Bite-Size Burmese: Gone to Live in the Village of the Spirits

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Gone to live in the village of the sacred spirits (နတ်ရွာစံတယ်), flown away (ပျံလွန်တော်မူတယ်), has taken up residence in Nirvana (ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် ) ... They all mean "to die," but depending on the type of person involved, some terms may be appropriate, others may not be. Then there are also monosyllabic terms you might use to describe death disdainfully or sarcastically, the Burmese equivalent of "kick the bucket" or "gone six feet under." If your life depends on it, will you be able to pick the correct verb to describe a queen's death, a monk's death, or a good-riddance death? Listen to this Bite-Size episode for a crash course the Burmese way to die. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)
Vocabulary
သေတယ် to die
ဆုံးတယ် to die, to pass away
ကွယ်လွန်တယ် to die, to pass away
နတ်ရွာစံတယ် to die, lit. to take up residence in the realm of the spirits (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ပျံလွန်တယ် to die, lit. to fly away (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ပရိနိဗ္ဗာန်စံတယ် to die, to enter Nirvana (respectful, for sages and highborn individuals)
ကြွတယ် to die, disrespectful
ဂန့်တယ် to die, disrespectful
ကြိယာ verb
အရွဲ့တိုက်တယ် to be sarcastic
ရှောင်လွှဲလို့မရဘူး cannot be avoided
ဒဲ့ဒိုးပြောတယ် / တဲ့တိုးပြောတယ် to speak directly, to speak bluntly
မြင့်မြတ်တယ် to be noble
မင်းမျိုးမင်းနွယ် royal blood
တော်ဝင်မိသားစု royal household

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