Category: Language

Type

Dictionaries come in various sizes and flavors.

• Hardcover
• Softcover
• Pocket sized
• Desk top
• Abridged
• Unabridged
• Student Edition
• Advanced Learners’ Dictionary
• Technical Dictionary
• Domain-oriented Dictionary (e.g Music)
• Thesaurus (in Dictionary form)
• On-line Dictionary
• Visual Dictionary
• Free Dictionary (e.g. Wiki-dictionary)
• Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
• Chambers’ Dictionary
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary
• Funk & Wagnall’s Dictionary
• Jones’ Pronouncing Dictionary
• Bilingual Dictionary (e.g French & English)
• Trilingual Dictionary (e.g Pali, English & French)
• Scrabble Dictionary
• Crossword Puzzle Dictionary
• Rhyming Dictionary
• English to Burmese Dictionary (e.g. Judson)
• Burmese to English Dictionary (e.g. Judson)

• Pali-English, Pali-Burmese and Pali-English-Burmese Dictionary

Coverage

A dictionary may cover

• meaning
• usage
• etymology (origin and evolution) of words
• synonyms
• antonyms

Usage

One looks up a dictionary when one knows the word but is not sure of its meaning and usage.

One looks up a thesaurus when one has an idea or concept but needs to choose an appropriate word from a list of synonyms and antonyms. Dr. Mark Roget compiled a thesaurus based on his classification scheme.

Visual Dictionary and Visual Thesaurus allows one to see the relations and links of words and concepts.

With the advent of computers and Internet, dictionaries are provided in most Word Processing Systems.

Vocabulary

An early study said that an average person learns about 20 new words every year.

By subscribing to “Word of the Day” from Merriam-Webster or by listening to “Word for the Wise” from NPR (National Public Radio), one can learn 300+ new words every year.

Lexicon

The old dictionaries are also known as Lexicon. The compilers are known as Lexicographers.

Lexicon is an early card game for building words. Scrabble is a later and more popular word forming game. The word challenge in Scrabble is processed using a Dictionary (e.g. Chambers or Jones’ Pronouncing Dictionary).

Lexicographers

Judson & Team

U Tun Nyein

U Hoke Sein

U Myat Kyaw & U San Lwin

U Nyatiloka

U Silananda

Minthuwun (U Wun)

Dr. Ba Han

Tet Toe (U Ohn Pe)

NFLC

There is a National Foreign Language Center (NLFC) at the University of Maryland (College Park).
It used to provide free (or limited) access to Federal employees and eligible educators to study languages (e.g. French, Chinese, Arabic).

For a number of years, it chose from among the languages used by minorities to add introductory level courses to its library.
One year NFLC decided to develop Listening and Reading Comprehension for basic Burmese.
It sent request to professors, scholars and Burmese associations to help with the project.

I was accepted to be the Language Advisor for the Burmese project.
The Listening Comprehension consists of broadcasts (e.g. Win Pe Lwai Eik).
The Reading Comprehension consists of short articles (e.g. Ayotha Pyinnya Wun U Po Kyar).

Specific fonts and browsers were needed to read the script for the Listening and Reading Comprehension.
English translations were provided. My task was to ensure the quality (e.g. correctness of the translation).
Exercises were provided.

As a contributor to the project, I had access to LangNet.
NFLC no longer offers free access. Individuals and groups can subscribe to its courses for nominal fees.

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2025

English

In our younger days, we were taught that there are eight parts of speech in the English language.

A Noun is a name of a person, place, thing, or concept.
A noun may be classified as Proper noun, Common noun, Collective noun or Abstract noun.

A Verb usually describes an action or a process.
A verb may be Transitive or Intransitive.

Instead of repeating a noun several times, we may use Pronouns.
A pronoun stands for a Noun.
Grammar books will give classification such as Person and Number of a Pronoun.
When we speak, the first person is the one who speaks; the second person is the one being spoken to, and the third person is some other being referenced.
If there is only one person, we say it is singular. If there is more than one, we say it is plural.
In English, the term “You” may be both singular and plural.

There are Modifiers.
An Adjective usually modifies a Noun or Pronoun.
An Adverb usually modifies a Verb.

There are Connectors.
A Conjunction (such as And or But) connects two parts of a Sentence (which is constructed using the parts of speech, and makes “complete sense”.)
A Preposition adds information such as position (e.g. in, on, upon, under) and time (e.g. before, after).

There are words to express Mood (e.g. surprise).
They are also called Exclamation or an Interjection.

Notes

There are two techniques :
Synthesis (combining the parts of speech)
and
Analysis (breaking down into the parts of speech).

Pali language has only four parts of speech.

Roles

• I was a student.
• I was a student of some of my students.
• I was a teacher.
• I was a teacher of some of my teachers.

Garawa

• My mother asked me to pay respect to my KG teacher (Daw Kywe) annually.
• I pay respect to my Thin Sayas, Myin Sayas and Kyar Sayas.

Some Sayas and Sayamas

• Ms. A Benjamin (SPHS)
• Mrs. Amelia Kyi (SPHS)
• Brother Anthony (SPHS)
• Dr Anthony Ralston (UCC)
• Brother Austin (SPHS)
• U Aung Zaw (UCC)
• U Ba Than (RIT)
• U Ba Myaing (SPHS)
• U Ba Myint (RIT)
• Mr. Beatson (SPHS)
• Daw Bo Mei (PPBRS)
• Mr. Cecil DeCruze (SPHS)
• Dr. Chit Swe (UCC)
• Daw Cho (PPBRS)
• Mr. Choudhury (RU)
• Brother Clementian (SPHS)
• Daw Collin (PPBRS)
• Mr. Des Rodgers (RIT)
• Daw Essie (PPBRS)
• Dr. Foreman Acton (UCC)
• Mr. George Chapman (SPHS)
• Daw Grace (PBRS)
• Dr. Harry D Huskey (UCC)
• U Hla Myint (RIT)
• U Htay Myint (SPHS)
• U Htwe (SPHS)
• Mr. Johnny Myo (SPHS)
• Brother Joseph (SPHS)
• Sao Kan Gyi (RIT)
• U Khin (RIT)
• Daw Khin Khin Aye (PPBRS)
• Daw Khin Kyi (RU)
• Daw Khin Ma Ma (RU)
• U Khin Zaw (RU)
• U Ko Ko Lay (UCC)
• Daw Ku Paw (PPBRS)
• U Kyaw Khin (SPHS)
• Dr. Kyaw Nyunt (RU)
• Dr. Kyaw Thein (RU)
• U Kyaw Tun (RIT – EE)
• U Kyaw Tun (RIT – Chem)
• U Kyin Soe (RIT)
• Daw Kywe (PPBRS)
• Mr. Lewis (SPHS)
• Dr. Malcolm P. Atkinson (UCC)
• U Maung Maung Win (RIT – Mech)
• U Min Wun (RIT)
• U Moe Aung (RIT)
• U Myo Min (UCC)
• U Nge (SPHS)
• Daw Nyein (RIT)
• U Nyunt Maung (SPHS)
• U Pe Tin (SPHS)
• Dr. Peter Wegner (UCC)
• Dr. Pike Tin (RU)
• Daw Po (RU)
• Dr. San Tint (RIT)
• U Sein (SPHS)
• U Sein Hlaing (RIT)
• U Sein Maung (RIT)
• U Sein Shan (RIT)
• U Sein Win (RIT)
• U Shwe Hlaing (RIT, UCC)
• U Soe Lwin (RIT)
• U Soe Paing (RIT, UCC)
• Daw Su Su (RU)
• Mehm Than Thaung (RU)
• Dr. Thaung Myint (RIT)
• U Thein Aung (Eco)
• U Thein Lwin (RIT)
• U Thit (RIT)
• Mr. Tims (SPHS)
• U Tin Nyunt (Eco)
• Daw Tinsa Maw Naing (RU)
• U Tin Swe (RIT)
• Dr. Tin Win (RIT)
• U Tun Shwe (RIT)
• Mrs. Violet Boudville (SPHS)
• U Win Mra (RIT)
• Brother Xavier (SPHS)
• Daw Yi Yi (PPBRS)

• Good Health
  Diet
  Exercise
  Good Sleep
  Rest / Vacation
  Meditation / Contemplation
  …
  
• Mobility
  No need for walking aid
  Not bed-ridden
  
• Vision
  No need for eye glasses
  Correction via simple treatment / surgery
  No reliance on special eye drops, magnifying glasses …
  
• Hearing
  No need for hearing aids
  Correction via simple treatment /surgery
  
• Memory
  Good Long term memory
  Good Short term memory
  No Dementia or Alzheimer’s disease
  …
  
• Critical Thinking
  Reasoning
  Decision Making
  …
  
• Vitamin F
  Friendship,
  Fellowship,
  …
  
• Vitamin M
  Mother,
  Myee,
  …
  
• Contentment
  Avoid being a Perfectionist
  Not setting unrealistic Goals
  Realist (rather than Optimist or Pessimist)
  
• Alobha
  Non-greed
  Sharing of resources / Philanthropy
  …
  
• Adosa
  Non-hatred
  Loving Kindness / Unbounded Love
  Compassion / Sympathy / Empathy
  Altruistic Joy
  …
  
• Amoha
  Non-delusion
  Data processing
  Information processing
  Knowledge processing
  Cultivate Wisdom
  …

Comments

U Aung Myaing (ChE72) wrote :

မျက်စိ အရှုံး နားအဆုံး တဲ့။အဓိပ္ပာယ်ကို စူးစမ်းခဲ့တယ်။ အဓိက သံသရာလွတ်ကြောင်းတရားတော်တွေနဲ့ ဒီအဆိုအမိန့် ဆက်စပ်နေပါတယ်။ က်စိမကောင်းလို့ စာမဖတ်နိုင်တော့ရင် စိတ်ရှိတိုင်း မလေ့လာနိုင်တော့တာမို့ ဘဝမှာ “ရှုံး” ပြီလို့ သတ်မှတ်လိုက်တယ်။ ဒါပေမယ့် နားကောင်းသေးတော့ လုံးဝ ဆုံးတာမဟုတ်သေးဘူး။ တရားတော်တွေကို ကြားနာလို့ရသေးလို့။ ဒါပေမယ့် နားလည်းမကြားတော့ဘူးဆိုရင်တော့ တရားတော်တွေကို ဖတ်လို့လည်းမရ။ ကြားနာလို့ မရတော့ ဘဝဆုံးပြီပေါ့။ ကျနော့် ညာဘက်မျက်လုံးက ဆယ်နှစ်ကျော်ကြာ ဆေးထိုးဆေးကုတဲ့ကြားက AMD Age-related Macular Degeneration ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။မှုန်ဝါးဝါးဘဲမြင်ရတယ်။ စာဖတ်မရဘူး။ ဘယ်ဘက်ကို သုံးလတစ်ကြိမ် checkup လုပ်ပြီး ထိန်းသိမ်းနေရတယ်။ စာဖတ်တာ လျှော့လိုက်ရတယ်။ နားကတော့ အလွန်ကောင်း။ တရားတော်တွေကို ကောင်းကောင်းနာကြားနိုင်သေးတယ်။ မရှုံးတရှုံး မဆုံးသေးတဲ့ ဘဝ။

Notes by Hla Min :

Most have Cataracts removed from one or both eyes. A few had Full or Partial transplant of the Cornea. Some had Retina Tear repaired. Glaucoma and several other factors can cause impaired Vision.

Saya U Ba Toke played soccer and was active in the RU Sports Council. In his 70s and early 80s, Saya took weekly walks from his house to the Shwe Dagon pagoda. Aging gradually restricted Saya’s mobility, hearing and eye sight. Saya passed away on December 2, 2020 (the day following the RU Centennial), but a few days short of his Centennial Birthday.

When Saya U Moe Aung encountered problem with his knee during a trip to Upper Burma to attend Ah Hlu of a Khamee Khamet, he composed a poem on “Stationary & Movement” with philosophical musings about Life, Illness and Death. A surgery relieved Saya from the use of wheel chair, but as a high school goalkeeper he values Mobility, Agility & Strength.

Sayagadaw appreciated Saya U Moe Aung’s “Poem Gift” on her birthday.

Bagyee Myat Myo Myint gave “Pon Tu” of the then Marla Hall Thu as a birthday present for his beloved spouse.

Ko Aung Min (M69) used the term Vitamin F in an invitation to the 69er Annual Dinner and Entertainment.

Saya U Moe Aung wrote :

Actually, before suffering from knee pain, I had cataract removed from my left eye some 30 or so years back (couldn’t recall which year) and then from my right eye after a lapse of about 10 years. But, I was lucky, so to speak, that up till the present, haven’t yet encountered any problem whatsoever except the need to change the power lens for a better viewing focus.

U Aung Min (M69) wrote :

I had right eye cornea transplantation 19 years ago, but unsuccessful .
Again cataract removal on left eye
It’s OK up to now.

Generalist versus Specialist

A generalist is a person who knows less and less about more and more until he/she practically knows nothing about everything.
A specialist is a person who knows more and more about less and less until he/she practically knows everything about nothing.

Optimist, Pessimist and Realist

An optimist sees a glass as “Half full”.
A pessimist sees the same glass as “Half empty”.
A realist tries to figure the direction (of the water) before commenting as either “Half Full” or “Half Empty”.

RIT Jokes

Set Hmu [Maung] Thein Aung

U Thein Aung (M72) presents the differentiation with U Thein Aung (Met72).
I am Set Hmu — Maung Thein Aung.
I am Maung Thein Aung studying Set Hmu (Mechanical Engineering).
He is Set Hmu Maung — Thein Aung.
He is Thein Aung, who won Set Hmu Maung (Mr. RIT with Sa Lwei Thaing) in 1968.

Ba La Gyi vs. Ba Lar Gyi

During his RIT days, U Thein Aung (Met72) was “Ba La Gyi” (full of strength and prowess).
Lately, he has become “Ba Lar Gyi” (nothing notable left).

Kar Ku La Thin Char

Saya U Aung Myint (Pet69, Kyant Ba Hone) drew a cartoon:

“Ah Ba, Kar Ku La Thin Char (Calculus) is fascinating.
If you differentiate a La Da, you get a Sargalay.
If you integrate a Sargalay, you get back a La Da“.

At a 69er gathering, Daw Saw Yu Tint (T69) greeted U Khin Maung Win (EP69) as Sargalay.
He replied, “I am no longer Sargalay. I have became a La Da.”

Saya U Sein Win

He is an alumnus of the University of Michigan, USA. He retired as Professor of Electrical Power Department at YTU. He was Technical Advisor for the UCC Project.

Saya left his brand new spouse at Hledan Zay and had a hair cut. He went back to RIT, and had a long discussion with his students. The students asked, “How is Sayagadaw?” Saya’s reply : “Let’s end the discussion. It’s past time I should have picked her up at the Zay”.

Einstein

• In our younger days, there were jokes about Sir Isaac Newton.
• Later, there were jokes about Albert Einstein.
• It is possible that someone made or modified a joke about an absent minded professor and then attributed to a famous person.

Einstein (1)

It was raining.
Einstein took off his hat and hid it in his coat.
A student asked “Why?”
Einstein’s reply : “My hat is new and can be damaged. But my head cannot be damaged by the rain.”

Einstein (2)

A ticket inspector boarded a train.
Einstein searched for his pockets.
The inspector said, “You need not show me the ticket. You are Einstein.”
Einstein’s reply : “I do not know which stop I should get down.”

Einstein (3)

Einstein was carrying a stack of books.
He collided with a beautiful student.
The books fell down.
The student collected the books and returned them to Einstein.
Einstein asked, “Which way was I going?”
The student replied, “You were going towards the school.”
Einstein felt relieved. “Then, I must had my lunch at home.”