One of the GVers asked on mailing list, “How do you say freedom on your language?”. She’s doing some bookmarks and stickers with “Freedom” written in different languages or something….So lots of GVers answered her back in their language. Here are a few I noted from the list.

  • In Arabic: حرية pronounced as: Hurriyah, Hurriyah (or Houria) is a very popular name in Morocco as well :)
  • In Turkish: özgürlük or hürriyet. While they mean the same thing, the first one is more “Turkish” in its etymology and the second is a borrowed version of the Arabic.
  • In italian: Libertà
  • In Malagasy it’s Fahafahana (pronounced as it’s spelled). It’s also my favorite folk song in Malagasy :) . French speakers will probably weigh in soon but if you are in a hurry, it’s Liberté.
  • In Chichewa it’s: Ufulu.
  • In Chinese : 自由 in Chinese (pronounced: zi you)
  • In Japanese: 自由 The same characters as the chinese, and the pronunciation is close too: Jiyu
  • In Danish: “Frihed”
  • In Norwegian: “Frihet”
  • In German: “Freiheit”
  • In Esperanto: “Libereco”
  • In Dutch: vrijheid
  • In Spanish (Español): Libertad
  • In Portuguese: Liberdade
  • In Catalan: Llibertat
  • Askatasun – Basque
  • In Malay: “KEBEBASAN”. used in brunei, malaysia and indonesia. :) ke-bay-bus-an in pronunciation
  • In Macedonian: Слобода
  • In Albanian: Liri
  • In Tamil: விடுதலை. Pronounced Viduthalai. In Hindi – pronounced Swatantrata
  • In Hindi: स्वतंत्रता. pronounced Swatantrata
  • In urdu: آزادی – pronounced Azadi
  • In Bangla (Bengali): স্বাধীনতা (Swadhinata)
  • In Mapudungun: Kidunguneun from Mapuche language.
  • In Serbian: Sloboda
  • In Hebrew: חופש . Interestingly enough, it comes from the root – חפש – which means “search” or “in search of”
  • In Russian and Ukrainian: свобода – svoboda –
  • In Persian: Azadi
  • In Filipino: Kalayaan
  • in Khmer (Cambodia): Serey Pheap.
  • # [Updated] #
  • In Fijian: Galala – Thx Naomi for the word. See Ian’s comment below for more detail.
  • In Welsh: ‘rhyddfreiniau’
  • In Tumbuka: wanangwa
  • In Finnish: vapaus
  • In Lithuanian: laisve or valia
  • In Latvian: briviba
  • In Estonian: vabadus
  • In Polish: wolnosc or swoboda
  • In Swedish: frihet

Quite a diversity in GV don’t you think? Anyways, after that much of replies have been posted from various authors, I realized that I haven’t replied in Burmese yet. So I quickly flick through my brain and found out that I forgot (seriously!) how to say “Freedom” in Burmese. Embarrassing! I asked my brother and he asked me back, “What freedom?, What are you talking about?”. May be he also forgot the word or don’t understand what I’m asking, he just brushed me off like that. So I asked some random Burmese onliners on my gtalk. I simply asked “How do you say freedom in Burmese?” What’s the Burmese word for Freedom?”

Me: how to say Freedom in burmese? is that loot lat yay? loot lat yay is independence right. what’s the burmese word for freedom?
X: may be ” it can do as you like in leagally & it can get all equally chances” I think friend..
Me: no, i dont want english meaning. I want Burmese word
X: so what? okok
Me: i forgot the word
X: it may “lute lat mhu” pot bya
Me: loot lut mhu or yay? lute lat mhu….ic ok thx
X: but in legally nor you must careful in that.
Me: i dont know those, i just forgot the burmese word so asking anyways. that’s all

I don’t know what/how he understand my simple question but he started talking about legality and illegality issues and showing the sign of warning in his words. I was a little annoyed about the sensitivity of the word “Freedom” and how Burmese people take extra care to speak of it; I just don’t want to listen to him anymore so quickly say thanks and left him. But I still wasn’t convinced with the word he mentioned so I asked another friend. Here is what he said:

May: bro, sorry to bother u
Y: hi, nope
Me: i forgot burmese word, how do u say Freedom in Burmese?
Y: long tim no see :P လြတ္လပ္ေရး?
Me: loot lat yay or loot lat mhu? yay? mhu? confused
Y: its depends, both are noun
Me: true, ok thanks bro
Y: sometime its even say လြတ္ေျမာက္ျခင္း
Me: ok cool, i’ll note that as well
Y: you can write မႈ or ျခင္း or ေရး , its depend on that sentence :D
Me: yep
Y: :D writing some articles?
Me: ah…a friend asked how it called n I forgot the word :D
Y: ah, i see :)

So…..the word “Freedom” in Burmese is လြတ္ေျမာက္ျခင္း (Loot Myout Chin) or လြတ္လပ္ေရး (Loot Lat yay) or လြတ္လပ္မွဳ (Loot Lat Mhu) depending on the sentence.

If you ask – What’s my point here? No point! I was asked to think about the word, I thought about it, turned out that I forgot the word, I asked around and now I got it. I’m a bit ashamed of myself for forgetting so I’m not posting it on the list but noting it down along with the word in other languages.
THE END.

P.S: I gotta ask how does it call in Fijian.

Related Posts: