Monastic vocabulary

This word list contains monastic vocabulary applicable to nuns and monks and conversations between lay people and nuns/monks.

Verbs for actions done by lay people towards monks/nuns

ဆွမ်းကပ် ။ to offer food (to a monk/nun)
ဆွမ်းလောင်း ။ to offer/place food (into the bowl of a monk/nun)
ဆွမ်းဖိတ် ။ to invite (a monk/nun to visit)
ဆွမ်းကျွဲး ။ to feed (a monk/nun)
ဘုရားပန်းကပ် ။ to give/offer a flower (to a monk/nun)
ဝတ္ထုကပ်/လှူ ။ to give/offer money (to a monk/nun)
နဝကမ္မလှူ ။ to give/offer money (to a monk/nun)
ပင့် ။ to invite (a monk/nun to visit)
လျောက် / လျောက်တင် / လျောက်ထား ။ to talk (to a monk/nun)

Verbs for actions done by monks/nuns

ကြွ ။ to walk/go
သီတင်းသုံး ။ to live
စံ ။ to live
ကျိန်း ။ to sleep
မိန့် / ဟော / ဟောကြား / ပြောကြား ။ to talk
ပျံလွန်တော်မူ / ပျံတော်မူ ။ to die

pronouns / nouns

တပည့်တော် ။ I (when speaking as a lay person to a monk/nun)
အရှင်ဘုရား ။ you (when speaking as a lay person to a monk/nun)
ဆရာလေး ။ a term of respect for a nun
ဆရာကြီး ။ a term of respect for a senior nun
ဂေါပက / နုဂ္ဂဟအဖွဲ့ ။ caretaker organisation that looks after a monastery, meditation centre or pagoda
နယက ။ chairperson (of a religious organisation​, such as ဂေါပက or နုဂ္ဂဟအဖွဲ့)
ဘုန်ကြီးပျံပွဲ / ဧယဥ်ကျူး ။ a monk's/nun's funeral

Expressions by lay people to monks/nuns

"မီန်တော်မူပါဘုရား" ။ “please speak” (as said by a lay person to a monk/nun)
"တင်ပါဘုရား" ။ “yes/okay” (as said by a lay person to a monk/nun)
"မှန်ပါဘုရား" ။ “yes/okay” (as said by a lay person to a monk/nun)