How to pronounce “Aung San Suu Kyi”

Coming across an op-ed from here, I came to the conclusion that most of the time, Burmese names are not done justice.
The op-ed states this:
Bush continued making us proud by thinking and saying that he was addressing an OPEC summit instead of the APEC summit. He thanked the Austrian army for providing security. Yes, of [...]

Interesting Burmese word origins

A graphic I made, showing some of the linguistic diversity found in the Burmese language.

Burmese has a hodgepodge of words that come from other languages, some that would surprise most people, at least me. It’s a given that many Burmese words come from Pali (from Buddhism) or English (from colonial rule), but quite a number [...]

Stigmas of being Indian and Muslim

Politically correct: ‘Eindiya Gayha’ instead of ‘Kala Gayha’, both of which mean “India House” in Burmese. I think the India House is the residence of the Indian ambassador to Burma.
The recent Economist article (“Unlikely sanctuary” on Burmese Muslims living in Yunnan, China inspired me to write about the rampant discrimination Indians, and in particular, [...]

The Arakanese dialect

A woman serving mohinga at the port of Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State.
Burmese is an remarkably uniform language, considering it covers a wide area in Burma, or so I thought. Since I could not differentiate Burmese spoken in Mandalay and that spoken in Rangoon (aside from minor vocabulary differences) and instead thought that there [...]