Language of security

The College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University has compiled a vocabulary list related to security issues for a range of Asian languages, including Myanmar. This list provides some interesting discussion of the varied uses of the selected words. The Myanmar language section is accessible 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.

gaing

In his 1975 text Sangha and State in Burma, Michael Mendelson argues for translating the Myanmar term gaing into English as "sect", as explained in the quote below from page 86.

"Sect is being used here as an approximate, if slightly unsatisfactory, substitute for the word gaing (Burmese). Spiro (1970: 315-320) suggests "branch" as a gloss for the term gaing. A gaing, from the Pali term gana (a chapter of monks), is, sociologically speaking, a group of taiks who recognize the somewhat charismatic leadership of a sayadaw who is considered the leader. It may at first have practices or beliefs (such as ordination rites, unique textual interpretations) no different from other established sects, but it may develop such differentiating characteristics and become both a self-defined and lay-defined sect, or what is known in Pali as a nikaya. Lay definition be a wealthy lay supporter (taga) usually precedes self definition. The difficulty is that the Burmese word gaing (collection, assemblage) is used by informants to cover both the Pali gana and nikaya. The problems involved with these terms are discussed in the Introduction. A further difficulty is that gaing can also have messianic overtones (Mendelson 1961a, b, 1963b, c)."

Michael Aung-Thwin, however, prefers the term "order" rather than "sect", as he argues in the quote below, taken from page 18 of his December 2009 paper "Of Monarchs, Monks and Men: Religion and the State in Myanmar."

"The Shwegyin considers itself stricter in discipline that the Thudhamma, the Maha Dwaya considers itself stricter that the Shwegyin, while the former's own offshoots consider themselves stricter that it. But in fact, all of these Orders are distinguished from one another more by the degree of adherence to the Vinaya--such as whether or not to wear sandals, or use umbrellas when going on their daily rounds for food--than by any substantive philosophical or doctrinal differences, hence my use of the term "Order" rather than "Sect."

kusala and kuthou

In a previous post I highlighted Gustaaf Houtman's explanation of the "Pali Trap", a concept which he uses to explain the tendency of anthropologists and other scholars to translate Myanmarised Pali terms according to their canonical Pali definitions rather than according to colloquial Myanmar usage.  Quoted below is a good example of such a "terminological shift" of a Pali word adopted into Myanmar, taken from Melford Spiro's Buddhism and Society: A great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes, p. 97.

"In nibbanic Buddhism, it will be recalled, there is a distinction between kusala, good action, and puñña, merit acquired by such action.  Throughout the Therevada world, however, one or the other of these semantically distinctive lexemes--puñña and kusala--has been dropped and its meaning assimilated to that of the remaining lexeme.  "Merit" and "good," distinctive concepts in nibbanic Buddhism, have been fused into a semantically undifferentiated concept which is rendered by one lexeme alone.  Thus, in Ceylon and Thailand, kusala has been dropped in favor of puñña (Sinhalese, pin; Thai, boon), while in Burma puñña has been dropped in favour of kusala (Burmese, ku.thou)."

This "terminological shift" has led to the common Myanmar phrase "ကုသိုလ်ရတယ်" (kuthou-ya-day), meaning to "get merit" (as a result of doing a meritorious act). By contrast, as I understand it, according to canonical usage, one would "do" a kusala act and "get" puñña.

Grammar terms

This vocabulary set contains some basic grammar terms in Myanmar language.

သဒ္ဒါ	grammar
အက္ခရာ	letters/alphabet
သရအက္ခရာ	vowel
ဗြည်းအက္ခရာ	consonant
ဝါစင်္ဂ	parts of speech
ပုဒ်	word; punctuation mark; part numerical classifier for counting pieces of writing such as articles,verse, songs, etc.
ဝေါဟာရ	vocabulary
ဝါကျ	sentence
နာမ်	noun
နာမ်စား	pronoun
ကြိယာ	verb
နာမဝိသေသန	adjective
ကြိယာဝိသေသန	adverb
ဝိဘတ်	postpositional marker; word suffixed to a noun or pronoun to designate it as the subject or object, and to a verb to indicate time or mood
သမ္ဗန္ဓ	conjunction
ပစ္စည်း	particle; word serving to qualify a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb or an adverb
အာမေဍိတ်	exclamation; interjection

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)