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Hmone Shwe Yi

Hmone Shwe Yi ( hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | မှုံရွှေရည် ) is a classic Myanmar movie directed by multi-talented Burmese actor, singer, writer, composer, publisher and director Win Oo (1935-1988) who also played instruments. "Hmone Shwe Yi" song and dance is a must-see for anyone interested in authentic Myanmar culture. Creative words used in the song are ideal for serious learners of Burmese language and literature.

Hmone Shwe Yi starring Win Oo and Khin Than Nu

The lyrics of the theme song are poetic rhymes of 3 to 5 syllable words, and a number of verses are made of original coined words having the same or closely-related meanings. "Hmone Shwe Yi" the movie itself and several videos of the theme song are on the Internet, but I have yet to find a version with English translation to present it to the World.

Just like the work of Shakespeare is not easy to understand, the poetic words in this song will not be fully appreciated unless explained. Even if you don't know a word of Burmese, you can still enjoy watching the Burmese traditional dance in two YouTube videos that I have selected. The second video is the modern re-make of the song with Karaoke style Burmese script to sing along. May Than Nu, the dancer/actress in the modern version of Hmone Shwe Yi video is not related to the actress Khin Than Nu in the original version.

မှုံရွှေရည် | Mhone Shwe Yi won the Best Picture Award and ဝင်းဦး | Win U won the Best Actor Award in 1970 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards.

Back in 1967, the same ဝင်းဦး | Win U and ခင်သန်းနု | Khin Than Nu won Best Actor and Best Actress Awards. He in ဆောင်းအိပ်မက် | Hsoun3 Ain2 Met | Saung Einmet (Winter Dream) and she in ကိုယ်ရယ် တိုးရယ် စိုးစိုးရယ် | ko2 yeare2 toe3 yeare2 so3-so3 yeare2 - Me, Toe and Soe Soe.

The pair in the second video မေသန်းနု | May Than Nu and ရန်အောင် | Yan Aung are also well known veteran actor and actress today, although they no longer play the leading roles. He won the Best Actor Award six times in 1991, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2006 and she won the Best Actress Award four times in 1995, 1996 , 2000, 2001 and Best Supporting Actress Award in 2002.

The story is about a fictional performing artist and a stage dancer named "Ma Khin Hmone" who is compared to the golden flower pollen of a rose with sweet fragrance that attracts and loved by everyone around. Hmone2 | မှုန် in Hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | မှုန်ရွှေရည် refers to the flower pollen woot hmone2 | ဝတ်မှုန်.

The original movie used the spelling variant မှုံ instead of မှုန် for the girl's name. There is nothing right or wrong about it. It is just an artistic expression which looks neater, more feminine and the dot on top is more fitting to describe a flower pollen.

Shway2 | ရွှေ meaning gold is included in the name to show that something or someone is highly esteemed. yi2 | ရည် in this context could mean the nectar of the flower as in ပန်းဝတ်ရည်, and it can also refer to the word တောက်ပခြင်း meaning something lustrous.

So, "Hmone Shwe Yi" or "Hmone Shwe Yee" romanized in the tone system as hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | မှုန်ရွှေရည် can be translated as "Lustrous Golden Flower Pollen".

htone2 | ထုံ - permeate with scent

way2 | ဝေ - abundance as in ဝေဆာ

si2 | စီ - line up in an organized way.

The opening line hmone2 shway2 yi2 | မှုန်ရွှေရည် rhymes with htone2 way2 si2 | ထုံဝေစီ, which also rhymes with wa1-thone2 myay2 ma1-hi2 | ဝသုန်မြေမဟီ to depict the fragrance of the flower pollen that permeates the earth.

wa1-thone2 | ဝသုန် - earth (from Pali: ဝသုန္ဓရာ)

myay2 | မြေ - earth

ma1-hi2 | မဟီ - earth (Pali)

hmone2 shway2 yi2, khine2 ma2-la2 hnin3-zi2 ... | မှုန်ရွှေရည် ခိုင်မာလာနှင်းဆီ

khine2 | ခိုင် - flower on stalk

ma2-la2 | မာလာ - flower

hnin3-zi2 | နှင်းဆီ - rose

kjine2 ga2 dtha2 thin3 kji2 ... | ကြိုင်ကာသာသင်းကြည်

kjine2 | ကြိုင် - fragrant (adjective)

ga2 | ကာ - just; only; modifies "fragrant" into "with fragrance" (conjunction)

dtha2 | သာ - in such a way; just; only(conjunction)

thin3 | သင်း - pleasant smelling (adjective)

kji2 | ကြည် - crystal clear and clean (adjective)

Re-make Version:
kjine2 zwa2 dtha2 thin3 kji2 ... | ကြိုင်စွာသာသင်းကြည်

myine2 hay2-ma2 a-twin3 htone2 way2 si2 ... | မြိုင်ဟေမာအတွင်း ထုံဝေစီ

myine2 | မြိုင် - rich in variety; forest (noun)

hay2-ma2 | ဟေမာ - deep forest (noun)

a-twin3 | အတွင်း - inside; used here as a postpositional marker: "within"

htone2 way2 si2 | ထုံဝေစီ - be abundant, orderly and permeate with scent.(verb)

thin3 ya1-nun1 ga1 hmway3 lwin2 dthi2 ... | သင်းရနံ့ကမွှေးလွင်သည်

thin3 | သင်း - pleasant smelling (adjective)

ya1-nun1 | ရနံ့ - scent (noun)

ga1 | က - is; postpositional marker to make the noun "subject"

hmway3 | မွှေး - fragrant (adjective)

lwin2 | လွင် - be vivid (verb)

dthi2 | သည် - ending affirmative word (literary form)(postpostional marker).

Re-make Version:
hsin3 ya1-nun1 ga1 hmway3 yin2 dthi2 ... | ဆင်းရနံ့က မွှေးယဉ်သည်

win3 pfun1 bun1 htway3 jin2 byi2 ... | ဝင်းဖန့်ဖန့်ထွေးချင်ပြီ

win3 | ဝင်း - bright (adjective)

pfun1 bun1 | ဖန့်ဖန့် - tinged; subdued shade of color (adjective)

htway3 | ထွေး - wrap around; embrace; swaddle just like to an infant (verb)

jin2 byi2 | ချင်ပြီ - want to do it already. (particle + postpositional marker)

thin3 thun1-thun1 pan3 woot-hmone2 shway2 yi2 ... hmone2 shway2 yi2 | သင်းသန့်သန့် ပန်းဝတ်မှုန်ရွှေရည် မှုံရွှေရည်

thin3 thun1-thun1 | သင်းသန့်သန့် - fresh & pleasant smell

pan3 | ပန်း - flower

woot-hmone2 shway2 yi2 | ဝတ်မှုန်ရွှေရည် - Lustrous Golden Pollen

hmone2 shway2 yi2... | မှုံရွှေရည်

Feel like embracing the bright and slightly colored rose on the stalk with golden pollens having pleasant fresh scent that permeates the deep forest.

The modern version replaced the "freshness" with "clear".

Re-make Version:
shin3 thun1-thun1 pan3 woot-hmone2 shway2 yi2 ... hmone2 shway2 yi2 | ရှင်းသန့်သန့် ပန်းဝတ်မှုန်ရွှေရည် မှုန်ရွှေရည်

pfu3 pwin1 ngone2 way2 shway2-shway2 hnin3-zi2... chu2 jin2 dthu2 dway2 mya3 hla1 bay2 dthi2 | ဖူးပွင့်ငုံဝေရွှေရွှေနှင်းဆီ ချူချင်သူတွေများလှပေသည်

pfu3 | ဖူး - flower bud

pwin1 | ပွင့် - a blossom

ngone2 | ငုံ - of flower bud

way2 | ဝေ - abundance; luxuriant as in ဝေဆာ

shway2-shway2 hnin3-zi2 | ရွှေရွှေနှင်းဆီ - Golden rose

chu2 jin2 dthu2 dway2 | ချူချင်သူတွေ - those who want to pluck

mya3 hla1 bay2 dthi2 | များလှပေသည် - too many of them

chit-thu2 dway2 wine3 ga2 pup leare2 ... moun1 yeare1 Hmone2-Shway2-Yi2 | ချစ်သူတွေဝိုင်းကာပတ်လည် မောင့်ရဲ့ မှုံရွှေရည်

chit-thu2 dway2 | ချစ်သူတွေ - lovers

wine3 ga2 pup leare2 | ဝိုင်းကာပတ်လည် - encircle and surround (encircle + while + surround)

moun1 yeare1 | မောင့်ရဲ့ - male lover's ( "your" if spoken by female; "my" by male)

Hmone2-Shway2-Yi2 | မှုံရွှေရည်

pwin1-hlwa2 dway2 da1-geare2 ma1-hnyo3-noon3 za1-ya2 ... htain3 thain3 kheare1 da2 | ပွင့်လွှာတွေ တကယ်မညှိုးနွမ်းစရာ ထိန်းသိမ်းခဲ့တာ

pwin1-hlwa2 dway2 | ပွင့်လွှာတွေ - layers of flower petals (noun)

da1-geare2 | တကယ် - really (adverb)

ma1-hnyo3-noon3 | မညှိုးနွမ်း - not wither (particle + verb)

za1-ya2 | စရာ - matter of (particle)

htain3 thain3 | ထိန်းသိမ်း - to safeguard and maintain (verb)

kheare1 da2 | ခဲ့တာ - had (particle)

pan2 a-hla1 Hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | ပန်းအလှမှုံရွှေရည် - beauty of this flower "Hmone2 Shway2 Yi2".

This passage alludes to the girl who had safeguarded her dignity and reputation in spite of the fact that she is very popular and surrounded by admirers who are too eager to "pluck" the blossoming flower bud from the stalk.

Hmone2-Shway2-Yi2 pan3 a-hla1 go2 nun3 ma1-wa1 dau1 dthi2 | မှုံရွှေရည် ပန်းအလှကို နမ်းမဝတော့သည်

Here is another one of those rhymes: nun3 ma1-wa1 | နမ်းမဝ - insatiably inhale and kiss the pan3 a-hla1 | ပန်းအလှ - beauty of the flower.

Hmone2-Shway2-Yi2 | မှုံရွှေရည်

pan3 | ပန်း - flower

a-hla1 | အလှ - beauty

go2 | ကို - to

nun3 | နမ်း - inhale and kiss

ma1-wa1 | မဝ - unsatiated

dau1 dthi2 | တော့သည် - not able to settle and finalize

myin2-myin2 dthu2 a-theare3 nit oun2 sweare3 chit ja1 byi2 | မြင်မြင်သူ အသည်းနစ်အောင် စွဲချစ်ကြပြီ

myin2-myin2 dthu2 | မြင်မြင်သူ - all seers and beholders

a-theare3 | အသည်း - heart (lit: liver)

nit | နစ် - drown

oun2 | အောင် - in order to make something happen

sweare3 | စွဲ - get addicted

chit | ချစ် - love

ja1 | ကြ - plural (to the act of inhaling and kissing)

byi2 | ပြီ - has started to

The heart and the feelings of all beholders get drown in the enchanting sea of love. The original version used the word byi2 | ပြီ to imply that the limelight and popularity has just begun for the young entertainer. The modern version missed the point, and replaced the word with dti2 | သည်, which is plain ending affirmation word in literary form.

Re-make Version:
myin2-myin2 dthu2 a-theare3 nit oun2 sweare3 chit ja1 dthi2 | မြင်မြင်သူ အသည်းနစ်အောင် စွဲချစ်ကြသည်

pyi2-dthu2 a-theare3 zweare3 Hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | ပြည်သူအသည်းစွဲမှုံရွှေရည် - a favorite of fans (or idolized by fans) all over the country.

pyi2-dthu2 | ပြည်သူ - fans (lit: general populace)

a-theare3 zweare3 | အသည်းစွဲ - favorite (noun); be idolized (verb)

Hmone2 Shway2 Yi2 | မှုံရွှေရည်

nyi2-du2 ma1-khweare3 beare3 wa1-thone2 myay2 ma1-hi2 | ညီတူမခွဲဘဲ ဝသုန်မြေမဟီ - equally by all on earth (regardless of different racial and ethnical background)

nyi2-du2 | ညီတူ - equally

ma1-khweare3 beare3 | မခွဲဘဲ - without having been divided

wa1-thone2 myay2 ma1-hi2 | ဝသုန်မြေမဟီ - on earth

myit-ta2 yay2 ma1-thway2 thoon3 pfyo3 lo1 | မေတ္တာရေ မသွေသွန်းဖြိုးလို့ - abundant affections pouring down like rain water and does not stray away.

myit-ta2 | မေတ္တာ - affections

yay2 | ရေ - water

ma1-thway2 | မသွေ - without straying away

thoon3 | သွန်း - pouring down of the rain as in ရွာသွန်း

pfyo3 | ဖြိုး - bountiful

lo1 | လို့ - emphasis; in such a way

The modern version missed out the point of love that does not stray away. In addition, the original version maintains the rhyme ma1-thway2 | မသွေ with yay2 | ရေ , which continues on to shway2 | ရွှေ (gold) and ngway2 | ငွေ (silver).

Re-make Version:
myit-ta2 yay2 ywa2-thoon3 pfyo3 lo1 | မေတ္တာရေရွာသွန်းဖြိုးလို့ - abundant affections pouring down like rain water

shway2-mo3 ngway2 mo3 ywa2 myi2 | ရွှေမိုးငွေမိုးရွာမည် - certain to bring prosperity as though the sky opening up to fall gold and silver rain.

shway2-mo3 | ရွှေမိုး - golden rain

ngway2 mo3 | ငွေမိုး - silvery rain

ywa2 | ရွာ - falling of the rain

myi2 | မည် - will happen (literary form)

My personal point of view is that we should not re-write the original work of Shakespeare. It will do disservice to the genius of the original creator. For someone who is well-versed in the Burmese Language, the rhymes, the rhythms and subtle meanings of tender, heart-warming words in "Hmone Shwe Yi" will just leave the mind's eyes with imagination in the whole new dimension. The graceful movements of Myanmar traditional dance by Khin Than Nu fittingly completed the missing half of this Myanmar classic to make "Hmone Shwe Yi" one of the greatest shows of all time.

Hmone Shwe Yee

မခင်မှုံ ရဲအောင်နဲ့ကြိုက်နေလား။

အစ်ကိုဘယ်လိုထင်လို့လဲ ဟင်။

မေးတာဖြေပါလေ။

သူ့ဘက်ကတော့ချစ်နေတာ၊ ကြိုက်နေတာ အထင်ရှားပဲလေ၊

အစ်ကိုလည်း အမြင်သားပဲ။

ဪ... မှုံ့ကို သူနဲ့ယူသင့်တယ်လို့ ပြောမလို့လား ဟင်။


သူနဲ့ယူသင့်တယ်လို့တော့ မပြောဘူး၊

ဒါပေမဲ့ အစ်ကိုနဲ့ ယူရမယ်လို့တော့ ပြောမယ်။


မှုံ့ကိုချစ်လို့လား ဟင် ... ချစ်နေလို့လား။

ဘာဖြစ်လို့ ပြန် ပြန်မေးနေလဲ၊

ရဲအောင်နဲ့ မခင်မှုံနဲ့ ရှင်းလား မရှင်းလား ဆိုတာ သိချင်တယ်၊

အဲဒါပဲဖြေ။


မှုံသူနဲ့ ကင်းရှင်းပါတယ်၊

နေပါဦး... အစ်ကို မှုံ့ကို အလောတကြီး ဘာဖြစ်လို့ လာမေးရတာလဲ။


အခုမှပဲ မခင်မှုံကို အစ်ကို မယူဘဲ မနေနိုင်တဲ့ စိတ်တွေ ပေါ်လာလို့ပဲ ကိုး။

အစ်ကို့ကို မခင်မှုံ ယူမယ်မဟုတ်လား ဟင်၊

မခင်မှုံ ယူမှာပါ။


အစ်ကို့သဘောပါပဲ။


Dialogue

Note how names are used in the conversational Burmese instead of the first and second person terms "you" and "I". In fact, "you" and "I" shown in brackets are not used at all.

Ma Khin Hmone, (are you) in love with Ye Aung?

What do you think, A-ko2?

Please just answer...

It's obvious that he likes (me). He is in love - from his side.

A-ko2 also knows that too well.

Oh, are (you) going to tell Hmone (me) Hmone (I) should marry him?

No, (I'm) not going to tell (you): '(you) should marry him.'

But, '(you) must marry A-ko2 (me)' - that (I am) going to tell (you).

Is A-ko2 in love with Hmone? In love with Hmone?

Why are you asking me back?

Is Ma Khin Hmone involved with Ye Aung or not?

(I) want to know...

Just answer.

Hmone is unblemished. No, Hmone is not involved with him.

Wait a minute... Why does A-ko2 come and ask Hmone this in such a hurry?

Only now, A-ko2 has such thoughts: A-ko2 can't live without Hmone.

Will Ma Khin Hmone marry A-ko2? Will (you)?

Surely, Ma Khin Hmone will do.

Whatever A-ko2 says.