Bite-Size Burmese: On Four-Letter Words

Learn Burmese from Natural Talk

Balderdash, baby talk, pillow talk, a clumsy act, a half-ass job, or a cuddly pet? Chances are, there's a four-letter, four-syllable word to describe it. They give your speech a certain meter and rhythm and make you sound musical. But many of them also sound quite similar. For language learners, the challenge is not to mix them up and use the wrong one. In this episode, I introduce you to a handful of four-letter expressions to impress or amaze your friends and tutors. Intro and end music: "When my ukulele plays" by Soundroll, Upbeat.io.

Vocabulary

တောက်တိုမည်ရ odd jobs, errands
တိုလီမိုလီ miscellaneous items
တော်ရိရော်ရိ (adverb) half-hearted, in a mediocre fashion
တိုးလိုးတန်းလန်း (adverb) half-finished, left undone
တောက်တီးတောက်တဲ့ nonsense, balderdash
ကတ်သီးကတ်သတ် (adverb) to be nitpicking, to be difficult
ကိုးရိုးကားရား (adverb) in a clumsy, bungling fashion
ပိုးစိုးပက်စက် (adverb) cruelly, hurtfully, in a mean-spirited fashion
ပိုးလိုးပက်လက် (adverb) to be undignified, sprawled out
ပွတ်သီးပွတ်သတ် (adverb) to be touchy feely, to be fondling
တွတ်တီးတွတ်တာ (adverb) to speak nonstop, to speak baby talk or pillow talk

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