ဃ့
ghay
The English word beautiful is translated into Karen as ဃ့ (ghay).
This adjective is used to describe someone or something that is attractive.
Meaning: attractive (adj)
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is ghay.
Did you know?
- In many Karen dialects, the concept of 'beautiful' is closely tied to the idea of 'good' or 'well', meaning the word for 'beautiful' and 'good' can be identical.
- Because Karen is a tonal language, saying ဃ့ with the wrong pitch might turn a compliment into a completely different, unrelated word.
- The S'gaw Karen script used to write ဃ့ is derived from the Burmese alphabet, which was originally based on the ancient Mon script and Pali traditions.
Example conversation
Two friends are admiring a flower in a garden.
- ကေကေ Kay Kayစောဘေ၊ တၢ်လီၤဃ့ဒိၣ်Saw Boe, ta lee ghaw doeSaw Boe, this flower is beautiful.
- စောဘေ Saw Baeမ့က့က့ဒိၣ်mae kka doeYes, it is very beautiful.
- ကေကေ Kay Kayနၤဃ့ဒိၣ်ဒံးna ghaw doe danYou are also very beautiful.
- စောဘေ Saw Baeတဘျိၣ်တဘျိၣ်ta byoe ta byoeThank you very much.
