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Learn Burmese from Natural TalkAuthor: kennethwongsf
Hello! Greetings from the Burmese corner! I'm Kenneth Wong, a Burmese language instructor, author, and translator. This is a podcast series for intermediate and advanced Burmese language learners who want to learn Burmese by listening to natural conversation. Every two weeks or so, a guest speaker and I record and upload an episode on a specific topic. At the end of each episode, you'll find the keywords and phrases with their meanings. For more on the podcast series, visit the Learn Burmese from Natural Talk blog: http://burmeselessons.blogspot.com/ Language: en-us Genres: Education, Language Learning Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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On Love and Life According to Forrest Gump
Episode 61
Tuesday, 14 April, 2026
"Life's like a box of chocolate; you never know what you're gonna get," says Forrest Gump, the title character played by Tom Hanks in the 1994 film. In Burmese, the saying roughly translates to "ဘဝဆိုတာ ချောကလက်ဘူးလေးလိုပါပဲ။ ဘာပါလဲဆိုတာ ဘယ်သူမှ မသိကြပါဘူး။" In this episode, my cohost Su, a Burmese language teacher from Chiang Mai, and I discuss Forrest Gump's attitude toward life's tragedies and challenges, war's toll on the human psyche, and the bitter-sweet nature of first love. Along the way, we introduce you to the words and phrases related to childhood, unrequited love, the Vietnam war's unhealed trauma, the flower-child generation, and women's liberation. Join us as we go for a run with Forrest. (Illustration generated in ChatGPT; music courtesy of Pixabay. "Flower Power" excerpt courtesy of Alana Jordan.)Vocabularyဇာတ်ကောင် character ပင်မဇာတ်ကောင် main characterတစ်စေ့တစ်စောင်း to catch a glimpseမှော်ပညာ wizardry, witchcraft ရေသူမ mermaidစုန်းမ witchဒဏ္ဍာရီ legend, fableတပ်စုမှူး platoon commanderတိတ်တိတ်ပုန်းချစ်တယ် to love someone secretlyလိင်အမြတ်ထုတ်တယ် to take advantage of someone sexuallyအခွင့်အရေးယူတယ် to take advantage ofဒုက္ခိတ disabledပြည့်တန်ဆာ prostituteသူရသတ္တိဘွဲ့ award for braveryစိတ်ဓာတ်ခွန်အားရတယ် to get inspiration or spiritual encouragementအရိပ်အယောင် hint, implicationမှင်တက်သွားတယ် to be stunned, to be awe-struckစိတ်လုံခြုံရာ space for mental securityထိပ်တိုက်ရင်ဆိုင်တယ် to face or confront something head-onသဟဇာတဖြစ်အောင် in order to be harmonious နားမလည်ပါးမလည် without fully realizing or understanding somethingနာတာရှည်ရောဂါ terminal disease ရောဂါကျွမ်းနေပြီ to be incurable ခါးစည်းခံမယ် to endure ကဲ့ရဲ့တယ် to criticize, to condemn ခံရသူကို အပြစ်တင်တယ် to blame the victimလေနှင်ရာ မျောပါသွားတယ် to be carried away by the wind Have a question about a Burmese word or phrase you heard here? Send us a message.
