Myanmar Trivia

In Ya-da-na-bon, the academy award wining Myanmar movie, one of my favorite scenes was when the heroine’s young nephew asked the hero's name and U Tun Myat the advocate answered the child: “Uncle's name is Maung Tun Myat”.

Quite a while ago, I was surprised and annoyed when a younger coworker I've known for years called me up by phone and says: “Are you ahkogyi? I am U Doe!” (အကိုကြီးလား။ကျွန်တော် ဦးဒိုးပါ။). In our language the pronoun “I” has a number of variants depending on the occasion and on who you are, and your gender. For males ကျွန်တော် which literally means “a king's subject” could be used to refer to yourself in addressing a superior, or used among the equals as a humble gesture. On the other hand, the prefix to a name U (ဦး) is used for addressing a male considerably older than yourself or a male of respectable social status or with some official position. We have similar usages for the females also and that's how we grew up with our Myanmar language.

So I may be excused for being annoyed when I hear this combination of “I” and “U”. So irritating to my ears (နားကလောပါတယ်). I think the correct way should be to use “Are you ahkogyi? I am Maung Doe!” (အကိုကြီးလား။ကျွန်တော် မောင်ဒိုးပါ။). Here ahkogyi means “big brother”. And here's some references:

Well, in real life we keep on hearing this combination of “I” and “U” regularly at least for the last five years and still today when I tuned in my favorite channels on radio or TV. It has been virtually institutionalized!

If I am not mistaken, the fact was that I wasn't aware of such misuse of Myanmar language throughout my career as a government employee until I left it in the early nineteen-nineties. When has this “official” culture of self-esteem (over)developed? It's so much unlike our humble and polite manners.

I wish I could show you the movie clip of U Tun Myat the advocate telling his name to the child!