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Common Myanmar Words with Buddhist Origin

"Use the Force, Luke... Use the Force!"

In Gorge Lucas' creation of Star Wars movies, the Jedi Knights with light sabres have gone through strict mental training somewhat like

သံဃာ | thun3-ga2 MP3 Audio Filethe Buddhist monks.

However, unlike the Jedi Knights, the accomplished ones in Theravada Buddhist tradition known as

ရဟန်း | ya1-hun3 MP3 Audio File

have gained

ပညာ | pyin2-nya2 MP3 Audio Fileknowledge and understanding

of the true Nature of existence through

ဝိပဿနာ | we1-pup-tha1-na2 MP3 Audio FileVipassana or insight Meditation.

Naing Tinnyuntpu as Jedi Master

Respectable ရဟန်း | ya1-hun3 would not use the Dark Forces of

စကြဝဠာ | set-kja2 wa1-la2 MP3 Audio Filethe Universe

even if they have the knowledge, because they understand that

လောက | lau3-ka1 MP3 Audio Filethe existential world

that we live in is သင်္ခါရ | thin2-kha2-ra1.

သင်္ခါရ | thin2-kha2-ra1, MP3 Audio File

or Sankhara in Pali language means that our formation or existence is dependent on external conditions and has the characteristics of

ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 MP3 Audio Filenothing is ultimately satisfying

အနိစ္စ | a-nate-sa1 MP3 Audio Filenothing lasts forever

အနတ္တ | a-na1-ta1 MP3 Audio Filenothing can be pointed to say unchanging "me" "my" and "mine"

Those who are familiar with the romanization of the Pali language will recognize those terms as Dukkha, Anicca, and Anatta.

Here's my YouTube Video.

In Love & in War there is no such thing as "ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3"

Some Burmese words with Buddhist origin have merged into every day usage out of religious context. One such word is

တရား | ta1-ya3. MP3 Audio File

ta1-ya3 in religious context means the teaching of the Buddha. In everyday usage, it means fairness (noun), or to be fair (verb).

NOTE: There is just a slight tone difference between

တရား | ta1-ya3 MP3 Audio Filefairness and

တစ်ရာ | ta1-ya2 MP3 Audio Fileone hundred (100).

Related Words



တရားသူကြီး | ta1-ya3 dthu2-ji3 MP3 Audio Filethe Judge who is impartial.(noun)

တရားရုံး | ta1-ya3 yone3 MP3 Audio FileCourt House (noun)

တရားခံ | ta1-ya1-khan2 MP3 Audio Filedefendant or a suspect (noun)

တရားလို | ta1-ya1-lo2 MP3 Audio Fileplaintiff (noun)

တရားစွဲ | ta1-ya3 sweare3 MP3 Audio Fileto file a legal case; to sue (verb)

တရားစွဲ | ta1-ya3 sweare3 — sue

ခံ | khan2 — subjected to

| ya1 — to get

တယ် | deare2 — ending confirmation word

တရားစွဲ ခံရတယ်

ta1-ya3 sweare3 khan2 ya1 deare2

He got sued.

တရားထိုင် | ta1-ya3 htine2 MP3 Audio File

means to do sitting meditation, where

ထိုင် | htine2 MP3 Audio File

is to sit.

The complete sentence is

တရားထိုင်ချင်တယ်

ta1-ya3 htine2 chin2 deare2 MP3 Audio File

I want to practice Meditation.

မြန်မာ | myan2-ma2 — Myanmar

ပြည် | pyi2 — country

မှာ | hma2 — postpositional marker "at"

တရား | ta1-ya3 — teaching of the Buddha.

ထိုင် | htine2 — sit

ချင်တယ် | chin2 deare2" — "I want to... " (want + affirmative ending word)

မြန်မာပြည်မှာ တရားထိုင်ချင်တယ်

myan2-ma2 pyi2 hma2 ta1-ya3 htine2 chin2 deare2"

I want to practice meditation in Myanmar.

If you are a business man or a business woman, make sure that you do

တရားဝင် | ta1-ya1-win2 MP3 Audio File

which means in accordance with the law (legally).

တရားဝင်လုပ်မယ်

ta1-ya1-win2 loat meare2

I will do it legally!

(legally [adverb] + do [verb] + ending word indicating future action [postpositional marker])

တရားဝင်လုပ်ကြမယ်

ta1-ya1-win2 loat ja1 meare2

We will do it legally!

(legally [adverb] + do [verb] + plural [particle] + ending word indicating future action [postpositional marker])

NOTE: In some words like

တရားခံ | ta1-ya1-khan2 MP3 Audio Filedefendant or a suspect

တရားလို | ta1-ya1-lo2 MP3 Audio Fileplaintiff and

တရားဝင် | ta1-ya1-win2 MP3 Audio Fileto do something legally,

ရား | "ya3" of the word

တရား | "ta1-ya3" MP3 Audio File

in the 3rd tone is read as short sliding

| "ya1" MP3 Audio File

in the 1st tone.

The negative term of တရား | ta1-ya3 is မတရားဘူး | ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3 . You can protest something by saying:

မတရားဘူး | ma1-ta1-ya3 bu3That's not fair!

Suffering is Doat-kha1

"Dukkha" in romanization of the Pali originally means all our worldly pursuit end up like holding on to the mirage and nothing is ultimately satisfying and lasting. In everyday Burmese usage,

ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 MP3 Audio File

means troublesome.

ဒုက္ခပါပဲ

doat-kha1 ba2 beare3We are in big trouble now!

Suffering is ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 and ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 is suffering. In this never ending rounds of births and deaths, there was, there is, and there will always be doat-kha1. The generation before us had it. We have it. And, the next generation will have it.

Suffering

Suffering is ဒုက္ခ | Doat-kha1 and ဒုက္ခ | Doat-kha1 is suffering. In this never ending rounds of births and deaths, there was, there is, and there will always be Doat-kha1. The generation before us had it. We have it. And, the next generation will have it. In everyday Burmese usage out of religious context, ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 means troublesome. [35 seconds]

Posted by Naing Tinnyuntpu on Wednesday, May 11, 2016

ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 — troublesome condition

ရောက် | yout — reach

ပါ | ba2 — soften tone

ပြီ | byi2 — has reached a condition or state

ဒုက္ခရောက်ပါပြီ

doat-kha1 yout ba2 byi2

Similar phrase to describe the messy situation.

ဒုက္ခ | doat-kha1 — trouble

ရောက် | yout — reach

လိမ့် | lain1 — points to future after the verb word, "to reach" in this case

မယ် | meare2 — will

ဒုက္ခ ရောက် လိမ့်မယ်

doat-kha1 yout lain1 meare2

"You will get into trouble."

An advice to (or not to) do something in view of negative future consequences.

Be mindful with full of "dtha1-de1"

Burmese word

သတိ | dtha1-de1 MP3 Audio File

is an another common word with Buddhist origin. This original Pali word is romanized by the Western Buddhist scholars as "Sati" meaning "mindfulness". "Satipatthana", or the 4 foundations of mindfulness is practiced by the meditators. In Burmese language, this Buddhist term is known as

သတိပဋ္ဌာန | dtha1-de1 pa1-hta2-na1. MP3 Audio File

In everyday usage,

သတိ | dtha1-de1

means to be watchful or careful about potential dangers. dtha1-de1 can also have the nostalgic sense about the good old days as in

သတိရတယ် | dtha1-de1 ya1 deare2, MP3 Audio File

which means to remember by or miss someone.

နင့် | nin1 — You

ကို | go2 — to

အမြဲပဲ | a-myeare3 beare3 — always

သတိ | dtha1-de1 — attention

| ya1 — get

ပါ | ba2 — soften tone

တယ် | deare2 — ending word

နင့်ကို အမြဲပဲ သတိရပါတယ်

nin1 go2 a-myeare3 beare3 dtha1-de1 ya1 ba2 deare2

You're always on my mind.

(As sung by Willy Nelson and Elvis Presley)

You can tell someone on the slippery roof doing his repair job like this:

သတိ | dtha1-de1 — attention

ထား | hta3 — to maintain and keep

နော် | nau2 — warm feeling tone

သတိထားနော်

dtha1-de1 hta3 nau2Be careful!

You may reach "a-nate-sa1" if you don't have "dtha1-de1"

If you don't have

သတိ | dtha1-de1 MP3 Audio File

when you are on the roof, it is possible that you may reach

အနိစ္စ | a-nate-sa1. MP3 Audio File

As we have seen in the beginning, this original Pali word in Buddhist sense is impermanence. Nothing lasts forever.

အနိစ္စရောက် | a-nate-sa1 yout MP3 Audio File

is the formal literary word which means to pass away.

အနိစ္စရောက်သွား၏။

a-nate-sa1 yout thwa3 e1

He has passed away.

Sharing of Merit

After someone

အနိစ္စရောက် | a-nate-sa1 yout, MP3 Audio File

the bereaved family has certain customs to perform. Burmese Buddhists have the custom of sharing the merit to the dead at the funerals, and to the beings in the other World, especially to those in the lower realms who need the most. To perform this act is called

a-hmya1 — equal portion

way2 — distribute.

အမျှဝေ | a-hmya1 way2 MP3 Audio File

However, if the deceased is believed to be in the Heavenly World, there's no need for it. Listen to this.

Long live Buddhism!

Here's another very common proclamation by the volunteers going around the neighborhood collecting the donation, or by the monk with the loudspeaker in the car ahead of other monks going for alms. It generally means "long-live Buddhism!"

ဗုဒ္ဓ သာသနံ စိရံ တိဋ္ဌတု | boat-da1 tha2-dtha1-nun2 si1-yan2 ti1-hta1-tu1

The Middle Way

မဇ္ဈိမပဋိပဒါ | myit-zi1-ma1 ba1-di1-ba1-da2 MP3 Audio FileThe Middle Way (Majjhimāpaṭipadā)

proclaimed by the Buddha avoids indulgence of whatever the mind's desire in one extreme, and extreme form of physical torment practiced in those days to gain enlightenment in the other.

He did not say that you cannot excel in something and just be an average person. In fact, he had the determination, and full intention to achieve what he had attained. After six years of unsuccessful attempts through perseverance, he found success.

We need to keep some "desire" to excel. Selfless desire for the good of many is admirable. But, unfortunately, most of us cannot become saintly monks. We need to maintain at least some level of "selfish" greed in order to survive in this world.

A "good and fair ambition" in our worldly pursuit doesn't harm ourselves or the others including the environment. And we don't use

မတရား | ma1-ta1-ya3

means to achieve our objectives. That's exactly what the Buddha had prescribed for the lay people in

သမ္မာအာဇီဝ | tha1-ma2 ah2-zi2-wa1 MP3 Audio FileRight livelihood (samma ajivo)

of the

မဂ္ဂင် ရှစ်ပါး | met-gin2 shit pa3 MP3 Audio FileNoble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga).

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