စကားဆိုးများ
sa-ka hso mya
The Burmese phrase for "bad words" is စကားဆိုးများ (sa-ka hso mya).
စကားဆိုးများ refers to the actual words that are considered bad or offensive. If you want to talk about the act of swearing or cursing itself, it is more natural to use the term ဆဲဆိုခြင်း. For swear words in everyday speech, most people say ဆဲစကား.
What does it mean word for word?
The phrase is composed of စကား (sa-ka) meaning "speech" or "word", ဆိုး (hso) meaning "bad" or "evil" and များ (mya) which is the plural marker.
How does it change in a sentence?
The phrase is plural because of the suffix များ (mya). If you remove this suffix, the phrase becomes စကားဆိုး, which refers to a single "bad word".
How do you pronounce it?
sa-ka hso mya
Did you know?
- In Burmese culture, using စကားဆိုး is often viewed not just as a social faux pas but as a spiritual stain that can affect one's karma.
- Some of the most severe စကားဆိုး in Burmese involve comparing a person to animals, which carries a much heavier social stigma than animal-based insults in English.
- Burmese uses different pronouns to indicate distance and respect, meaning a person can turn a neutral word into a စကားဆိုး simply by switching to a rude pronoun.
Examples in context
- စကားဆိုးများ မသုံးပါနဲ့။sagar soe myar ma thone bar nae.Please do not use bad words.
Example conversation
A teacher is talking to a student about his behavior.
- နှင်းနှင်း Hnin Hninဇော်ဇော်၊ စကားဆိုးများ မပြောပါနဲ့။Zaw Zaw, sagar soe myar ma pyaw par nae.Zaw Zaw, please don't use bad words.
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawစိတ်မရှိပါနဲ့၊ ကျွန်တော် တောင်းပန်ပါတယ်။sate ma she par nae, kyun taw taung pan par tal.I'm sorry, please forgive me.
- နှင်းနှင်း Hnin Hninနောက်တစ်ခါ စကားဆိုးများ မပြောဖို့ သတိထားပါ။nauk ta khar sagar soe myar ma pyaw pho tha ti htar par.Be careful not to say bad words next time.
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ အခုကစပြီး သတိထားပါ့မယ်။houk kae, a khu ka sa pee tha ti htar par mal.Yes, I will be careful from now on.
This is the wrong word and meaning, I’m Myanmar but I don’t understand about this word.
Thank you for telling me. I’ve rewritten the page, and it now also gives ဆဲစကား, the everyday word for swear words.