ဟ့ခ်
hke
The Karen word for stupid is ဟ့ခ် (hke).
ဟ့ခ် is an adjective used to describe someone or something that is lacking in intelligence.
Meaning: lacking in intelligence (adj)
How do you pronounce it?
hke
Did you know?
- In many Karen communities, direct criticism of intelligence is often softened with euphemisms to maintain social harmony and 'face'.
- Because Karen is a tonal language, the word ဟ့ခ် must be pronounced with a specific high or low contour to be understood correctly by the listener.
- The usage of ဟ့ခ် can vary significantly between the S'gaw and Pwo Karen dialects, meaning a word understood in one village might sound foreign in another.
Example conversation
Two friends are talking about a mistake someone made.
- စောလူး Saw Luအီၤမၤတဂ့ၤလီၤ.ee ma t-ga leeHe did it wrong.
- နုနု Nu Nuအီၤဟ့ခ်လီၤ.ee hka leeHe is stupid.
- စောလူး Saw Luမဲးစံးအီၤနုနု.mae sa ee Nu NuDon't criticize him, Nu Nu.
- နုနု Nu Nuတဂ့ၤလီၤ စောလူး.t-ga lee Saw LuIt's not good, Saw Lu.
