မုၢ်နံၤဟဲဖျဲၣ်မၤမုာ်
mu ni hai phye ma mu
“Happy birthday” in Karen is မုၢ်နံၤဟဲဖျဲၣ်မၤမုာ် (mu ni hai phye ma mu).
မုၢ်နံၤဟဲဖျဲၣ်မၤမုာ် is used to express good wishes to someone on their birthday.
Meaning: good wishes for a birthday (intj)
What does it mean word for word?
The phrase is composed of the following parts: မုၢ်နံၤ (mu ni) meaning ‘day/date’, ဟဲဖျဲၣ် (hai phye) meaning ‘to arrive/come’ and မၤမုာ် (ma mu) meaning ‘to be happy/joyful’.
How do you pronounce it?
mu ni hai phye ma mu
Did you know?
- Because the Sgaw Karen script is derived from the Burmese alphabet, the words for 'birthday' use characters that were originally designed for a completely different language family.
- In some Karen communities, celebrations are tied more closely to the lunar calendar or agricultural cycles than to the specific date of birth mentioned in မုၢ်နံၤ.
- While English uses 'happy' as an adjective, the Karen phrase မၤမုာ် (ma mu) uses a causative structure to 'make' the happiness occur.
Example conversation
Two friends meet at a party.
- နုနု Nu Nuစောစော, မုၢ်နံၤဟဲဖျဲၣ်မၤမုာ်!Saw Saw, mu na nyi hae phya ma muSaw Saw, happy birthday!
- စောစော Saw Sawတဘျာမုာ်, နုနု.ta bya mu, Nu NuThank you, Nu Nu.
- နုနု Nu Nuနီၤမုာ်မုာ်ဧါ.ni mu mu ahBe very happy.
- စောစော Saw Sawတဘျာမုာ်ဒိၣ်မုာ်.ta bya mu doh muThank you very much.
