your hosts will talk something about their kids and schools. When I was growing up, the official English translation for the number of schooling years in Myanmar was known as "standard". But, it is now changed to "grade" as in American/Canadian education system.

In the old days, "pre" Standard 1 is called သူငယ်တန်း | thu2-ngeare2 dun3. MP3 Audio File Nowadays, on the cover of thu2 ngeare2-dun3 textbook, you can see the English word GRADE 1.

You can estimate the age of the child by the "grade" that he or she is in. 5 Years olds start school as a Grade 1. This is unlike the British education system where students go through "primary" 1,2,3,4, and then "form" 1,2,3,4,5,6.

Speaking of education system, private schools are now getting popular in Myanmar among the affluent parents to prepare their children for entrance into foreign universities. Education has become a big business with students busy taking tuition after school hours, and in many cases given by their own school teachers in government schools. In local Universities, only the brightest students are qualified for medical college. Unlike in the US, the top students do not choose law, nor do they have to go through 4 years of college first to enter law or medical schools.

Myanmar Private School

Can you talk politics with your host?

Yes, you can now. Politics was a hot topic in the 2015 elections year. This country used to be the country of fear with no freedom of speech or press. All was changed about two years after President U Thein Sein took office.

In the year of 2015 General elections, I was surprised to see some news media highlighting students demonstrating the education law passed by the parliament with photos of people who are too old to be students. From my own observation and common sense tell me that normal teenagers are not too concerned with or understand such big issues. Even adults are not aware of the details of the Education law.

However, in later reports, the same news media carried the story about some students who are young girls. It is truly admirable if those young demonstrators have passion and knowledge about those issues on their own initiatives and perhaps, they are child prodigies who have solutions for the country at such young age. If not, it's just sad to see their future sacrificed as pawns in the dangerous game.

Let's get back to the Burmese family.

ဟာ | ha2... — Wow!

တော် | tau2 — to excel in whatever that one does; bright; brilliant

လိုက်တာ | lite da2 —"extreme to such a degree; so much"

ဟာ၊ တော် လိုက်တာ | ha2... tau2 lite da2Wow, you are so bright!

Myanmar Grammar Notes: တော် | tau2 MP3 Audio File means "relative". in the above context is a verb in Burmese grammar. In English, it is similar to adjectives "bright", "clever", and "brilliant", but in the above sentence, it is used as "to excel in something".

Learn the extreme word "lite da2"

The word လိုက်တာ | lite da2 MP3 Audio File roughly means "extreme to such a degree".

More examples of the extreme word:

ပူလိုက်တာ | pu2 lite da2It's so hot!

ဆာလိုက်တာ | hsa2 lite da2I am so hungry!

ကောင်းလိုက်တာ | koun3 lite da2It's so good!

Myanmar Grammar Notes: ဆာ | hsa2 MP3 Audio File is the verb "be hungry". Whenever one-syllable description of the word has something to do with subjective feeling, perception or emotion (as opposed to external condtions such as weather), general rule of thumb is that the word is a verb.

Meet the rest of the family

အမျိုး | a-myo3 MP3 Audio File means "relative".

အမျိုး တော်တယ် | tau2 deare2 MP3 Audio File means to be related. This is a complete sentence which says the person in the conversation is a relative.

Yes, the word တော် | "tau2" MP3 Audio File in this context is spelled and read exactly the same as tau2 in the phrase tau2 lite da2 MP3 Audio File (You are so bright!) we have seen earlier.

Burmese have quite complex ways of addressing the relatives depending on the seniority. Fortunately, it's less complicated than the Chinese who even have different words for "grandfather" and "grandmother" depending on whether he or she is from the mother's side or the father's side. I have listed most of the Burmese vocabulary to address the relatives, and to describe the family relations in this table.

So, the word တော် | tau2 could mean to excel in something, and it also means to be related to someone. Here is an another usage. In this clip, တော်ပါ | tau2 ba2 means "enough" as in "enough is enough, please stop." It's another performance by အိမ့်ချစ် | Eint Chit | ain1 chit (see lesson 2 and 4) with different look who excels တော် | tau2 in what she does. Also, she seems to get a little tired and enough of high notes that she can hit wonderfully, so she tried a different vocal style.

So, the word (တော် | tau2) could mean to excel in something, and it also means to be related to someone. Here is an another usage. In this clip, (တော်ပါ | tau2 ba2) means "enough" as in "enough is enough, please stop." It's another performance by Eint Chit (အိမ့်ချစ် | ain1 chit) with different look who excels (တော် | tau2) in what she does. Also, she seems to get a little tired and enough of high notes that she can hit wonderfully, so she tried a different vocal style. (43 seconds)

Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Friday, May 20, 2016

What does "ah3 na2" mean?

If you bother to bring expensive gifts, or a token of present, or offer to help them out in some way, you may hear the very common Burmese phrase

အားနာစရာကြီး | ah3-na2 za1-ya2 ji3 MP3 Audio File (or)

အားနာလိုက်တာ | ah3 na2 lite da2 MP3 Audio File

What does အားနာ | ah3-na2 (verb) MP3 Audio File mean? If you analyze it word by word, it doesn't make sense. အား | ah3 means "strength" and နာ | na2 means "to be painful". Since I cannot translate it word by word, I will describe the feeling tone. You have the same feeling inside as you say the words: "You are so kind, I don't even know how to repay you back" in English.

The speaker may also use the phrase အားနာလိုက်တာ | ah3 na2 lite da2 MP3 Audio File to express apology, for example, when she keeps someone waiting. It's like saying: "I am so sorry to keep you waiting."

The word စရာ | sa1-ya2 MP3 Audio File in the first phrase means "matter", which is slightly different in pronunciation than ဆရာ | hsa1-ya2 as in "teacher" or "master". When you say ဆရာ | hsa1-ya2 MP3 Audio File in the word "teacher" or "master", there is more hissing sound for | hsa1 as you put the tip of your tongue closer to the teeth.

The word ကြီး | ji3 means "big". So, အားနာစရာကြီး | ah3-na2 za1-ya2 ji3 MP3 Audio File is a matter of big appreciation.

Likewise, အားနာလိုက်တာ | ah3 na2 lite da2 MP3 Audio File is an another way of saying, "Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it so much."

Please accept my sincerity

Your Burmese host may be at first reluctant to accept the gift as he says

အားနာစရာကြီး | ah3-na2 za1-ya2 ji3 MP3 Audio File

as if saying: "Oh, it's so expensive. You shouldn't have done that. We couldn't accept it". Burmese people really feel it inside. It's not just superficial formalities. It doesn't mean he does not like it, though. You need to do more persuasion.

ယူပါ | yu2 ba2 MP3 Audio FilePlease take it! (take + polite suggestion)

စေတနာ | say2-da1-na2 (noun) MP3 Audio File means "sincere good will".

When you are helping someone, or giving something to someone with sincerity, you have this say2-da1-na2 within you. This Burmese version is slightly different in meaning from the original ancient Pali word "Cetana", which means any volition good or bad that will result in Karmic consequences.

The usage of this word is also slightly different from "altruism" in English, which refers to the deeds and actions for the welfare of many, whereas say2-da1-na2 is more often used in one to one personal relations.

စေတနာ | say2-da1-na2 — sincere good will (noun)

နဲ့ | neare1 — with (postpositional marker to show that noun is being "used")

ပေး | pay3 — give; pay (verb)

တာပါ | da2 ba2 — this is as such ("this" in reference to above action [particle] + polite ending word [particle])

စေတနာ နဲ့ ပေးတာပါ | say2-da1-na2 neare1 pay3 da2 ba2I am giving this to you with all my sincerity.

ယူပါနော် | yu2 ba2 nau2Please take it! (take + polite suggestion + warm feeling tone)

Your chance to "ah3 na2"

Back in lesson 15, I have covered the list of food items in Burmese language. Now it's your turn to say အားနာ | ah3 na2 to the host as they prepare the food for you.

စါးပါဦး | sa3 ba2 ome3Please eat! (eat + "do as such" suggestion)

ဒါ | da2 — this

ကတော့ | ga1 dau1 — as for

xxxx — name of the food

ဒါ ကတော့ | da2 ga1 dau1 xxxxThis is xxxx.

ထည့်ပါဦး

hteare1 ba2 ome3Please take some more! (put in + "do as such" suggestion)

It's so special!

Burmese Lunch

There's a simple Burmese word to describe delicious food with appetizing aroma and flavor accompanied by pleasing appearance. The word ရှယ် | sheare2 MP3 Audio File comes from the English word "special". You will often see this word displayed at roadside stalls and eating houses to attract customers.

ဟာ . . . ရှယ်ပဲ | ha2... sheare2 beare3Hmmm... it's so special!

As the host brings more food to the table, you can say:

အားနာစရာကြီး | ah3-na2 za1-ya2 ji3You are so kind and hospitable!

Yes, indeed, those are very appropriate words. Burmese people have the culture of treating the guests more than what they would normally have themselves. At this point of writing, the income disparity and the gap between the rich and the poor is even more widening. While the rich can wine and dine in style and be happy, the average government employee will have to think twice whether or not to invite the guests, as the money is tight.

But, it appears that we have now started to see light at the end of the tunnel. Within three years of new parliamentary system, we have seen marked improvements in the living conditions, boom in constructions along with new foreign investments pouring into the country, creating new jobs and opportunities. There has been pay raise to the government employees for the third time as well as a realistic pension plan for the retirees during this period, which has alleviated the situation considerably without steep inflation.

See you again next time

နောက် | nout — next time; future (noun used as an adverb)

ပြန် | pyan2 — (particle to show repetition)

တွေ့ | tway1 — meet (verb)

ကြ | ja1 — (particle to show plurality of the verb)

သေး | thay3 — yet to be; till then (particle)

တာပေါ့ | da2 bau1 — positive statement (ending particle)

နောက် ပြန်တွေ့ ကြသေးတာပေါ့ | nout pyan2 tway1 ja1 thay3 da2 bau1See you again next time!

Philosophical Concept of the future

In Burmese, the word နောက် | NOUT MP3 Audio File refers to the back — the direction behind you. နောက်မှာ | nout hma2 MP3 Audio File means "at the back". Looking back at the year 2008, this is the singer အစ္စဏီ | Issani telling, "Don't turn back and look". I can't help but look even further back to the faint distant past, the time when I was listening to this song in the original Chinese version. The mystery surrounding Time is captured by this word NOUT which also refers to the future point in time. Why is it that the back refers to the future?

Don't Look Back

In Burmese, the word နောက် | NOUT refers to the back — the direction behind you. Looking back at the year 2008, this is the singer အစ္စဏီ | Issani telling "Don't turn back and look". {42 seconds] I can't help but look even further back to the faint distant past, the time when I was listening to this song in the original Chinese version. The mystery surrounding Time is captured by this word NOUT which also refers to the future point in time. Why is it that the back refers to the future? I then recalled this interesting Buddhist illustration of our journey in life. There was a picture of a man walking backward as the passage of time took him from youth to the inevitable old age and death. He could see the path that he had walked in his life, but the future was unseen. There is no looking back to the past, but perhaps, we can take a peek at the future behind us and say, သွားပါဦးမယ် | thwa3 ba2 ome3-meare2 — Well. I've got to go... နောက် ပြန်တွေ့ ကြသေးတာပေါ့ | nout pyan2 tway1 ja1 thay3 ta2 pau1 — See you again next time!

Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Wednesday, June 1, 2016
အစ္စဏီ | Issani

I then recalled this interesting Buddhist illustration of our journey in life. There was a picture of a man walking backward as the passage of time took him from youth to the inevitable old age and death. He could see the path that he had walked in his life, but the future was unseen. There is no looking back to the past, but perhaps, we can take a peek at the future behind us and say,

သွားပါဦးမယ် | thwa3 ba2 ome3 meare2Well, I've got to go... MP3 Audio File

နောက် ပြန်တွေ့ ကြသေးတာပေါ့

nout pyan2 tway1 ja1 thay3 da2 bau1See you again next time! MP3 Audio File

Color Codes: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, particles, postpositional markers, interjections.

NO SCRIPT VERSION

Words for Relatives & Family Relations in Burmese Language | ဆွေမျိုးစပ် ဝေါဟာရများ

What's the difference between calling your parents

ဖေဖေ မေမေ | pfay2-pfay2, may2-may2, MP3 Audio File

and အဖေ အမေ | a-pfay2, a-may2? MP3 Audio File

It's like saying "dad and mom" as opposed to "father and mother".

When an adult person speaks about his father to an another person, he will say

ကျွန်တော့် အဖေ | kja1-nau1 a-pfay2 MP3 Audio File

to mean "my father", but at home, he will still call his father

ဖေဖေ | pfay2-pfay2 (dad). MP3 Audio File

The table below lists the vocabulary for relatives and family relations in Burmese. The warmer terms spoken at home are shown with the brackets as (warmer).

CLICK (OR TOUCH) TABLE HEADER COLUMNS TO SORT BY ASCENDING OR DESCENDING ORDER OF ENGLISH OR BURMESE SCRIPT.

List of Burmese Family Relations (Sortable)
ENGLISH ↑↓ AUDIO ↑↓
aunt အဒေါ် |a-dau2
twins အမွှာ | a-hmwa2
spouse အိမ်ထောင်ဖက် | ain2-doun2-bet
head of the household အိမ်ထောင်ဦးစီး | ain2-doun2 u3-zi3
elder bother အစ်ကို | a-ko2
eldest brother အစ်ကိုကြီး | a-ko2 ji3
elder brother (middle) အစ်ကိုလတ် | a-ko2 lut
elder sister အစ်မ | a-ma1
mother အမေ | a-may2
relative အမျိုး | a-myo3
father အဖေ | a-pfay2
grandfather အဘိုး1 | a-pfo3
grandmother အဘွား2 | a-pfwa3
aunt who is uncle's wife or father's sister အရီး | a-yi3
elder brother of parent ဘကြီး | ba1 ji3
great grandfather ဘေး | bay3
great grandmother ဘေးမ | bay3-ma1
great great grandfather ဘီ | be2
daughter-in-law ချွေးမ | chway3 ma1
aunt (warmer) ဒေါ်ဒေါ် | dau2-dau2
younger sister of a man နှမ | hna1-ma1
second cousins နှစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ | hna1-woon3-gweare3
sister-in-law; younger sister of wife; wife of younger brother ခယ်မ | kheare2-ma1
brother-in-law; husband of elder sister of a woman; elder brother of husband ခဲအို | kheare3-o2
husband (formal) ခင်ပွန်း | khin2-boon3
elder sister of parent ကြီးကြီး | kji3-kji3
elder brother (warmer) ကိုကို | ko2-ko2
same as u3 lay (warmer) လေးလေး | lay3-lay3
husband (gossip) လင် | lin2
husband & wife လင်မယား | lin2 ma1-ya3
step-son (husband's son) လင်ပါသား | lin2 ba2 tha3
elder sister (warmer) မမ | ma1-ma1
step-daughter (wife's daughter) မယားပါသမီး | ma1-ya1-ba2 tha1-mi3
wife (official) မယား |ma1-ya3
wife (illicit) မရင်ငယ် | ma1-yin2 ngeare2
wife (informal) မိန်းမ | main3-ma1
mother (warmer) မေမေ | may2-may2
parents မိဘ | mi1-ba1
step mother မိထွေး | mi1-dway3
family (parents & children) မိသားစု | mi1-tha3-zu1
younger brother (of a girl/woman) မောင် | moun2
siblings (boy & girl) မောင်နှမ | moun2 hna1-ma1
adopted daughter မွေးစားသမီး | mway3-za3 tha1-mi3
adopted son မွေးစားသား | mway3-za3 tha3
grandchild မြေး | myay3
great grandchild မြစ် | myit
younger brother of a boy/man ညီ | nyi2
brothers (both males) ညီအစ်ကို | nyi2 a-ko2
siblings (mix boy/girl) ညီအစ်ကိုမောင်နှမ | nyi2 a-ko2 moun2 hna1-ma1
sisters (both females) ညီအစ်မ | nyi2 a-ma1
younger sister ညီမ | nyi2 ma1
younger sister / little sister (warmer) ညီမလေး | nyi2 ma1 lay3
younger brother / little brother (warmer) ညီလေး | nyi2 lay3
step-father ပထွေး | pa1-htway3
father (warmer) ဖေဖေ | pfay2-pfay2
grandfather (warmer) ဖိုးဖိုး | pfo3-pfo3
grandmother (warmer) ဖွားဖွား | pfwa3-pfwa3
first cousins တစ်ဝမ်းကွဲ | ta1-woon3-gweare3
father and son သားအဖ | tha3 a-pfa1
mother and child သားအမိ | tha3 a-mi1
eldest son သားကြီး | tha3 ji3
son-in-law သမက် | tha1-met
daughter သမီး | tha1-mi3
eldest daughter သမီးကြီး | tha1-mi3 ji3
son သား | tha3
great great grandchild တီ | ti2
nephew တူ | tu2
niece တူမ | tu2 ma1
younger brother of parent ဦးလေး | u3 lay3
cousin ဝမ်းကွဲ | woon3-gweare3
sister-in-law ယောက်မ | youn3-ma1
parent in-law ယောက္ခမ | yout-kha1-ma1
husband (informal) ယောက်ျား | yout-kja3
brother-in-law ယောက်ဖ | yout-pfa1
wife (formal) ဇနီး | za1-ni3
young couple ဇနီး မောင်နှံ | za1-ni3 moun2-hnun2

1အဘိုး is read အဖိုး
2အဘွား is read အဖွား

There are still certain terms that need more elaboration than the space that the above table allows. For example, if I say Mr. A and Mr. B are

ခမည်းခမက် တော်တယ်

kha1-mi3 kha1-met tau2 deare2,

this means Mr. A's son (or daughter) is married to Mr. B's daughter (or son).

တော်တယ် | tau2 deare2 in the above phrase indicates that the two are related.

The word အရင်း | ayin3 is attached to the relationships to mean having blood-relation with the similar DNA pattern. So, အဖေ အရင်း | a-pfay2 ayin3 is a biological father as opposed to step father.

When the father re-marries, the siblings of the same father but of different mother are called ဖအေတူမအေကွဲ | pfa1-ay2 du2 ma1-ay2 gweare3.

The word တူ | tu2 in this context means "be the same" and ကွဲ | kweare3 means to differ by mean of separate route or path.

There are also cases where the mother re-marries and have children. The children from the first marriage, and the second marriage are မအေတူဖအေကွဲ | ma1-ay2 du2 pfa1-ay2 gweare3

Some of the Burmese words such as great great grandfather are not so common. I, myself, had forgotten those words from long disuse, and needed to refer back to the reference book.

Reference:

မသိမဖြစ် ဝေါဟာရအဘိဓာန် | Essential Words Dictionary by ပညာကျော် | Pyinya Kyaw (Pyin2 Nya2 Kjau2); unity စာပေ | Unity Publishing House, Yangon, February 2010