ချစ်စရာ
hkyitsaya
The Burmese word for cute is ချစ်စရာ (hkyitsaya).
This word is used to describe someone or something that is attractive or pleasing in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way.
Meaning: attractive or pleasing in a youthful, dainty, quaint or fun-spirited way (adj)
What does it mean word for word?
The term is composed of the verb ချစ်, which means to love and the suffix စရာ, which is used to form adjectives meaning 'worthy of' or 'something to…'. Literally, it translates to 'lovely to love' or 'worth loving'.
Which one should you use?
When using 'cute' as an attributive adjective directly before a noun (e.g., 'a cute baby'), the form changes to ချစ်စရာကောင်းသော in formal or written contexts.
How does it change in a sentence?
When using the adjective to modify a noun directly in formal or written Burmese, you should use the form ချစ်စရာကောင်းသော.
How do you pronounce it?
hkyitsaya
Did you know?
- If you call a person 'cute' using only the root verb ချစ်, you are actually telling them 'I love you'.
- While ချစ်စရာ means 'cute', Burmese speakers often use the word ချစ် on its own as a term of endearment, similar to calling someone 'dear' or 'darling' in English.
- The suffix စရာ does not just create adjectives like 'cute', but can also turn verbs into nouns meaning 'a reason for' or 'something to', such as ပြောစရာ for 'something to say'.
Examples in context
- ဒီအင်္ကျီလေးက ချစ်စရာလေး။di ain chi lay ka chit sa yar lay.This little shirt is cute.
- ကလေးတွေက ချစ်စရာကောင်းလိုက်တာ။ka lay tway ka chit sa yar kaung lite tar.The children are so cute.
- သူ့ရဲ့ အမူအရာက ချစ်စရာပဲ။thu ye a mu a yar ka chit sa yar pal.His mannerism is cute.
Example conversation
Min Min and Myat Noe are looking at a small stuffed toy.
- မင်းမင်း Min Minဒီအရုပ်လေးကို ကြည့်ပါဦး၊ ချစ်စရာလေးနော်။di ayoke lay ko kyi par oon, chit sa yar lay naw.Look at this toy, it's cute, isn't it?
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeဟုတ်တယ်၊ အရမ်းချစ်စရာကောင်းတာပဲ။hote tal, ayan chit sa yar kaung tar pal.Yes, it is very cute.
- မင်းမင်း Min Minဒါကို ဝယ်ပေးရမလား။dar ko wal pay ya ma lar.Should I buy it for you?
- မြတ်နိုး Myat Noeဟုတ်ကဲ့၊ ဝယ်ပေးပါ။hote kae, wal pay par.Yes, please buy it.
