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Burmese
Myanmar language
မြန်မာဘာသာ, Mranma bhasa
Pronunciation[mjəmà bàθà]
Native to
SpeakersL1: 33 million (2007)[1]
L2: 10 million (no date)[1]
Early forms
Official status
Official language in
 Myanmar
Regulated byMyanmar Language Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1my
ISO 639-2bur (B)
mya (T)
ISO 639-3mya – inclusive code
Individual codes:
mya – Myanmar
int – Intha
tco – Taungyo
rki – Rakhine
rmz – Marma
Tay – Tavoyan dialects
Glottologmran1234
Linguasphere77-AAA-a
Myanmar
Areas where Burmese is spoken (dark blue signifies areas where it is more widely spoken). This map does not indicate whether the language is a majority or minority.
This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.
A Burmese speaker, recorded in Taiwan

Burmese (Burmese: မြန်မာဘာသာ; MLCTS: Mranma bhasa; pronounced [mjəmà bàθà]) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Myanmar,[2] where it is the official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar, the country's largest ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, India's Mizoram state, and the Burmese diaspora. The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as the Myanmar language in English,[3] though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese, after Burma—a name with co-official status until 1989 (see Names of Myanmar). Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca.[4] In 2019, Burmese was spoken by 42.9 million people globally, including by 32.9 million speakers as a first language, and an additional 10 million speakers as a second language.[5][2] A 2023 World Bank survey found that 80% of the country's population speaks Burmese.[6]

Burmese is a tonal, pitch-register, and syllable-timed language,[7] largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with a subject–object–verb word order. Burmese is distinguished from other major Southeast Asian languages by its extensive case marking system and rich morphological inventory.[8][9] It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets.

Classification

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Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages.[10] Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages.[10] Burmese was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Classical Chinese, Pyu, Old Tibetan and Tangut.[10]

Dialects

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The majority of Burmese speakers, who live throughout the Irrawaddy River Valley, use variants of standard Burmese, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in the peripheral areas of the country. These dialects include:

Arakanese in Rakhine State and Marma in Bangladesh are also sometimes considered dialects of Burmese and sometimes as separate languages.

Burmese dialects mostly share a common set of tones, consonant clusters, and written script. Several Burmese dialects differ substantially from standard Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes. Below is a summary of lexical similarity between major Burmese dialects:[11]

Dialects Burmese Danu Intha Rakhine Taungyo
Burmese 100% 93% 95% 91% 89%
Danu 93% 100% 93% 85-94% 91%
Intha 95% 93% 100% 90% 89%
Rakhine 91% 85-94% 90% 100% 84-92%
Taungyo 89% N/A 89% 84-92% 100%
Marma N/A N/A N/A 85% N/A

Irrawaddy River valley

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Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers,[12] particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay-Yangon dialect continuum) originates from the Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), called anya tha (အညာသား) and speakers from Lower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), called auk tha (အောက်သား), largely occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor lexical and rhyme differences exist throughout the Irrawaddy River valley.[13] For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း, "food offering [to a monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of [sʰwáɰ̃], which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma.

The standard dialect is typified by the Yangon dialect because of the modern city's media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its continued use of the first-person pronoun ကျွန်တော်, kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women. In Yangon, only male speakers use the same pronoun, while female speakers use ကျွန်မ, kya.ma. [tɕəma̰]. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology, Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family, whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not.

Mon has also influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma.[14] In Lower Burmese varieties, the verb ပေး ('to give') is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, similar to other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in most Tibeto-Burman languages.[14] This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct.[14]

Outside the Irrawaddy basin

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Main articles: Arakanese language, Tavoyan dialects, Intha dialect, Yaw dialect, and Myeik dialect

More distinctive non-standard varieties of Burmese emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of the country. These varieties include the Yaw, Palaw, Myeik (Merguese), Tavoyan and Intha dialects. Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects, especially with language convergence.

Dialects in Tanintharyi Region, including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved the /l/ medial, which is only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. These dialects also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop. Beik has 250,000 speakers[15] while Tavoyan has 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese.[14]

The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of the [ɹ] sound, which has become [j] in standard Burmese. Moreover, Arakanese features a variety of vowel differences, including the merger of the ဧ [e] and ဣ [i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood" သွေး is pronounced [θwé] in standard Burmese and [θwí] in Arakanese.

History

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The Burmese language's early forms include Old Burmese and Middle Burmese. Old Burmese dates from the 11th to the 16th century (Pagan to Ava dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century (Toungoo to early Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century to the present. While Burmese phonology has evolved significantly, word order, grammatical structure, and vocabulary have remained markedly stable well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g., function words).[16][17][18]

Old Burmese

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Main article: Old Burmese
Further information: Nanzhao Kingdom
The Myazedi inscription, dated to AD 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription of the Burmese language.

The earliest attested form of the Burmese language is called Old Burmese, dating to the 11th and 12th century stone inscriptions of Pagan. The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984.[19]

Owing to the linguistic prestige of Old Pyu in the Pagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via the Pyu language.[14] These indirect borrowings can be traced back to orthographic idiosyncrasies in these loanwords, such as the Burmese word "to worship", which is spelt ပူဇော် (pūjo) instead of ပူဇာ (pūjā), as would be expected by the original Pali orthography.[14]

In the mid-15th century, bilingual Pali-Burmese texts called nissaya (နိဿယ) emerged.[9] These texts played a significant role in shaping the standard language, leading Burmese postpositional markers to be reinterpreted as equivalents of Pali inflections, giving them new grammatical roles that were compatible with their original use but not inherent to them.[9] Over time, these markers became integral to the morphological structure of Burmese and were seen as more obligatory in literary Burmese, and to a lesser extent, colloquial Burmese.[9]

Middle Burmese

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Main article: Middle Burmese

The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century.[16] The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in the underlying orthography.[16]

From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace's literacy rate, which manifested itself in greater participation of laymen in scribing and composing legal and historical documents, domains that were traditionally the domain of Buddhist monks, and drove the ensuing proliferation of Burmese literature, both in terms of genres and works.[20] During this period, the Burmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used in palm-leaf manuscripts, as opposed to the traditional square block-form letters used in earlier periods.[20] The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced back to Middle Burmese.

Modern Burmese

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Modern Burmese emerged in the mid-18th century. By this time, male literacy in Burma stood at nearly 50%, which enabled the wide circulation of legal texts, royal chronicles, and religious texts.[20] A major reason for the uniformity of the Burmese language was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (called kyaung) in Burmese villages. These kyaung served as the foundation of the pre-colonial monastic education system, which fostered uniformity of the language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley, the traditional homeland of Burmese speakers. The 1891 Census of India, conducted five years after the annexation of the entire Konbaung Kingdom, found that the former kingdom had an "unusually high male literacy" rate of 62.5% for Upper Burmans aged 25 and above. For all of British Burma, the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women (by contrast, British India more broadly had a male literacy rate of 8.44%).[21]

The expansion of the Burmese language into Lower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s, Mon, an Austroasiatic language, was the principal language of Lower Burma, employed by the Mon people who inhabited the region. Lower Burma's shift from Mon to Burmese was accelerated by the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. By 1830, an estimated 90% of the population in Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking territory, from the Irrawaddy Delta to upriver in the north, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay), and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking.[22][20] The language shift has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in the region.[20][22]

Standardized tone marking in written Burmese was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged.[23] British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers.

Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout the 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens from the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma.[24] British rule in Burma eroded the strategic and economic importance of the Burmese language; Burmese was effectively subordinated to the English language in the colonial educational system, especially in higher education.[13]

In the 1930s, the Burmese language saw a linguistic revival, precipitated by the establishment of an independent University of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university by Pe Maung Tin, modeled on Anglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford.[13] Student protests in December of that year, triggered by the introduction of English into matriculation examinations, fueled growing demand for Burmese to become the medium of education in British Burma; a short-lived but symbolic parallel system of "national schools" that taught in Burmese, was subsequently launched.[13] The role and prominence of the Burmese language in public life and institutions was championed by Burmese nationalists, intertwined with their demands for greater autonomy and independence from the British in the lead-up to the independence of Burma in 1948.[13]

The 1948 Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as the official language of the newly independent nation. The Burma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal of modernizing the Burmese language in order to replace English across all disciplines.[13] Anti-colonial sentiment throughout the early post-independence era led to a reactionary switch from English to Burmese as the national medium of education, a process that was accelerated by the Burmese Way to Socialism.[13] In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named the Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan (မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း), was compiled in 1978 by the commission.[23]

Registers

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Diglossia

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Burmese is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers (or diglossic varieties):[25]

  1. Literary High (H) form[26] (မြန်မာစာ mranma ca): the high variety (formal and written), used in literature (formal writing), newspapers, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches
  2. Spoken Low (L) form[26] (မြန်မာစကား mranma ca.ka:): the low variety (informal and spoken), used in daily conversation, television, comics and literature (informal writing)

The literary form of Burmese retains archaic and conservative grammatical structures and modifiers (including affixes and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form.[25] Most verbs and some nouns also have longer forms in literary Burmese.[27] Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since the 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools.[13][28] Case marking is highly developed and consistently used in literary Burmese, covering markers for subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, the ablative and locative.[9] Spoken Burmese also uses case markers, but does so less consistently, particularly for subjects and direct object marking.[9] The equivalent affixes used in Literary and Spoken Burmese are totally unrelated to each other.[29] Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms:

Gloss Literary

HIGH

Spoken

LOW

"this" (pronoun) ဤ i ဒီ di
"that" (pronoun) ထို htui ဟို hui
"at" (case) ၌ hnai. [n̥aɪʔ] မှာ hma [m̥à]
plural (suffix) များ mya: တွေ twe
possessive (case) ၏ i. ရဲ့ re.
"and" (conjunction) နှင့် hnang. LOW နဲ့ ne.
"if" (conjunction) လျှင် hlyang ရင် rang

Historically the literary register was preferred for written Burmese on the grounds that "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". In the mid-1960s, some Burmese writers attempted to abandon the literary form in favour of the spoken vernacular form.[30][31] Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt, a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether.[32] Although the literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts.[23] Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use the spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms.[25]

Burmese uses also distinct spoken and written forms for question pronouns.[27] The following examples demonstrate significant differences in the pronouns, verbs, and other markers used between the literary and spoken forms (contrasts in bold):

Literary:

Spoken:

Gloss:

မည်သူ

ဘယ်သူ

who

များ

တွေ

PL

က

"

TOP

မိမိ

ကိုယ့်

my

၏

ရဲ့

POS

အသက်လမ်းကြောင်း

"

lifeline

ဆက်လက်

ဆက်

continue

ပေး

"

give

နေ

"

CONT

သည့်

တဲ့

POS

ခလုတ်

"

plug

ကို

"

OBJ

ဖြုတ်ချ

ဖြုတ်

pull

ကြ

"

PL

မည်

မယ်

FUT

နည်း?

လဲ?

Q

Literary: မည်သူ များ က မိမိ ၏ အသက်လမ်းကြောင်း ဆက်လက် ပေး နေ သည့် ခလုတ် ကို ဖြုတ်ချ ကြ မည် နည်း?

Spoken: ဘယ်သူ တွေ " ကိုယ့် ရဲ့ " ဆက် " " တဲ့ " " ဖြုတ် " မယ် လဲ?

Gloss: who PL TOP my POS lifeline continue give CONT POS plug OBJ pull PL FUT Q

'Who will discontinue my life support?'

Literary:

Spoken:

Gloss:

ရှစ်လေးလုံးအရေးအခင်း

"

8888 Uprising

ဖြစ်

"

occur

သောအခါက

တုံးက

when

လူ

"

people

ဦးရေ

အယောက်

MW

၃၀၀၀

"

3,000

မျှ

လောက်

approximately

သေဆုံး

သေ

die-V

ခဲ့

"

PAST

ကြ

"

PL

သည်။

တယ်။

FP

Literary: ရှစ်လေးလုံးအရေးအခင်း ဖြစ် သောအခါက လူ ဦးရေ ၃၀၀၀ မျှ သေဆုံး ခဲ့ ကြ သည်။

Spoken: " " တုံးက " အယောက် " လောက် သေ " " တယ်။

Gloss: {8888 Uprising} occur when people MW 3,000 approximately die-V PAST PL FP

'When the 8888 Uprising took place, approximately 3,000 people died.'

Honorific terms

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Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take into account the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience. The suffix ပါ (pa) is frequently used after a verb to express politeness.[33] Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect.[34] Polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third person pronouns or kinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns.[35][36]

Honorific vocabulary is used in Burmese to distinguish Buddhist clergy from the laity (householders), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks).[37] Distinct honorific vocabulary (often euphemistic in nature) is also employed to distinguish commoners from royals. The honorific markers -တော် (daw) and -တော်မူ (dawmu) are suffixed to nouns and verbs respectively, in relation to Buddhist clergy and royals. Lexical items from standard Burmese, royal vocabulary, and clerical vocabulary are shown side by side in the table below:

Gloss Standard Polite Religious Royal
'eat' (verb) စား ca: သုံးဆောင် sum: hcaung ဘုဉ်းပေး bhuny: pe: ပွဲတော်တယ် pwai dau te
'sleep' (verb) အိပ် ip ကျိန်း kyin: စက်တော်ခေါ် cak tau khau
'die' (verb) သေ se ကွယ်လွန် kwe lwan ပျံတော်မူ pyam tau mu နတ်ရွာစံ nat rwa cam
'father' အဖေ a hpe ဖခင် hpa hkang ခမည်းတော် hka many: tau
'live, dwell' (verb) နေ ne နေထိုင် ne htuing ကိန်း kin: စံ cam

Vocabulary

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Burmese has primarily inherited its monosyllabic vocabulary from Sino-Tibetan stock. The language has also adopted polysyllabic loanwords from Indo-European languages like Pali and English, as well as sesquisyllabic words from Mon, an Austroasiatic language.[17] Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in the form of nouns.[17]

Of the Indo-European languages, Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism, had the most profound influence on enriching the Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due to phonotactic similarities between the two languages, and the Burmese script's inherent ability to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy.[38] Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science.[38][non-primary source needed] Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms:

  1. Direct loan: direct import of Pali words with no alteration in orthography
  2. Abbreviated loan: import of Pali words with accompanied syllable reduction and alteration in orthography, usually by means of a placing a diacritic, called athat အသတ် (llit. 'nonexistence') atop the last letter in the syllable to suppress the consonant's inherent vowel[39]
  3. Double loan: adoption of two different terms derived from the same Pali word[38]
  4. Hybrid loan (e.g., neologisms or calques): construction of compounds combining native Burmese words with Pali or combine Pali words[40]
Category Gloss Burmese Pali
Direct loan 'life' ဇီဝ jīva ဇီဝ jīva
'life' ဘဝ bhava ဘဝ bhava
'music' ဂီတ gīta ဘဝ gīta
Abbreviated loan 'karma' ကံ kam ကမ္မ kamma
'dawn' အရုဏ် aruṇ အရုဏ aruṇa
'merit' ကုသိုလ် kusuil ကုသလ kusala
Double loan 'arrogance' မာန māna မာန māna
'pride' မာန် mān
'strength' ဗလ bala ဗလ bala
'leader' ဗိုလ် buil
Hybrid loan 'airplane' လေယာဉ်ပျံ leyāñpyaṃ[41] ယာဉ် (from yāna, 'vehicle')
'name' နာမည် nāmaññ[42] နာမ (from nāma, 'name')

Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by the Mon people of Lower Burma. Most Mon loanwords are so well assimilated that they are not distinguished as loanwords, as Burmese and Mon were used interchangeably for several centuries in pre-colonial Burma.[43] Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music.[23]

As a natural consequence of British rule in Burma, English has been another major source of vocabulary, especially with regard to technology, measurements, and modern institutions. English loanwords tend to take one of three forms:

  1. Direct loan: adoption of an English word, adapted to the Burmese phonology[44]
    • "democracy": English democracy → Burmese ဒီမိုကရေစီ
  2. Neologism or calque: translation of an English word using native Burmese constituent words[45]
    • "human rights": English 'human rights' → Burmese လူ့အခွင့်အရေး (လူ့ 'human' + အခွင့်အရေး 'rights')
  3. Hybrid loan: construction of compound words by joining native Burmese words to English words[46]
    • 'to sign': ဆိုင်းထိုး [sʰã́ɪ̃ tʰó] ← ဆိုင်း (English, sign) + ထိုး (native Burmese, 'inscribe').

To a lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words from Sanskrit (religion), Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), and Chinese (games and food).[23] Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such as Portuguese.

Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese:

Gloss Burmese Source
'suffering' ဒုက္ခ [dowʔkʰa̰] Pali dukkha
'radio' ရေဒီယို [ɹèdìjò] English radio
'crab' ကဏန်း [ɡənáɴ] Mon ဂတာံ
'flatter' ဖော်လံဖား [pʰɔ̀làɴpʰá] Hokkien 扶𡳞脬 (phô͘-lān-pha)
'wife' ဇနီး [zəní] Sanskrit जनी (janī)
'noodle' ခေါက်ဆွဲ [kʰaʊʔ sʰwɛ́] Shan ၶဝ်ႈသွႆး [kʰāu sʰɔi]
'foot' (unit) ပေ [pè] Portuguese pé
'flag' အလံ [əlã̀] Arabic: علم ʿalam
'storeroom' ဂိုဒေါင် [ɡòdã̀ʊ̃] Malay gudang

Since the end of British rule, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans (especially from English) by coining new words (neologisms). For instance, for the word "television", Burmese publications are mandated to use the term ရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit. 'see picture, hear sound') in lieu of တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း, a direct English transliteration.[47] Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English car) in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of use with the adoption of indigenous neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì], from English university, now တက္ကသိုလ် [tɛʔkət̪ò], a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila (တက္ကသီလ Takkasīla), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan.[47]

Some words in Burmese may have many synonyms, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example is the word "moon", which can be လ la̰ (native Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း [sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Pali canda 'moon'), or သော်တာ [t̪ɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit).[48]

Phonology

[edit]
Main article: Burmese phonology

Consonants

[edit]

The consonants of Burmese are as follows:

Consonant phonemes[49][50]
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Post-al./
Palatal 		Velar Laryngeal
Nasal voiced m n ɲ ŋ
voiceless m̥ n̥ ɲ̊ ŋ̊
Stop/
Affricate 		voiced b d dʒ ɡ
voiceless p t tʃ k ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ tʃʰ kʰ
Fricative voiced ð ([d̪ð~d̪]) z
voiceless θ ([t̪θ~t̪]) s ʃ
aspirated sʰ h
Approximant voiced l j w
voiceless l̥ ʍ

According to Jenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016:15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants of သ are dental stops (/t̪, d̪/), rather than fricatives (/θ, ð/) or affricates.[51] These phonemes, alongside /sʰ/, are prone to merger with /t, d, s/.[52]

An alveolar /ɹ/ can occur as an alternate of /j/ in some loanwords.

The final nasal /ɰ̃/ is the value of the four native final nasals: ⟨မ်⟩ /m/, ⟨န်⟩ /n/, ⟨ဉ်⟩ /ɲ/, ⟨င်⟩ /ŋ/, as well as the retroflex ⟨ဏ⟩ /ɳ/ (used in Pali loans) and nasalisation mark anusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as in တံခါး tankhá 'door', and တံတား tantá 'bridge', or else replaces final -m ⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after the OB vowel *u e.g. ငံ ngam 'salty', သုံး thóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံး sóum 'end'. It does not, however, apply to ⟨ည်⟩ which is never realised as a nasal, but rather as an open front vowel [iː] [eː] or [ɛː]. The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. It may also allophonically appear as a homorganic nasal before stops. For example, in /mòʊɰ̃dáɪɰ̃/ ('storm'), which is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ].

Vowels

[edit]

The vowels of Burmese are:

Vowel phonemes
Monophthongs Diphthongs
Front Central Back Front offglide Back offglide
Close i u
Close-mid e ə o ei ou
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a ai au

The monophthongs /e/, /o/, /ə/, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda); the diphthongs /ei/, /ou/, /ai/ and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda). /ə/ only occurs in a minor syllable, and is the only vowel that is permitted in a minor syllable (see below).

The close vowels /i/ and /u/ and the close portions of the diphthongs are somewhat mid-centralized ([ɪ, ʊ]) in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɰ̃/ and /ʔ/. Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically [tɕàʊ̃].

Tones

[edit]

Burmese is a tonal language, which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch, but also phonation, intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese a pitch-register language like Shanghainese.[53] Spoken Burmese exhibits tone sandhi in the form of a shift from a low to an induced creaky tone, to indicate possession.[27]

There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table, the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example.

Tone Burmese IPA
(shown on a)		 Symbol
(shown on a)		 Phonation Duration Intensity Pitch
Low နိမ့်သံ [aː˧˧˦] à modal medium low low, often slightly rising[54]
High တက်သံ [aː˥˥˦] á sometimes slightly breathy long high high, often with a fall before a pause[54]
Creaky သက်သံ [aˀ˥˧] a̰ tense or creaky, sometimes with lax glottal stop medium high high, often slightly falling[54]
Checked တိုင်သံ [ăʔ˥˧] aʔ centralized vowel quality, final glottal stop short high high (in citation; can vary in context)[54]

For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone:

  • Low ခါ /kʰà/ "shake"
  • High ခါး /kʰá/ "be bitter"
  • Creaky ခ /kʰa̰/ "to wait upon; to attend on"
  • Checked ခတ် /kʰaʔ/ "to beat; to strike"

In syllables ending with /ɰ̃/, the checked tone is excluded:

  • Low ခံ /kʰàɰ̃/ "undergo"
  • High ခန်း /kʰáɰ̃/ "dry up (usually a river)"
  • Creaky ခန့် /kʰa̰ɰ̃/ "appoint"

In spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with a stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches.[55] The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay."[56][57]

Spoken Burmese exhibits tone sandhi in the form of a shift from a low to an induced creaky tone: to indicate possession and to pronounce low-toned numerals in conjunction with other digits.[27] For the former, this does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses ၏ [ḭ] as postpositional marker for possessive case instead of ရဲ့ [jɛ̰]. Examples include the following:

ငါ

/ŋà/

>

>

ငါ့

/ŋa̰/

ငါ > ငါ့

/ŋà/ > /ŋa̰/

'me' > 'my'

အမေ

/ʔəmè/

>

>

အမေ့

/ʔəmḛ/

အမေ > အမေ့

/ʔəmè/ > /ʔəmḛ/

'mother' > 'mother's'

ဆယ်

/sʰɛ̀/

>

>

ဆယ့်တစ်

/sʰɛ̰tɪʔ/

ဆယ် > ဆယ့်တစ်

/sʰɛ̀/ > /sʰɛ̰tɪʔ/

'ten' > 'eleven'

Syllable structure

[edit]

The syllable structure of Burmese is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide, and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɰ̃/. Some representative words are:

Structure Example IPA Meaning
CV မယ် /mɛ̀/ title for young women
CVC မက် /mɛʔ/ 'to crave'
CGV မြေ /mjè/ 'earth'
CGVC မျက် /mjɛʔ/ 'eye'
CVVC မောင် /màʊɰ̃/ term of address for young men
CGVVC မြောင်း /mjáʊɰ̃/ 'ditch'

A minor syllable has some restrictions:

  • It contains /ə/ as its only vowel
  • It must be an open syllable (no coda consonant)
  • It cannot bear tone
  • It has only a simple (C) onset (no glide after the consonant)
  • It must not be the final syllable of the word

The Mon language is attributed with the development of frequent sesquisyllabic reduction in Burmese words, a pattern that does not appear in other Burmic languages.[58] Some examples of words containing minor syllables:

  • ခလုတ် /kʰə.loʊʔ/ 'switch, button'
  • ပလွေ /pə.lwè/ 'flute'
  • သရော် /θə.jɔ̀/ 'mock'
  • ကလက် /kə.lɛʔ/ 'be wanton'
  • ထမင်းရည် /tʰə.mə.jè/ 'rice-water'

Writing system

[edit]
Main article: Burmese alphabet
Sampling of various Burmese script styles

The Burmese alphabet consists of 33 letters and 12 vowels and is written from left to right. It requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability. Characterized by its circular letters and diacritics, the script is an abugida, with all letters having an inherent vowel အ a. [a̰] or [ə]. The consonants are arranged into six consonant groups (called ဝဂ် vag) based on articulation, like other Brahmi scripts. Tone markings and vowel modifications are written as diacritics placed to the left, right, top, and bottom of letters.[23]

Orthographic changes subsequent to shifts in phonology (such as the merging of the [-l-] and [-ɹ-] medials) rather than transformations in Burmese grammatical structure and phonology, which by contrast, has remained stable between Old Burmese and modern Burmese.[23][clarification needed] For example, during the Pagan era, the medial [-l-] ္လ was transcribed in writing, which has been replaced by medials [-j-] ျ and [-ɹ-] ြ in modern Burmese (e.g. "school" in old Burmese က္လောင် [klɔŋ] → ကျောင်း [tɕã́ʊ̃] in modern Burmese).[59] Likewise, written Burmese has preserved all nasalized finals [-n, -m, -ŋ], which have merged to [-ɰ̃] in spoken Burmese. (The exception is [-ɲ], which, in spoken Burmese, can be one of many open vowels [i, e, ɛ].) Similarly, other consonantal finals [-s, -p, -t, -k] have been reduced to [-ʔ]. Similar mergers are seen in other Sino-Tibetan languages like Shanghainese, and to a lesser extent, Cantonese.

Written Burmese dates to the early Pagan period. Burmese orthography originally followed a square block format, but the cursive format took hold from the 17th century when increased literacy and the resulting explosion of Burmese literature led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as parabaiks (ပုရပိုက်).[60]

Grammar

[edit]

The basic word order of the Burmese language is subject-object-verb. Pronouns in Burmese vary according to the gender and status of the audience, although pronouns are often omitted. Affixes are used to convey information. Verbs are almost always suffixed and nouns declined.

Case affixes

[edit]

Burmese is an agglutinative language with an extensive case system in which nouns are suffixed to determine their syntactic function in a sentence or clause. Sometimes the case markers are different between the two registers.[61]

The case markers are:

High register Low register
Subject thi (သည်), ká (က), hma (မှာ) ha (ဟာ), ká (က)
Object ko (ကို) ko (ကို)
Recipient à (အား)
Allative thó (သို့)
Ablative hmá (မှ), ká (က) ká (က)
Locative hnai (၌), hma (မှာ), twin (တွင်) hma (မှာ)
Comitative hnín (နှင့်) né (နဲ့)
Instrumental hpyin (ဖြင့်), hnin (နှင့်)
Possessive í (၏) yé (ရဲ့)

Adjectives

[edit]

Burmese does not have adjectives per se. Rather, it has verbs that carry the meaning "to be X", where X is an English adjective. These verbs can modify a noun by means of the suffix တဲ့ tai. [dɛ̰] in colloquial Burmese (literary form: သော sau: [t̪ɔ́]), which is suffixed as follows:

Literary:

Spoken:

Gloss:

ချော

ချော

beautiful

သော

တဲ့

POS

လူ

လူ

person

Literary: ချော သော လူ

Spoken: ချော တဲ့ လူ

Gloss: beautiful POS person

'beautiful person'

Adjectives may also form a compound with the noun (e.g. လူချော lu hkyau: [lù tɕʰɔ́] 'person' + 'be beautiful').

Comparatives are usually ordered: X + ထက်ပို htak pui [tʰɛʔ pò] + adjective, where X is the object being compared to. Superlatives are indicated with the prefix အ a. [ʔə] + adjective + ဆုံး hcum: [zṍʊ̃].

Verbs

[edit]

The roots of Burmese verbs almost always have affixes which convey information like tense, aspect, intention, politeness, mood, etc. Many of these affixes also have formal/literary and colloquial equivalents. In fact, the only time in which no suffix is attached to a verb is in imperative commands.

The most commonly used verb affixes and their usage are shown below with an example verb root စား ca: [sá] ('to eat'). Alone, the statement စား is imperative.

The affix တယ် tai [dɛ̀] (literary form: သည် sany [d̪ì]) can be viewed as an affix marking the present tense and/or a factual statement:

စား

ca:

[sá

တယ်

tai

dɛ̀]

စား တယ်

ca: tai

[sá dɛ̀]

'I eat'

The affix ခဲ့ hkai. [ɡɛ̰] denotes that the action took place in the past. However, this affix is not always necessary to indicate the past tense such that it can convey the same information without it. But to emphasize that the action happened before another event that is also currently being discussed, the affix becomes imperative. The affix တယ် tai [dɛ̀] in this case denotes a factual statement rather than the present tense:

စား

ca:

[sá

ခဲ့

hkai.

ɡɛ̰

တယ်

tai

dɛ̀]

စား ခဲ့ တယ်

ca: hkai. tai

[sá ɡɛ̰ dɛ̀]

'I ate'

The affix နေ ne [nè] is used to denote an action in progression. It is equivalent to the English '-ing'.

စား

ca:

[sá

နေ

ne

nè

တယ်

tai

dɛ̀]

စား နေ တယ်

ca: ne tai

[sá nè dɛ̀]

'I am eating'

This affix ပြီ pri [bjì], which is used when an action that had been expected to be performed by the subject is now finally being performed, has no equivalent in English. So in the above example, if someone had been expecting the subject to eat, and the subject has finally started eating, the affix ပြီ is used as follows:

(စ)

(ca.)

[(sə)

စား

ca:

sá

ပြီ

pri

bjì]

(စ) စား ပြီ

(ca.) ca: pri

[(sə) sá bjì]

'I am [now] eating'

The affix မယ် mai [mɛ̀] (literary form: မည် many [mjì]) is used to indicate the future tense or an action which is yet to be performed:

စား

ca:

[sá

မယ်

mai

mɛ̀]

စား မယ်

ca: mai

[sá mɛ̀]

'I will eat'

The affix တော့ tau. [dɔ̰] is used when the action is about to be performed immediately when used in conjunction with မယ်. Therefore, it could be termed as the "immediate future tense suffix".

စား

ca:

[sá

တော့

tau.

dɔ̰

မယ်

mai

mɛ̀]

စား တော့ မယ်

ca: tau. mai

[sá dɔ̰ mɛ̀]

'I'm going to eat [right away]'

When တော့ is used alone, however, it is imperative:

စား

ca:

[sá

တော့

tau.

dɔ̰]

စား တော့

ca: tau.

[sá dɔ̰]

'eat [now]'

Verbs are negated by the prefix မ ma. [mə]. Generally speaking, there are other suffixes on verb, along with မ.

The verb suffix နဲ့ nai. [nɛ̰] (literary form: နှင့် hnang. [n̥ɪ̰̃]) indicates a command:

မစား

ma.ca:

[məsá

နဲ့

nai.

nɛ̰]

မစား နဲ့

ma.ca: nai.

[məsá nɛ̰]

'don't eat'

The verb suffix ဘူး bhu: [bú] indicates a statement:

မစား

ma.ca:

[məsá

ဘူး

bhu:

bú]

မစား ဘူး

ma.ca: bhu:

[məsá bú]

'[I] don't eat'

Nouns

[edit]

Nouns in Burmese are pluralized by suffixing တွေ twe [dwè] (or [twè] if the word ends in a glottal stop) in colloquial Burmese or များ mya: [mjà] in formal Burmese. The suffix တို့ tou. [to̰], which indicates a group of persons or things, is also suffixed to the modified noun. An example is below:

Literary:

Spoken:

Both:

Gloss:

မြစ်

မြစ်

မြစ်

river

များ

တွေ

တို့

PL

Literary: မြစ် များ

Spoken: မြစ် တွေ

Both: မြစ် တို့

Gloss: river PL

'rivers'

Plural suffixes are not used when the noun is quantified with a number.

ကလေး

hka.le:

/kʰəlé

child

၅

nga:

ŋá

five

ယောက်

yauk

jaʊʔ/

CL

ကလေး ၅ ယောက်

hka.le: nga: yauk

/kʰəlé ŋá jaʊʔ/

child five CL

"five children"

Although Burmese does not have grammatical gender (e.g. masculine or feminine nouns), a distinction is made between the sexes, especially in animals and plants, by means of suffix particles. Nouns are masculinized with the following suffixes: ထီး hti: [tʰí], ဖ hpa [pʰa̰], or ဖို hpui [pʰò], depending on the noun, and feminized with the suffix မ ma. [ma̰]. Examples of usage are below:

  • ကြောင်ထီး kraung hti: [tɕã̀ʊ̃ tʰí] "male cat"
  • ကြောင်မ kraung ma. [tɕã̀ʊ̃ ma̰] "female cat"
  • ကြက်ဖ krak hpa. [tɕɛʔ pʰa̰] "rooster/cock"
  • ထန်းဖို htan: hpui [tʰã́ pʰò] "male toddy palm plant"

Numerical classifiers

[edit]
Main article: Burmese numerical classifiers

Burmese uses numerical classifiers (also called measure words) when nouns are counted or quantified. This is similar to neighbouring languages like Thai, Bengali, and Chinese. This approximately equates to English expressions such as "two slices of bread" or "a cup of coffee". Classifiers are required when counting nouns, so ကလေး ၅ hka.le: nga: [kʰəlé ŋà] (lit. 'child five') is incorrect, since the measure word for people ယောက် yauk [jaʊʔ] is missing; it needs to suffix the numeral.

The standard word order of quantified words is: quantified noun + numeral adjective + classifier, except in round numbers (numbers that end in zero), in which the word order is flipped, where the quantified noun precedes the classifier: quantified noun + classifier + numeral adjective. The only exception to this rule is the number 10, which follows the standard word order.

Measurements of time, such as "hour", နာရီ "day", ရက် or "month", လ do not require classifiers.

Below are some of the most commonly used classifiers in Burmese.

Burmese MLC IPA Usage Remarks
ယောက် yauk [jaʊʔ] for people Used in informal context
ဦး u: [ʔú] for people Used in formal context and also used for monks and nuns
ပါး pa: [bá] for people Used exclusively for monks and nuns of the Buddhist order
ကောင် kaung [kã̀ʊ̃] for animals
ခု hku. [kʰṵ] general classifier Used with almost all nouns except for animate objects
လုံး lum: [lṍʊ̃] for round objects
ပြား pra: [pjá] for flat objects
စု cu. [sṵ] for groups Can be [zṵ].

Affixes

[edit]

The Burmese language makes prominent usage of affixes (called ပစ္စည်း in Burmese), which are untranslatable words that are suffixed or prefixed to words to indicate tense, aspect, case, formality etc. For example, စမ်း [sã́] is a suffix used to indicate the imperative mood. While လုပ်ပါ ('work' + suffix indicating politeness) does not indicate the imperative, လုပ်စမ်းပါ ('work' + suffix indicating imperative mood + suffix indicating politeness) does. Affixes are often stacked next to each other

Some affixes modify the word's part of speech. Among the most prominent of these is the prefix အ [ə], which is prefixed to verbs and adjectives to form nouns or adverbs. For instance, the word ဝင် means "to enter", but combined with အ, it means "entrance" အဝင်. Moreover, in colloquial Burmese, there is a tendency to omit the second အ in words that follow the pattern အ + noun/adverb + အ + noun/adverb, like အဆောက်အအုံ, which is pronounced [əsʰaʊʔ ú] and formally pronounced [əsʰaʊʔ əõ̀ʊ̃].

Pronouns

[edit]
Main article: Burmese pronouns

Burmese exhibits pronoun avoidance, where pronouns are avoided for politeness.[62] In Burmese, speakers account for social distinctions linguistically, reflecting gender, relative age, kinship, social status, and intimacy.[63][64] Burmese uses "negative politeness," whereby speakers avoid directly addressing people.[63] Instead, Burmese relies on status and kinship terms, titles, personal names, and other terms of address, rather than regular pronouns.[63][64] Burmese kinship terms are commonly substituted as pronouns. For example, an older person may use ဒေါ်လေး dau le: [dɔ̀ lé] ('aunt') or ဦးလေး u: lei: [ʔú lé] ('uncle') to refer to himself, while a younger person may use either သား sa: [t̪á] ('son') or သမီး sa.mi: [t̪əmí] ('daughter').

Burmese has developed an elaborate hierarchical system of pronouns that are grammatically underspecified, but highly marked for the complex relation between speaker and addressee according to their relative position in the society.[65] In Burmese, the polite forms of first-person pronouns ကျွန်တော် (kya. nau [tɕənɔ̀], lit. 'royal slave') for males, and ကျွန်မ (kya. ma. [tɕəma̰], lit. 'female slave') for females humble the speaker, while the polite forms of second-person pronouns မင်း (min [mɪ́ɴ]; lit. 'lordship'), ခင်ဗျား (khang bya: [kʰəmjá]; lit. 'master lord')[66] or ရှင် (hrang [ʃɪ̀ɴ]; lit. 'ruler, master') elevate the addressee.[67][68] The original pronouns ငါ nga [ŋà] ('I/me') and နင် nang [nɪ̃̀] ('you') have been relegated to use with people of higher or equivalent status, although most speakers prefer to use third person pronouns.[69]

Burmese also uses case markers to mark subject pronouns (က [ɡa̰] in colloquial, သည် [t̪ì] in formal) and object pronouns (ကို [ɡò] in colloquial, အား [á] in formal), although these are generally dropped in spoken Burmese.

The basic pronouns are:

Person Singular Plural*
Informal Formal Informal Formal
First-person ငါ
nga
[ŋà] 		ကျွန်တော်‡
kywan to
[tɕənɔ̀]

ကျွန်မ†
kywan ma.
[tɕəma̰] 		ငါဒို့
nga tui.
[ŋà do̰] 		ကျွန်တော်တို့‡
kywan to tui.
[tɕənɔ̀ do̰]

ကျွန်မတို့†
kywan ma. tui.
[tɕəma̰ do̰]
Second-person နင်
nang
[nɪ̃̀]

မင်း
mang:
[mɪ̃́] 		ခင်ဗျား‡
khang bya:
[kʰəmjá]

ရှင်†
hrang
[ʃɪ̃̀] 		နင်ဒို့
nang tui.
[nɪ̃̀n do̰] 		ခင်ဗျားတို့‡
khang bya: tui.
[kʰəmjá do̰]

ရှင်တို့†
hrang tui.
[ʃɪ̃̀n do̰]
Third-person သူ
su
[t̪ù] 		(အ)သင်
(a.) sang
[(ʔə)t̪ɪ̃̀] 		သူဒို့
su tui.
[t̪ù do̰] 		သင်တို့
sang tui.
[t̪ɪ̃̀ do̰]
* The basic particle to indicate plurality is တို့ tui., colloquial ဒို့ dui..
‡ Used by male speakers.
† Used by female speakers.

Other pronouns are reserved for speaking with bhikkhus (Buddhist monks). When speaking to a bhikkhu, pronouns like ဘုန်းဘုန်း bhun: bhun: (from ဘုန်းကြီး phun: kri: 'monk'), ဆရာတော် chara dau [sʰəjàdɔ̀] ('royal teacher'), and အရှင်ဘုရား a.hrang bhu.ra: [ʔəʃɪ̃̀ pʰəjá] ('your lordship') are used depending on their status ဝါ. When referring to oneself, terms like တပည့်တော် ta. pany. tau ('royal disciple') or ဒကာ da. ka [dəɡà], ('donor') are used. When speaking to a monk, the following pronouns are used:

Person Singular
Informal Formal
First person တပည့်တော်†
ta.paey. tau 		ဒကာ†
da. ka
[dəɡà]
Second person ဘုန်းဘုန်း
bhun: bhun:
[pʰṍʊ̃ pʰṍʊ̃]

(ဦး)ပဉ္စင်း
(u:) pasang:
[(ʔú) bəzín] 		အရှင်ဘုရား
a.hrang bhu.ra:
[ʔəʃɪ̃̀ pʰəjá]

ဆရာတော်‡
chara dau
[sʰəjàdɔ̀]
† The particle ma. မ is suffixed for women.
‡ Typically reserved for the chief monk of a kyaung (monastery).

Kinship terms

[edit]
Main article: Burmese kinship

Kinship terms vary across Burmese dialects. Upper Burmese dialects still differentiate maternal and paternal sides of a family, unlike Lower Burmese dialects:

Term Upper Burmese Lower Burmese Myeik dialect
  • Paternal aunt (older)
  • Paternal aunt (younger)
  • အရီးကြီး [ʔəjí dʑí] (or [jí dʑí])
  • အရီးလေး [ʔəjí lé] (or [jí lé])
  • ဒေါ်ကြီး [dɔ̀ dʑí] (or [tɕí tɕí])
  • ဒေါ်လေး [dɔ̀ lé]
  • မိကြီး [mḭ dʑí]
  • မိငယ် [mḭ ŋɛ̀]
  • Maternal aunt (older)
  • Maternal aunt (younger)
  • ဒေါ်ကြီး [dɔ̀ dʑí] (or [tɕí tɕí])
  • ဒေါ်လေး [dɔ̀ lé]
  • Paternal uncle (older)
  • Paternal uncle (younger)
  • ဘကြီး [ba̰ dʑí]
  • ဘလေး [ba̰ lé]1
  • ဘကြီး [ba̰ dʑí]
  • ဦးလေး [ʔú lé]
  • ဖကြီး [pʰa̰ dʑí]
  • ဖငယ် [pʰa̰ ŋɛ̀]
  • Maternal uncle (older)
  • Maternal uncle (younger)
  • ဦးကြီး [ʔú dʑí]
  • ဦးလေး [ʔú lé]

1 The youngest (paternal or maternal) aunt may be called ထွေးလေး [dwé lé], and the youngest paternal uncle ဘထွေး [ba̰ dwé].

In a testament to the power of media, the Yangon-based speech is gaining currency even in Upper Burma. Upper Burmese-specific usage, while historically and technically accurate, is increasingly viewed as distinctly rural or regional speech. In fact, some usages are already considered strictly regional Upper Burmese speech and are likely to die out. For example:

Term Upper Burmese Standard Burmese
  • Elder brother (to a male)
  • Elder brother (to a female)
  • နောင် [nã̀ʊ̃]
  • အစ်ကို [ʔəkò]
  • အစ်ကို [ʔəkò]
  • Younger brother (to a male)
  • Younger brother (to a female)
  • ညီ [ɲì]
  • မောင် [mã̀ʊ̃]
  • Elder sister (to a male)
  • Elder sister (to a female)
  • အစ်မ [ʔəma̰]
  • Younger sister (to a male)
  • Younger sister (to a female)
  • နှမ [n̥əma̰]
  • ညီမ [ɲì ma̰]
  • ညီမ [ɲì ma̰]

In general, the male-centric names of old Burmese for familial terms have been replaced in standard Burmese with formerly female-centric terms, which are now used by both sexes. One holdover is the use of ညီ ('younger brother to a male') and မောင် ('younger brother to a female'). Terms like နောင် ('elder brother to a male') and နှမ ('younger sister to a male') now are used in standard Burmese only as part of compound words like ညီနောင် ('brothers') or မောင်နှမ ('brother and sister').

Reduplication

[edit]

Reduplication is prevalent in Burmese and is used to intensify or weaken adjectives' meanings. For example, if ချော [tɕʰɔ́] "beautiful" is reduplicated, then the intensity of the adjective's meaning increases. Many Burmese words, especially adjectives with two syllables, such as လှပ [l̥a̰pa̰] "beautiful", when reduplicated (လှပ → လှလှပပ [l̥a̰l̥a̰ pa̰pa̰]) become adverbs. This is also true of some Burmese verbs and nouns (e.g. ခဏ 'a moment' → ခဏခဏ 'frequently'), which become adverbs when reduplicated.

Some nouns are also reduplicated to indicate plurality. For instance, ပြည် [pjì] ('country'), but when reduplicated to အပြည်ပြည် [əpjì pjì], it means "many countries", as in အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ [əpjì pjì sʰã̀ɪ̃ jà] ('international'). Another example is အမျိုး, which means "a kind", but the reduplicated form အမျိုးမျိုး means "multiple kinds".

A few measure words can also be reduplicated to indicate "one or the other":

  • ယောက် (measure word for people) → တစ်ယောက်ယောက် ('someone')
  • ခု (measure word for things) → တစ်ခုခု ('something')

Numerals

[edit]
Main article: Burmese numerals

Burmese digits are traditionally written using a set of numerals unique to the Mon–Burmese script, although Arabic numerals are also used in informal contexts. The cardinal forms of Burmese numerals are primarily inherited from the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, with cognates with modern-day Sino-Tibetan languages, including the Chinese and Tibetan. Numerals beyond 'ten million' are borrowed from Indic languages like Sanskrit or Pali. Similarly, the ordinal forms of primary Burmese numerals (i.e., from first to tenth) are directly borrowed from Pali.[70] Ordinal numbers beyond ten are suffixed မြောက် (lit. 'to raise').

Burmese numerals follow the nouns they modify, with the exception of round numbers, which precede the nouns they modify. Moreover, numerals are subject to several tone sandhi and voicing rules that involve tone changes (low tone → creaky tone) and voicing shifts depending on the pronunciation of surrounding words. A more thorough explanation is found on Burmese numerals.

Romanization and transcription

[edit]
Main article: Romanization of Burmese

There is no official romanization system for Burmese.[citation needed] There have been attempts to make one, but none have been successful. Replicating Burmese sounds in the Latin script is complicated. There is a Pali-based transcription system in existence, MLC Transcription System which was devised by the Myanmar Language Commission (MLC). However, it only transcribes sounds in formal Burmese and is based on the Burmese alphabet rather than the phonology.

Several colloquial transcription systems have been proposed, but none is overwhelmingly preferred over others.

Transcription of Burmese is not standardized, as seen in the varying English transcriptions of Burmese names. For instance, a Burmese personal name like ဝင်း [wɪ̃́] may be variously romanized as Win, Winn, Wyn, or Wynn, while ခိုင် [kʰã̀ɪ̃] may be romanized as Khaing, Khine, or Khain.

Computer fonts and standard keyboard layout

[edit]
See also: Zawgyi font § Unicode incompatibility
Myanmar3, the de jure standard Burmese keyboard layout

The Burmese alphabet can be entered from a standard QWERTY keyboard and is supported within the Unicode standard, meaning it can be read and written from most modern computers and smartphones.

Burmese has complex character rendering requirements, where tone markings and vowel modifications are noted using diacritics. These can be placed before consonants (as with ေ), above them (as with ိ) or even around them (as with ြ). These character clusters are built using multiple keystrokes. In particular, the inconsistent placement of diacritics as a feature of the language presents a conflict between an intuitive WYSIWYG typing approach, and a logical consonant-first storage approach.[clarification needed]

Since its introduction in 2007, the most popular Burmese font, Zawgyi, has been near-ubiquitous in Myanmar. Linguist Justin Watkins argues that the ubiquitous use of Zawgyi harms Myanmar languages, including Burmese, by preventing efficient sorting, searching, processing and analyzing Myanmar text through flexible diacritic ordering.[71]

Zawgyi is not Unicode-compliant, but occupies the same code space as Unicode Myanmar font. As it is not defined as a standard character encoding, Zawgyi is not built in to any major operating systems as standard. However, allow for its position as the de facto (but largely undocumented) standard within the country, telcos and major smartphone distributors (such as Huawei and Samsung) ship phones with Zawgyi font overwriting standard Unicode-compliant fonts, which are installed on most internationally distributed hardware.[72] Facebook also supports Zawgyi as an additional language encoding for their app and website.[73] As a result, almost all SMS alerts (including those from telcos to their customers), social media posts and other web resources may be incomprehensible on these devices without the custom Zawgyi font installed at the operating system level. These may include devices purchased overseas, or distributed by companies who do not customize software for the local market.

Keyboards which have a Zawgyi keyboard layout printed on them are the most commonly available for purchase domestically.

Until recently, Unicode compliant fonts have been more difficult to type than Zawgyi, as they have a stricter, less forgiving and arguably less intuitive method for ordering diacritics. However, intelligent input software such as Keymagic[74] and recent versions of smartphone soft-keyboards including Gboard and ttKeyboard[75] allow for more forgiving input sequences and Zawgyi keyboard layouts which produce Unicode-compliant text.

A number of Unicode-compliant Burmese fonts exist. The national standard keyboard layout is known as the Myanmar3 layout, and it was published along with the Myanmar3 Unicode font. The layout, developed by the Myanmar Unicode and NLP Research Center, has a smart input system to cover the complex structures of Burmese and related scripts.

In addition to the development of computer fonts and standard keyboard layout, there is still a lot of scope of research for the Burmese language, specifically for Natural Language Processing (NLP) areas like WordNet, Search Engine, development of parallel corpus for Burmese language as well as development of a formally standardized and dense domain-specific corpus of the Burmese language.[76]

The Myanmar government has designated 1 October 2019 as "U-Day" to officially switch to Unicode.[77] The full transition is estimated to take two years.[78]

Example text

[edit]

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Burmese:[79]

လူတိုင်းသည် တူညီ လွတ်လပ်သော ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာဖြင့် လည်းကောင်း၊ တူညီလွတ်လပ်သော အခွင့်အရေးများဖြင့် လည်းကောင်း၊ မွေးဖွားလာသူများ ဖြစ်သည်။ ထိုသူတို့၌ ပိုင်းခြား ဝေဖန်တတ်သော ဉာဏ်နှင့် ကျင့်ဝတ် သိတတ်သော စိတ်တို့ရှိကြ၍ ထိုသူတို့သည် အချင်းချင်း မေတ္တာထား၍ ဆက်ဆံကျင့်သုံးသင့်၏။

The romanization of the text into the Latin alphabet:

lutuing:sany tu-nyi lwatlapsau: gun.sikhka.hprang. lany:kaung:| tu-nyi-lwatlapsau: ahkwang.-are:mya:hprang. lany:kaung:| mwe:hpwa:la.su-mya: hpracsany|| htuisutui.hnai puing:hkra: wehpantatsau: nyanhnang. kyang.wat si.tatsau: cittui.hri.kra.rwe htuisutui.sany ahkyang:hkyang: mettahta:rwe hcakhcamkyang.sum:sang.e||

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:[80]

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Burmese at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Myanmar at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Intha at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Taungyo at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Rakhine at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Marma at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Tavoyan dialects at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ a b Burmese at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  3. ^ Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008), Chapter XV, Provision 450
  4. ^ Bradley 1996.
  5. ^ "Burmese". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 2019. Archived from the original on 2019-08-20.
  6. ^ "Myanmar Subnational Phone Surveys (MSPS) of the World Bank: Coverage, Reliability and Representativeness" (PDF). World Bank. April 2023. The share of population that speaks Burmese as the most common language with other members of households is about 10 percentage points higher than independent estimates of Burmese languages speakers in Myanmar. However, these independent estimates of the share of Burmese speakers are dated as language information was not collected in the last census.
  7. ^ Chang 2003.
  8. ^ "Language Burmese". WALS Online. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Jenny, Mathias (2021-08-23), Sidwell, Paul; Jenny, Mathias (eds.), "25 The national languages of MSEA: Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, Vietnamese", The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia: A comprehensive guide, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 599–622, doi:10.1515/9783110558142-025, ISBN 978-3-11-055814-2, retrieved 2024-12-06
  10. ^ a b c Bradley 1993, p. 147.
  11. ^ "Myanmar". Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-10-10.
  12. ^ Barron et al. 2007, pp. 16–17.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h Allott 1983.
  14. ^ a b c d e f Jenny 2013.
  15. ^ Bradley, D. 2007a. East and Southeast Asia. In C. Moseley (ed.), Encyclopedia of the world's endangered languages , pp. 349–424. London: Routledge.
  16. ^ a b c Herbert & Milner 1989, p. 5.
  17. ^ a b c Wheatley 2013.
  18. ^ Bradley, David (2021-08-23), Sidwell, Paul; Jenny, Mathias (eds.), "17 Typological profile of Burmic languages", The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia: A comprehensive guide, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 299–336, doi:10.1515/9783110558142-017, ISBN 978-3-11-055814-2, retrieved 2024-12-06
  19. ^ Aung-Thwin 2005, p. [page needed].
  20. ^ a b c d e Lieberman 2018, p. [page needed].
  21. ^ Lieberman 2003, p. 189.
  22. ^ a b Lieberman 2003, pp. 202–206.
  23. ^ a b c d e f g Herbert & Milner 1989.
  24. ^ Adas 2011, pp. 67–77.
  25. ^ a b c Bradley 2010, p. 99.
  26. ^ a b Bradley 1995, p. 140.
  27. ^ a b c d Bradley, David (2021-08-23), Sidwell, Paul; Jenny, Mathias (eds.), "17 Typological profile of Burmic languages", The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia: A comprehensive guide, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 299–336, doi:10.1515/9783110558142-017, ISBN 978-3-11-055814-2, retrieved 2024-12-06
  28. ^ Bradley 2019.
  29. ^ Bradley 1996, p. 746.
  30. ^ Herbert & Milner 1989, pp. 5–21.
  31. ^ Aung Bala 1981, pp. 81–99.
  32. ^ Aung Zaw 2010, p. 2.
  33. ^ San San Hnin Tun 2001, p. 39.
  34. ^ Taw Sein Ko 1924, pp. 68–70.
  35. ^ San San Hnin Tun 2001, pp. 48–49.
  36. ^ San San Hnin Tun 2001, p. 26.
  37. ^ Houtman 1990, pp. 135–136.
  38. ^ a b c Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 64.
  39. ^ Unicode Consortium 2012, p. 370.
  40. ^ Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 65.
  41. ^ lit. 'flying air vehicle'; the 1st (လေ) and 3rd (ပျံ) elements are native Burmese words.
  42. ^ A calque of native Burmese and Pali words for 'name,' the 2nd element is from Burmese အမည်.
  43. ^ Wheatley & Tun 1999.
  44. ^ Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 81.
  45. ^ Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 67.
  46. ^ Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 94.
  47. ^ a b Wheatley & Tun 1999, p. 68.
  48. ^ MLC 1993.
  49. ^ Chang 2003, p. 63.
  50. ^ Watkins 2001.
  51. ^ Jenny & San San Hnin Tun 2016, p. 15.
  52. ^ Jenny & San San Hnin Tun 2016, p. 30.
  53. ^ Jones 1986, pp. 135–136.
  54. ^ a b c d Wheatley 1987.
  55. ^ Taylor 1920, pp. 91–106.
  56. ^ Taylor 1920.
  57. ^ Benedict 1948, pp. 184–191.
  58. ^ Bradley, David (2021-08-23), Sidwell, Paul; Jenny, Mathias (eds.), "17 Typological profile of Burmic languages", The Languages and Linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia: A comprehensive guide, De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 299–336, doi:10.1515/9783110558142-017, ISBN 978-3-11-055814-2, retrieved 2024-12-06
  59. ^ Khin Min 1987.
  60. ^ Lieberman 2003, p. 136.
  61. ^ Jenny, Mathias (26 August 2009). "DIFFERENTIAL OBJECT MARKING IN BURMESE" (PDF).
  62. ^ "Chapter Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns". WALS Online. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
  63. ^ a b c "Chapter Politeness Distinctions in Pronouns". WALS Online. Retrieved 2024-12-07.
  64. ^ a b Müller, André; Weymuth, Rachel (2017-03-01). "How Society Shapes Language: Personal Pronouns in the Greater Burma Zone". Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques. 71 (1): 409–432. doi:10.1515/asia-2016-0021. ISSN 2235-5871.
  65. ^ Müller, André; Weymuth, Rachel (2017-03-01). "How Society Shapes Language: Personal Pronouns in the Greater Burma Zone". Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques. 71 (1): 409–432. doi:10.1515/asia-2016-0021. ISSN 2235-5871.
  66. ^ From Burmese သခင်ဘုရား, lit. "lord master"
  67. ^ Müller, André; Weymuth, Rachel (2017-03-01). "How Society Shapes Language: Personal Pronouns in the Greater Burma Zone". Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques. 71 (1): 409–432. doi:10.1515/asia-2016-0021. ISSN 2235-5871.
  68. ^ Bradley 1993, p. 157–160.
  69. ^ Bradley 1993.
  70. ^ Okell, John (2002). Burmese By Ear (PDF). The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ISBN 186013758X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-04-20. Retrieved 2013-10-20.
  71. ^ Watkins, Justin. "Why we should stop Zawgyi in its tracks. It harms others and ourselves. Use Unicode!" (PDF).
  72. ^ Hotchkiss, Griffin (23 March 2016). "Battle of the fonts". Frontier.
  73. ^ "Facebook nods to Zawgyi and Unicode".
  74. ^ "Keymagic Unicode Keyboard Input Customizer".
  75. ^ "TTKeyboard – Myanmar Keyboard".
  76. ^ Saini 2016, p. 8.
  77. ^ "Unicode in, Zawgyi out: Modernity finally catches up in Myanmar's digital world". The Japan Times. Sep 27, 2019. Archived from the original on 2019-09-30. Retrieved 24 December 2019. Oct. 1 is "U-Day," when Myanmar officially will adopt the new system. ... Microsoft and Apple helped other countries standardize years ago, but Western sanctions meant Myanmar lost out.
  78. ^ Saw Yi Nanda (21 Nov 2019). "Myanmar switch to Unicode to take two years: app developer". The Myanmar Times. Archived from the original on 24 December 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2019.
  79. ^ "Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Burmese/Myanmar". Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Archived from the original on Dec 7, 2023.
  80. ^ "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". United Nations. Archived from the original on Dec 13, 2023.

References

[edit]

Bibliography

[edit]
[edit]
Burmese edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For a list of words relating to Burmese language, see the Burmese language category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Tibeto-Burman Languages".
Wikivoyage has a phrasebook for Burmese.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burmese_language&oldid=1262223148"
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