In the 1980s, when I was growing up in Rangoon under Ne Win's Socialist Government, I remember how foreigners were shocked by, among other things, local people chewing betel quid and spitting out splashes of red betel juice all over the sidewalks. Today, if you come from a place like Japan, where nobody expects you to tip, you’re in for a shock when visiting the U.S., where tipping is expected everywhere, from coffee shops to fine-dining restaurants (15-20% of your bill is the norm, in case you’re wondering). In both Thailand and Burma, travelers are expected to remove their footwear when entering temples and shrines, but there’s a notable difference between the two countries. In Japan, you can generally enter temple grounds with your shoes on, but must remember to remove them if you’re entering someone’s home, especially a traditional home with tatami mats.

In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my guest Su, a Chiang Mai-based Burmese teacher, and I discuss the culture shocks we have experienced at home and abroad. (Photo by Jirawatfoto, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

မျက်နှာချင်းဆိုင် face to face (adverb)
ခြေချတယ် to settle
မြေအောက်ရထား underground train, subway
မိုးပျံတံတား / မိုးပျံလမ်း overhead bridge or walkway (lit. flying bridge or walkway)
ညဈေး night market
ကျတ်ရွာ village of the lost souls / ghost village
သရဲတ‌စ္ဆေ ghosts
အလာကျဲတယ် to come infrequently (used with trains and buses)
အလာစိပ်တယ် to come frequently (used with trains and buses)
ဖိုမဆက်ဆံရေး intimate relationships (lit. male-female interaction)
ပွင့်လင်းတယ် open, progressive, liberal (socially)
ပရဝဏ် pagoda precinct
အများသုံးအိမ်သာ public bathroom
ကွမ်း betel quid
ကွမ်းတံတွေး betel juice (liquid from chewing betel quid)
ထွေးတယ် to spit
ပက်ခနဲ in a splash
လူ့ကျင့်ဝတ် social protocol, proper manner
လိုင်းကား bus
၃၁ ဘုံ 31 planes of existence
ဖေါ်ရွေတယ် to be hospitable
နှိုးဆော်တယ် to urge, to rally
ချေလျင် on foot (adverb)
တစ်ပြ a distance equal to one furlong or 220 yards, but Burmese people also use it to refer to ill-defined distances

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Some homegrown businesses and neighborhood restaurants flourish in Burma, thanks for the power of viral posts and social media. But fake news of levitating monks and strange omens also spread online, like wildfire. While not exactly fake news, inaccurate news and old news also tend to resurface from time to time, stirring up racial tension or raising false hopes. In this episode of Learn Burmese from Natural Talk, my cohost Mol Mol from BLAY (Burmese Language Academy of Yangon) and I discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of social media. (Photo by Lanlao, licensed from Shutterstock. Music courtesy of Pixabay)

Vocabulary

ကောင်းကျိုး benefits
ဆိုးကျိုး negative impact
မီးပုံးပျံ aerial balloon
ရင်တထိတ်ထိတ် anxiously (adverb, literally, with the heart beating fast)
လူမှုရေးကွန်ရက် social network
လူမှုရေး social
ကွန်ရက် / ပိုက်ကွန် network
သတင်းမှား fake news
ကောလာဟလ rumors
ပွဲဆူအောင် to stir up things
ပဋိပက္ခ riot, conflict
ဆဲလဖီ ဆွဲတယ် to take selfie
ဆဲလဖီ တင်တယ် to post selfie
ဆဲလီ celebrity
ဝေခွဲလို့မရဘူး cannot determine
ဈာန်ကြွတယ် to levitate, to float by spiritual means
Google ခေါက်တယ် to search in Google
Google လိုက် go ahead and use Google
နှလုံးရောဂါ heart disease
သုံးသပ်တယ် to analyze
ချဉ်းကပ်တယ် to approach
စကားချိုသွေးတယ် to sweet-talk
ဂျင်းမိတယ် to be deceived, to be taken advantage of (slang)
ဂျင်းထည့်တယ် to deceive, to take advantage of (slang)
ပေါက်သွားတယ် to become popular, to go viral online (slang)
ကျမ်းကိုးကျမ်းကား cited sources
ငွေသား cash, money
ပိတ်ပင်တားဆီး to forbid

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Given a choice, would you rather drink the Kool-Aid, or the bitter rainwater (မိုးခါးရေ)? The phrase “to drink the Kool-Aid,” meaning to embrace an irrational, foolish, or dangerous popular ideology, is associated with the tragic episode involving the American cult leader Jim Jones. The Burmese equivelent is "to drink the bitter rainwater" (မိုးခါးရေသောက်တယ်), stemming from the folktale about a kingdrom where everyone, save but a few wise citizens, drank the toxic rainwater and became insane.

The Burmese moviemaker Ko Pauk, who left the country after the military coup of 2021 and joined the resistance, made a documentary honoring the activists in the civil disobedience movement. Though it was released under the English title "The Road Not Taken," the original Burmese title was မသောက်မိသောမိုးခါးရေ ("The Bitter Rainwater I Refused to Drink"). The songwriter and singer ဆောင်းဦးလှိုင် (Hsaung Oo Hlaing) recently released a song titled မိုးခါးရေ ("Bitter Rainwater").

To learn more about the folktale behind the phrase and how to use the expression to talk about taking a stand or caving to pressure, listen to this episode of Bite-Size Burmese. (Illustration by Burmese artist Nyan Kyal Say, NK Artbox; Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.)

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