ကြောင်
kraung/t͡ɕàʊɴ/
The Burmese word for "cat" is ကြောင် (kraung).
The term ကြောင် refers to the domestic species of cat.
Meaning: domestic species (noun)
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is kraung. The IPA is /tɕàʊɴ/.
Did you know?
- The word ကြောင် can also mean 'to cheat' or 'to swindle' in certain contexts. It is possible that the word for 'cat' was originally used as a metaphor for someone behaving in a sneaky or devious way.
- The Burmese word for 'cat' shares a common ancestor with words used for 'tiger' in other ancient Sino-Tibetan languages. This suggests that, historically, the distinction between domestic cats and large wild cats was less linguistically sharp.
- Beyond the animal, ကြောင် is used to describe a person who is 'staring' or has 'eyes wide open' in a fixed, unblinking manner.
Examples in context
- ဒီကြောင်က အရမ်းချစ်ဖို့ကောင်းတယ်။di kyaung ka ayan chit pho kaung tal.This cat is very cute.
- ကျွန်တော် ကြောင်မွေးချင်တယ်။kyun taw kyaung mway chin tal.I want to raise a cat.
- အိမ်ရှေ့မှာ ကြောင်တစ်ကောင် ရှိတယ်။ate shay mha kyaung tit kaung shi tal.There is a cat in front of the house.
Example conversation
Two friends are talking about a pet.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeဇော်ဇော်မှာ ကြောင်ရှိလား။Zaw Zaw hmar kyaung shi-lar?Do you have a cat, Zaw Zaw?
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawဟုတ်၊ ကျွန်တော့်မှာ ကြောင်တစ်ကောင်ရှိတယ်။hoat, kyun-daw hmar kyaung ta-kaung shi-tal.Yes, I have one cat.
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeကြောင်လေးက ဘာအရောင်လဲ။kyaung-lay ga bar ayaung lae?What color is the little cat?
- ဇော်ဇော် Zaw Zawသူက အဖြူရောင်ပါ။thu ga a-phyu yaung bar.It is white.
Sources
- Wiktionary, “cat” translations and entries ကြောင်, CC BY-SA 4.0, dump of 2026-09-26.
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries ကြောင်, CC BY-SA 4.0.
