u/Agitated-Home-3475

this isn’t really the most intellectual and thought provoking reddit post ever but i’ve just been wondering what does it exactly mean when someone adds စောက် before a word to make it a “cuss” word. as someone burmese its only normal that ik a lot of burmese cuss words although i dont use them a lot myself but every word makes perfect sense of why it makes a cuss word but i’m just curious what စောက် means and where it comes from… please enlighten me 😭

while myanmar is not the most developed country out there with thousands of contributions to the world today, i think the internalized racism that most burmese people have is concerning and should be addressed more. it is quite common to see POC having internalized racism as white supremacy is sadly a real thing, it really makes me sad to see my people be ashamed to be known as burmese. i am a burmese college student studying abroad and the place where im studying has quite a lot of burmese students. i have had a handful of burmese people complimenting me by saying "omg you're so pretty i didn't think you were burmese at all" or "i thought you were (native from my study abroad country or just another ethnicity)." while im pleased to get complimented, i can't help but notice how backhanded it is to burmese people, practically implying that it's a bad thing to look burmese. and i have noticed that these people aren't aware of the message they are giving out from that one sentence and are not intentionally doing it but i feel like it's just something we've all been kinda brainwashed into??

of course this is only one of many examples regarding beauty standards, just like how people would try to look more east asian or western with their makeup to be considered pretty by the general public instead of embracing their own features. i know it's kind of a canon event that most of us go through especially as teens and ALSO considering how corrupt it has become so i'm not really blaming on anybody but i just wish that in the near future we can finally proudly and shamelessly be ourselves, both as southeast asians and burmese people.