Vocabulary Booster: Physical Appearance

Hello Burmese learners! In this episode, my regular guest Su from Burmese Chatter Talk and I introduce you to a list of basic words and phrases to describe physical appearance, from body types and skin tones to hair and height. We discuss the Burmese word "to be fat," which few people like to hear, and the alternatives that are much more diplomatic. We also discuss tricky words that are typically used to describe tall people, long streets, and long hair, and some that are used primarily to describe height (in vertical dimension) but not length (in horizontal dimension). Want to know how to say "tall, dark, and handsome," or "brown-skinned cutie" in Burmese? Tune in to this episode. (Image licensed from Shutterstock. Music: "Sunshine Dreams" by Kaazoom, Pixabay) 

Vocabulary

ဝတယ် to be fat

ပြည့်တယ် to be full-figured, to be chubby

ဝလာသလိုပဲ seem to have gain weight

ပိန်သွားသလိုပဲ seem to have lost weight

ဗိုက်ပူတယ် to have a beer belly

(အရပ်)ပုတယ် to be short

(အရပ်)နိမ့်တယ် to be short

(အရပ်)ရှည်တယ် to be tall

(အရပ်)မြင့်တယ် to be tall

ဒေါင်ကောင်းတယ် to have good height

ရှည်တယ် to be tall, long

မြင့်တယ် to be high 

တိုတယ် to be short

နိမ့်တယ် to be low

ဆံပင်ရှည်တယ် to have long hair

ဆံပင်တိုတယ် to have short hair

ဂင်တိုတိုနဲ့လူ someone who is short and stout

ကလန်ကလား gangly (tall, with long arms, legs, and neck)

ဗျိုင်း egret

ဗလကောင်းတယ် to be muscular 

ဗလတောင့်တယ် to be muscular 

သွယ်တယ် to be slim, willowly

ခန့်တယ် to be handsome 

ချောတယ် to be goodlooking 

ရုပ်ဆိုးတယ် to be ugly

အကျည်းတန်တယ် to be ugly

အသားဖြူတယ် to have fair skin

အသားညိုတယ် to have brown skin

အသားမည်းတယ် to have dark skin

ညိုချောလေး a brown-skinned cutie

ဖြူချောလေး a fair-skinned cutie

အသားတော်ညိုပြာညက်ကယ် with brown and bluish skin, from the lyrics of an old song

ညက်တယ် to be fine-grained, to be smooth