More Myanmar e-book websites

Here are links to two more websites providing free Myanmar e-book downloads.

1. Burmese Classic

2. Burmese Books Online

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (7/13)

This post presents page 7 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (6/13)

This post presents page 6 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (5/13)

This post presents page 5 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (4/13)

This post presents page 4 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (3/13)

This post presents page 3 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (2/13)

This post presents page 2 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Thein Pe Myint's "Oil" (1/13)

This post presents page 1 of 13 of Thein Pe Myint's 1938 short story "Oil". This copy has been downloaded from the "Burmese Classic" website, which has an excellent collection of Myanmar books in PDF format.

Flooding of farm fields in Sagaing (2)

This post presents the second page (the image on the right below) of an article on a recent flood in Sagaing Region taken from 7 Day News Journal, April 28, 2011. The section of the article in the image on the left is take from page 3. The section of the article in the image on the right is take from page 12.

Flooding of farm fields in Sagaing (1)

This post presents the first page (the image on the left below) of an article on a recent flood in Sagaing Region taken from 7 Day News Journal, April 28, 2011. The section of the article in the image on the left is take from page 3. The section of the article in the image on the right is take from page 12.

DKBA loans

This post presents a short article on loans to the DKBA from the Myanma Agricultural Development Bank. The article comes from 7 Day News Journal, April 28, 2011. The column on the left in the image below is from page 1 and the column on the right is from page 6.

Reforming Myanmar's agriculture policy (3)

This post presents the third (and final) column of an editorial on Myanmar's agricultural policy that was included in The Voice Weekly, May 16-22, p.30.

Reforming Myanmar's agriculture policy (2)

This post presents the second column of an editorial on Myanmar's agricultural policy that was included in The Voice Weekly, May 16-22, p.30.

Reforming Myanmar's agriculture policy

This post presents the first column of an editorial on Myanmar's agricultural policy that was included in The Voice Weekly, May 16-22, p.30.

Political parties and peasant associations (2)

This post presents the second page (the image on the right below) of two pages of a recent article on the NLD's decision to form a farmers' association.

Political parties and peasant associations

This post presents a recent article on the NLD's decision to form a "farmers' association". The English text below is a translation of the first of the article's two pages (the image on the left below). Related English language articles are available here and here and here.

"Class" and "Status" in Myanmar vocabulary

The use of the term "လူတန်းစား" in the recently posted review of the film "Thingyan Moe" highlights the ambiguous way in which this term is sometimes used. Native Myanmar speakers often conflate "လူတန်းစား" with "လူအဆင့်အတန်း". This conflation is misleading.

"လူတန်းစား" should be translated into English as "class" and "လူအဆင့်အတန်း" should be translated as "status". In a Marxist (မာ့စ်ဝါဒ) sense "လူတန်းစား" refers to socio-economic groups defined in terms of their relationship to the means of production ("ကုန်ထုတ်ကိရိယာနှင့် ဆက်ဆံရေး"). Defined this way, the word can be used in terms like the following:

အလုပ္သမား လူတန္းစား ။ working class
ပစ္စည်းမဲ့လူတန်းစား ။ proletariat (lit. property-less class)
အရင်းရှင် လူတန်းစား ။ capitalist class
ဘူဇွာ လူတန်းစား ။ bourgeois class (propertied middle income class)
လူတန်းစား ပဋိပက္ခ ။ class conflict

However, native Myanmar speakers sometimes use the word "လူတန်းစား" as though it meant "status", in terms of socio-economic stratification, as with the following terms:

အခြေခံ လူတန်းစား ။ lower class (lit. 'basic' class)
အလယ်အလတ်တန်းစား လူတန်းစား ။ middle class
အထက်တန်းလွှာ လူတန်းစား ။ upper class

The terms "lower class", "middle class" and "upper class" are, of course, commonly used in English as well. And they are just as misleading in English. When class is (mis)understood as referring to income level, rather than a relationship to the means of production, it misses the fact that even people of middle income (and even at times high income), if they are wage earners, are also part of the proletariat (ပစ္စည်းမဲ့လူတန်းစား) and thus have shared class interests with low income workers.

Environmental conservation in Bogalay Township

This post presents an article from The Voice Weekly, April 25 - May 1, page 15, regarding NGO projects aimed at environmental conservation in the area of Beautiful Lady Island (Mainma-hla-kyon), Bogalay Township, Irrawaddy Region.

Class conflict in a classic Myanmar film (2)

This post presents a translation of the second of two pages (the image on right below) of a review of the classic Myanmar film Thingyan Moe taken from the Myanmar Times website.

Myanmar's market economic system

This post contains a short article about the content of Myanmar president U Thein Sein's first speech in the new parliament about the country's transition to a market-oriented economic system. It comes from The Voice Weekly, April 25 - May 1, page 3.

Class conflict in a classic Myanmar film (1)

This post presents a translation of the first of two pages (the image on left below) of a review of the classic Myanmar film Thingyan Moe taken from the Myanmar Times website.

The weakness of agricultural credit in Myanmar (5)

This post contains the second and final page of an article on the challenges of weak credit for farmers in Myanmar. It comes from page 30 of 7 Day News, April 28, 2011. The rest of the article will be translated in a subsequent post.

The weakness of agricultural credit in Myanmar (4)

This post contains the fifth column of an article on the challenges of weak credit for farmers in Myanmar. It comes from page 29 of 7 Day News, April 28, 2011. The rest of the article will be translated in a subsequent post.

The weakness of agricultural credit in Myanmar (3)

This post contains the fourth column of an article on the challenges of weak credit for farmers in Myanmar. It comes from page 29 of 7 Day News, April 28, 2011. The rest of the article will be translated in a subsequent post.

The weakness of agricultural credit in Myanmar (2)

This post contains the third column of an article on the challenges of weak credit for farmers in Myanmar. It comes from page 29 of 7 Day News, April 28, 2011. The rest of the article will be translated in a subsequent post.