Burmese language

Classification

Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages. Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non-Sinitic Sino-Tibetan languages. Burmese was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Chinese characters, the Pyu script, the Tibetan alphabet and the Tangut script.

Dialects

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

Tanintharyi Region: Merguese (Myeik, Beik), Tavoyan (Dawei), and Palaw

Magway Region: Yaw

Shan State: Intha, Taungyo and Danu

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

Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as for the most part, they share the same four tones, consonant clusters and the use of the Burmese script. However, several dialects substantially differ in Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes.

Irrawaddy River valley

The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay-Yangon dialect continuum) comes 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, occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor pronunciation differences do exist within the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း "food offering [to a monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɴ] instead of [sʰwáɴ], which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma.

The standard dialect is represented 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 use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် kya.nau [tɕənɔ] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon, the said pronoun is used only by male speakers while ကျွန်မ kya.ma. [tɕəma̰] is used by female speakers. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology, Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not.

Spread of Burmese in Lower Burma

Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, who all use variants of Standard Burmese. The first major reason for the uniformity is the traditional Buddhist monastic education system, which encouraged education and uniformity in language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley, the traditional homeland of the Bamar people.

According to the 1891 British census conducted five years after the annexation of the entire country, Konbaung Burma had an "unusually high male literacy" rate where 62.5% of age 25 and over in Upper Burma could read and write. The figure would have been much higher if non-Bamars (e.g., Chins, Kachins, etc.) were excluded. For the whole country, the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women.

The migration of Burmese speakers of Bamar descent to Lower Burma is relatively recent. As late as the mid-1700s, the Austroasiatic language Mon was the principal language of Lower Burma and the Mon people who inhabited it. After the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757, the shift to Burmese began in Lower Burma. By 1830, an estimated 90% of the population in the region identified themselves as Bamar (and, as such, Burmese speakers) due the influx from Upper Burma, assimilation, and intermarriage. In the British colonial era, British incentives, particularly geared toward rice production, as well as political instability in Upper Burma, accelerated this migration.

Outside the Irrawaddy basin

More distinctive non-standard varieties 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. 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 otherwise only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. They also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop. Myeik has 250,000 speakers while Tavoyan has 400,000.

The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of the [ɹ] sound, which has become a [j] sound in standard Burmese. Also, 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.

Registers

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

1. Literary High (H) form (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 (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 particles, markers and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form. In most cases, the corresponding grammatical markers in the literary and spoken forms are totally unrelated to each other. Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical items:

"this" (pronoun): HIGH ဤ i → LOW ဒီ di

"that" (pronoun): HIGH ထို htui → LOW ဟို hui

"at" (postposition): HIGH ၌ hnai. [n̥aɪʔ] → LOW မှာ hma [m̥à]

plural (marker): HIGH များ mya: → LOW တွေ twe

possessive (marker): HIGH ၏ i. → LOW ရဲ့ re.

"and" (conjunction): HIGH နှင့် hnang. → LOW နဲ့ ne.

"if" (conjunction): HIGH လျှင် hlyang → LOW 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 spearheaded efforts to abandon the literary form, asserting that the spoken vernacular form ought to be used. Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt, a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use the spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms.

The following sample sentence reveals that differences between literary and spoken Burmese mostly occur in grammatical particles:

Spoken Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience into account. The particle ပါ pa is frequently used after a verb to express politeness. Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect. In many instances, 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. Furthermore, with regard to vocabulary choice, spoken Burmese clearly distinguishes the Buddhist clergy (monks) from the laity (householders), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks). The following are examples of varying vocabulary used for Buddhist clergy and for laity :

"sleep" (verb): ကျိန်း kyin: [tɕéɪɴ] for monks vs. အိပ် ip [eɪʔ] for laity

"die" (verb): ပျံတော်မူ pyam tau mu [pjàɴ dɔ̀ mù] for monks vs. သေ se [θè] for laity

Vocabulary

Burmese primarily has a monosyllabic received Sino-Tibetan vocabulary. Nonetheless, many words, especially loanwords from Indo-European languages like English, are polysyllabic, and others, from Mon, an Austroasiatic language, are sesquisyllabic. Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in the form of nouns.

Historically, Pali, the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism, had a profound influence on Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin because of phonotactic similarities between two languages alongside the fact that the script used for Burmese can reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy. Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science.

Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms:

1. Direct loan: direct import of Pali words with no alteration in orthography
2. "life": Pali ဇီဝ jiva → Burmese ဇီဝ jiva
3. 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 (lit. "nonexistence") atop the last letter in the syllable to suppress the consonant's inherent vowel
4. "karma": Pali ကမ္မ kamma → Burmese ကံ kam
5. "dawn": Pali အရုဏ aruṇa → Burmese အရုဏ် arun
6. "merit": Pali ကုသလ kusala → Burmese ကုသိုလ် kusuil
7. Double loan: adoption of two different terms derived from the same Pali word
8. Pali မာန māna → Burmese မာန [màna̰] "arrogance" and မာန် [màɴ] "pride"
9. Hybrid loan (e.g., neologisms or calques): construction of compounds combining native Burmese words with Pali or combine Pali words:
10. "airplane": လေယာဉ်ပျံ [lè jɪ̀ɴ bjàɴ], lit. "air machine fly", ← လေ (native Burmese, "air") + ယာဉ် (from Pali yana, "vehicle") + ပျံ (native Burmese word, "fly")

Burmese has also adapted a great deal of words from Mon, traditionally spoken by the Mon people, who until recently formed the majority in 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. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture and music.

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
2. "democracy": English democracy → Burmese ဒီမိုကရေစီ
3. Neologism or calque: translation of an English word using native Burmese constituent words
4. "human rights": English "human rights" → Burmese လူ့အခွင့်အရေး (လူ့ "human" + အခွင့်အရေး "rights")
5. Hybrid loan: construction of compound words by native Burmese words to English words
6. "to sign": ဆိုင်းထိုး [sʰáɪɴ 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). 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:

suffering: ဒုက္ခ [doʊʔkʰa̰], from Pali dukkha

radio: ရေဒီယို [ɹèdìjò], from English "radio"

method: စနစ် [sənɪʔ], from Mon

eggroll: ကော်ပြန့် [kɔ̀pja̰ɴ], from Hokkien 潤餅 (jūn-piáⁿ)

wife: ဇနီး [zəní], from Hindi jani

noodle: ခေါက်ဆွဲ [kʰaʊʔ sʰwɛ́], from Shan ၶဝ်ႈသွႆး [kʰāu sʰɔi]

foot (unit of measurement): ပေ [pè], from Portuguese pé

flag: အလံ [əlàɴ], Arabic: علم‎‎ ʿalam

storeroom: ဂိုဒေါင် [ɡòdàʊɴ], from 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. Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̀ɴ] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English "car") in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of usage with the adoption of neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì], from English "university", now တက္ကသိုလ် [teʔkəðò], a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila (တက္ကသီလ Takkasila), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan.

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 [sàɴdà]/[sáɴ] (derivatives of Pali canda "moon"), or သော်တာ [θɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit).

Phonology

The transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Consonants

The consonants of Burmese are as follows:

Phonetic notes:

^1 /ð/ is uncommon, except as a voiced allophone of /θ/.^2 /w̥/ is rare, having disappeared from modern Burmese, except in transcriptions of foreign names and a handful of native words.^3 /ɹ/ is rare, used only in toponyms that have retained Sanskrit or Pali pronunciations (such as Amarapura, pronounced [àməɹa̰pùɹa̰] and in English-derived words. Historically, /ɹ/ became /j/ in Burmese, and is usually replaced by /j/ in Pāli loanwords, e.g. "monk" ရဟန္တာ ra.hanta [jəhàɴdà], "king" ရာဇ raja. [jàza̰]. Occasionally it is replaced with /l/ (e.g., "animal" တိရစ္ဆာန် ti.rac hcan), pronounced [təɹeɪʔ sʰàɴ] or [təleɪʔ sʰàɴ].^4 ɴ is a special syllable-final nasal consonant, which bears some resemblance to Japanese moraic n, ン.

Burmese exhibits two distinct types of voicing sandhi, which occurs in the consonant phones:

In the first type, the initial consonant of the second syllable becomes voiced:

e.g. "hot water": [jèbù] ရေပူ ← /jè/ + /pù/

In the second type, the initial consonants of both syllables become voiced:

e.g. "promise": [ɡədḭ] ကတိ ← /ka̰/ + /tḭ/

In some compound works, the phoneme /dʑ/, when following the nasalized final /ɴ/, can shift to a /j/ sound:

e.g. "blouse" (အင်္ကျီ angkyi): [èɪɴdʑí] → [èɪɴjí].

The phonemes /p, pʰ, b, t, tʰ, d/, when following the nasalized final /ɴ/, can become /m/ in compound words:

e.g. "to consult" တိုင်ပင်: [tàɪɴ pɪ̀ɴ] → [tàɪɴ mɪ̀ɴ]e.g. "to apologize" တောင်းပန်: [táʊɴ pàɴ] → [táʊɴ màɴ]e.g. "airplane" လေယာဉ်ပျံ: [lèi jɪ̀ɴ pjàɴ] → [lèɪɴ mjàɴ]

The placeless nasal /ɴ/ is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a homorganic nasal of the following consonant; thus /mòʊɴdáɪɴ/ "storm" is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ].

In many Burmese verbs, pre-aspiration and post-aspiration distinguishes the causative and non-causative forms of verbs, where the aspirated initial consonant indicates active voice or a transitive verb, while an unaspirated initial consonant indicates passive voice or an intransitive verb:

e.g. "to cook" [tɕʰɛʔ], ချက် vs. "to be cooked" [tɕɛʔ], ကျက်e.g. "to loosen" [pʰjè], ဖြေ vs. "to be loosened" [pjè], ပြေe.g. "to elevate" [m̥jɪɴ], မြှင့် vs. "to be elevated" [mjɪɴ], မြင့်

Vowels

The vowels of Burmese are:

The monophthongs /e/, /o/, /ə/, 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 slightly centered to [ɪ] and [ʊ] in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɴ/ and /ʔ/. Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ "two" is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàuɴ/ "cat" is phonetically [tɕàʊɴ].

Although this analysis is (more or less) correct from a purely phonetic point of view, it hides the diachronic nature of Burmese vowel development and mergers, and obfuscates the reasoning behind Burmese orthography.

Vowels in Open Syllables

The mainstay of the Modern Standard Burmese (MSB) vowel system is derived from four basic vowels in Old Burmese (OB): */a/ */i/ */o/ */u/.

In open syllables these are reflected in MSB as /a/ /i/ /u̯a/ /u/. In OB they could additionally be followed by a glide /j/ or /w/, creating a diphthong which has subsequently homogenised, creating a new monophthong considered in MSB to be an open syllable. The /j/ offglide results in the e-class vowels /ɛ/ /e/ /u̯ɛ/ /u̯e/ respectively, while the /w/ offglide is, currently, only believed to have existed in */aw/ and */uw/ resulting in the MSB o-class vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ respectively. Therefore, there can be said to be a total of 10 vowels in MSB open syllables: /a/ /u̯a/ /ɛ/ /u̯ɛ/ /e/ /u̯e/ /i/ /ɔ/ /o/ /u/. Although the vowels /u̯a/ /u̯ɛ/ /u̯e/ are commonly treated as medial-vowel sequences, reducing the vowel inventory of MSB in open syllables from 10 to 7, the behaviour of /u̯a/ /u̯ɛ/ /u̯e/ is unlike that of glide-vowel combinations. See below for a more complete explanation.

Finals

MSB recognises 8 finals in native vocabulary which are all distinguished from their initial forms with the c-shaped superscript diactiric asat ( ် ) which for ease of reading, is omitted here: the stops: ပ /p/ တ /t/ စ /c/ က /k/ and the nasals: မ /m/ န /n/ ည / ဉ /ɲ/ င /ŋ/. All of the stops in final position are realised as a glottal stop /ʔ/ (or, potentially, a geminate of a following stop) which shortens the vowel and precludes it from bearing any tone. All of the nasals on the other hand nasalise the vowel but are not pronounced as consonants unless there is a following nasal or stop.

Finals are broadly grouped into two sets: front and back finals. Front finals include the labial and alveolar finals -m -n and -p -t which are not distinguished in MSB, leading to mergers such as အိပ္ (*/ip/ sleep) and အိတ္ (*/it/ bag), both pronounced [ĕɪʔ]. In Tavoyan dialects however, the labial finals -m and -p often cause vowel breaking (*/un/ -> /ũː/, */um/ -> /ãʊ/). The back finals include the palatal finals -c -ɲ and velar -k -ŋ, although their uses are even more complex.

Current reconstruction holds that the OB vowel-offglide sequences – which today are /ɛ/ /u̯ɛ/ /e/ /u̯e/ /ɔ/ /o/ in MSB – counted as a closed syllables and thus could not be followed by a final. As a result, most closed syllables in MSB are built around the 4 basic vowels /a/ /i/ /u̯a/ /u/.

Finals in Loans

In loan words, usually from Pali, လ /l/ ရ /ɹ~j/ ဝ /w/ သ /s/ are found but are silent and do not affect the vowel, which continues to behave as an open syllable vowel. Also from Pali are the retroflex finals ဋ /ʈ/ and ဏ /ɳ/ which merge with their alveolar counterparts, as does the superscript diacritic ( ံ ) anusvara which is a pan-Brahmic nasalisation mark functioning as a final -m or -n in MSB. The consonant ( ယ ) is also seen with an asat diacritic, but this is the standard spelling for the vowel /ɛ/ with tone 2 (long and low level or low rising) and not viewed in any way as a final (although, as noted above, this is an etymologically accurate rendering of /ɛ/ which originated from the */aj/ sequence).

Vowels Before Front Finals

The 4 basic vowels /a/ /i/ /u̯a/ /u/ can all occur before the front finals. In MSB before the -p and -t finals they are pronounced /æ̆ʔ/ /ĕɪʔ/ /u̯æ̆ʔ~ŭʔ/ /ŏʊʔ/ respectively. Similarly, before the -m and -n finals, vowels use the same qualities except that they are nasalised and are pronounced long by default thus giving: /æ̃ː/ /ẽɪː/ /u̯æ̃ː~ũː/ /õʊː/.

The variation between /ŭʔ/ /ũː/ and /u̯æ̆ʔ/ /u̯æ̃ː/ is regional. North-central dialects in and around Mandalay tend to use the original opening diphthong while southern dialects in and around Yangon tend to use the monophthong. Both pronunciations are universally accepted and understood. In more conservative dialects /i/ /u/ and */o/ may not break, and thus remain /ĭʔ/ /ĩ/, /ŭʔ/ /ũ/, and /ɔ̆ʔ/ /ɔ̃/, additionally */an/ may move back, not forward, leaving /ɔ̃/ and not /æ̃/, but all of these features are considered non-standard.

Vowels Before Back Finals

The finals ( ည / ဉ ) originally */ɲ/ in OB, can only occur after the vowel /a/ and are highly variable in pronunciation. Across Burmese dialects ( ည ) does not nasalise the vowel, and tends to result in an open syllable monophthong, often with multiple possible realisations. ( ဉ ) on the other hand nasalises the vowel and tends to have a more conservative pronunciation. As the original final was realised */aɲ/ in OB, the vowel underwent a shift /aɲ > ajɲ > aɪɲ > aɪn (> ãɪ > ɛ/e/i)/. The pronunciation of ( ဉ ) tends to be /aɪn~ãɪ/ in the Rakhine/Arakanese dialects, but /in~ĩː/ in other dialects, including the conservative Tavoyan/Dawe. In MSB ( ည ) is most commonly pronounced /ɛː/, following the shift of */aj/ > /ɛː/ in open syllables, although it can be /iː/ and less often /eː/. Tavoyan dialects restrict the pronunciation to /ɛː/ exclusively, while Rakhine dialects use /eː/.

The final ( စ ) shows a lot of similarities to the development of ( ဉ ). It similarly exists only after the vowel /a/. In MSB and Tavoyan dialects it is pronounced as /ĭʔ/, but Rakhine dialects preserve it as /ăɪʔ/ following the same shift /ac > ajc > aɪc > aɪʔ (> iʔ)/.

The velar finals ( က ) and ( င ) can follow the vowels /a/ and /u̯a/ and, unusually, /ɔ/ and /o/. In MSB /a/ and /u̯a/ become /ɛ̆ʔ/ /u̯ɛ̆ʔ/ and /ĩː/ /u̯ĩː/ with the stop and nasal finals respectively. This is, it must be said, a distinctive feature of MSB however, as the Rakhine dialects shift the /a/ back to become /ɔ̆ʔ/ /ɔ̃ː/, and Tavoyan dialects merge the -ak -aŋ rimes with the -at -an and -ap -am rimes, allegedly resulting in /ăʔ/ /ãː/, although it is unclear whether these are truly [a] or [æ] as in MSB.

The rimes */ɔk/ (အောက်) */ɔŋ/ (အောင်) are somewhat problematic from a linguistic perspective. Despite the fact that these rimes are written with the same compound vowel diacritics which indicate the open syllable /ɔ/, as noted above, the rime */aw/ is viewed by linguists to have been a closed syllable and thus, it is assumed that the */aw/ vowel which resulted in MSB /ɔ/ is distinct from the vowel in the rimes */ɔk/ */ɔŋ/ which either did not exist in open syllables, or merged completely with a vowel which did. Whatever the etymology, in MSB the rimes */ɔk/ */ɔŋ/ are realised as /ăʊʔ/ /ãʊ/, and realised /ɔ̆ʔ/ /ɔ̃ː/ in Tavoyan.

The rimes */ok/ (အိုက်) */oŋ/ (အိုင်), written with the compound vowel diacritic for /o/ are pronounced /ăɪʔ/ and /ãɪ/ respectively and are currently believed to have been innovations in Burmese, and as such their shared orthography with the /o/ vowel is coincidental.

Notes on Glides

Note that, the vocalic onglide /u̯/ is usually transcribed both in phonetic transcription and in romanisation as /w/. This is due to the fact that phonetically it behaves as a medial, however, here the transcription /u̯/ is used to emphasise that it is a part of the vowel and not a true medial like /-j-/ (romanised -y-). /-j-/ is derived from OB */-j-/ */-l-/ and */-ɹ-/, and is, therefore, reflected in various ways in different dialects. In MSB orthography two spellings exist for the medial (demonstrated on the consonant က /k/), one reflecting an original /-j-/ (ကျ - ky), and one an original /-ɹ-/ (ကြ - kr) and official government romanistion still reflects this fact (Myanmar, in official romanistion is rendered mran-ma). However, in MSB, /ɹ/, for which there is also a unique initial letter ( ရ ), is pronounced /j/ in all instances (usually realised as [ʝ] initially) except in loan words. The letter for /l/ ( လ ) is still pronounced as /l/ in initial position, but as a medial, it has completely merged with /-j-/ and /-ɹ-/. In OB inscriptions this medial could be rendered with a subscript or “stacked” လ as in ( က္လ ), a practice still used in the rare dialects, such as Tavoyan/Dawe where the /-l-/ medial is still pronounced distinctly. These medials behave differently than the /u̯/ onglide in the following ways:

[*] a medial */-j-/ */-l-/ */-ɹ-/ can be placed before the onlglide /u̯/, whereas two medials can never be used in the same syllable.

[*] the use of /u̯/ is restricted by the vowel nucleus (only used with /a/ /ɛ/ /e/) and may in some cases drastically change the pronunciation of the vowel e.g. in Yangon /wa/ before a final becomes [u], while /a/ before a final becomes [æ]. However, it cannot affect the pronunciation of the initial.

[*] glides are restricted by the preceding initial, and often change its pronunciation. Bearing in mind that MSB does not reliably indicate the development of */-l-/, /m/ /pʰ/ /p/ /b/ can apparently be followed by any glide in which case the glide becomes [ʲ]. Similarly /kʰ/ /k/ and /g/ can be followed by any glide, in which case the cluster becomes [tɕʰ] [tɕ] or [dʑ] respecitvely. /ŋ/ can be followed by /-ɹ-/ but not /-j-/ in which case the cluster becomes [ɲ], merging with the palatal nasal letter ( ည / ဉ ). And finally, /l/ can be followed by /-j-/ but not /-ɹ-/. It should be noted that this is rare and in Yangon MSB this represents the only case where the medial impacts the vowel whereby the sequence လျာ */ljaː/ is realised [lea̯]. Tavoyan front vowels are frequently raised following /-j-/. There is, at least in Yangon MSB, no difference between an initial /j/ /ɹ/ /w/ and a null initial with /-j-/ /-ɹ-/ /u̯/. This extends to a /w/ initial followed by a /u̯/ onglide. Therefore, in Yangon (and likely much of MSB) /wa/, /Øu̯a/, and /wu̯a/ are pronounced identically.

Tones

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.

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

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

Low /kʰà/ "shake"

High /kʰá/ "be bitter"

Creaky /kʰa̰/ "fee"

Checked /kʰaʔ/ "draw off"

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

Low /kʰàɴ/ "undergo"

High /kʰáɴ/ "dry up"

Creaky /kʰa̰ɴ/ "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. 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."

Syllable structure

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 /ɴ/. Some representative words are:

CV /mè/ 'girl'

CVC /mɛʔ/ 'crave'

CGV /mjè/ 'earth'

CGVC /mjɛʔ/ 'eye'

CVVC /màʊɴ/ (term of address for young men)

CGVVC /mjáʊɴ/ '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

Some examples of words containing minor syllables:

/kʰə.loʊʔ/ 'knob'

/pə.lwè/ 'flute'

/θə.jɔ̀/ 'mock'

/kə.lɛʔ/ 'be wanton'

/tʰə.mə.jè/ 'rice-water'

Alphabet

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 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.

The development of the script followed that of the language, which is generally divided into Old Burmese, Middle Burmese and modern Burmese. Old Burmese dates from the 11th to the 16th century (Pagan and 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. Orthographic changes followed shifts in phonology (such as the merging of the [-l-] and [-ɹ-] medials) rather than transformations in Burmese grammatical structure and phonology, which has not changed much from Old Burmese to modern Burmese. 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 [tɕáʊɴ] in modern Burmese). Likewise written Burmese has preserved all nasalized finals [-n, -m, -ŋ], which have merged to [-ɴ] in spoken Burmese. (The exception is [-ɲ], which, in spoken Burmese, can be one of many open vowels [i, e, ɛ]. Likewise, 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. The British colonial period scholars believed that the Burmese script was developed c. 1058 from the Mon script. However, evidence shows that the Burmese script has been in use at least since 1035 (perhaps as early as 984) while the earliest Burma Mon script, which is different from the Thailand Mon script, dates to 1093. The Burmese script may have been sourced from the Pyu script. (Both Mon and Pyu scripts are derivatives of the Brahmi script.) Burmese orthography originally followed a square format but the cursive format took hold from the 17th century when popular writing led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as parabaiks ပုရပိုက်. Much of the orthography in written Burmese today can be traced back to Middle Burmese. Standardized tone marking was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because ambiguities arose over spelling sounds that had been merged. During British colonial rule, Burmese spelling was standardized through dictionaries and spellers. The latest spelling authority, named the Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း, was compiled in 1978 at the request of the Burmese government.

Grammar

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. Burmese is monosyllabic (i.e., every word is a root to which a particle but not another word may be prefixed). Sentence structure determines syntactical relations and verbs are not conjugated. Instead they have particles suffixed to them. For example, the verb "to eat," စား ca: [sà] is itself unchanged when modified.

Adjectives

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 grammatical particle တဲ့ tai. [dɛ̰] in colloquial Burmese (literary form: သော sau: [θɔ́], which is suffixed as follows:

Colloquial: ချောတဲ့လူ hkyau: tai. lu [tɕʰɔ́ dɛ̰ lù]Formal: ချောသောလူ hkyau: so: luGloss: "beautiful" + adjective particle + "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 [tʰeʔ pò] + adjective, where X is the object being compared to. Superlatives are indicated with the prefix အ a. [ʔə] + adjective + ဆုံး hcum: [zóʊɴ].

Numerals follow the nouns they modify. Moreover, numerals follow several pronunciation 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.

Verbs

The roots of Burmese verbs are almost always suffixed with at least one particle which conveys such information as tense, intention, politeness, mood, etc. Many of these particles also have formal/literary and colloquial equivalents. In fact, the only time in which no particle is attached to a verb is in imperative commands. However, Burmese verbs are not conjugated in the same way as most European languages; the root of the Burmese verb always remains unchanged and does not have to agree with the subject in person, number or gender.

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

The suffix တယ် tai [dɛ̀] (literary form: သည် sany [ðì] can be viewed as a particle marking the present tense and/or a factual statement:

စားတယ် ca: tai [sá dɛ̀] "I eat"

The suffix ခဲ့ hkai. [ɡɛ̰] denotes that the action took place in the past. However, this particle 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 particle becomes imperative. Note that the suffix တယ် tai [dɛ̀] in this case denotes a factual statement rather than the present tense:

စားခဲ့တယ် ca: hkai. tai [sá ɡɛ̰ dɛ̀] "I ate"

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

စားနေတယ် ca: ne tai [sá nè dɛ̀] "I am eating"

This particle 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 you to eat and you have finally started eating, the particle ပြီ is used as follows:

(စ)စားပြီ (ca.) ca: pri [(sə) sá bjì] "I am (now) eating"

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

စားမယ် ca: mai [sá mɛ̀] "I will eat"

The particle 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 particle".

စားတော့မယ် ca: tau. mai [sá dɔ̰ mɛ̀] "I'm going to eat (straight-away)"

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

စားတော့ ca: tau. [sá dɔ̰] "Eat (now)"

Verbs are negated by the particle မ ma. [mə], which is prefixed to the verb. Generally speaking, other particles are suffixed to that verb, along with မ.

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

မစားနဲ့ ma.ca: nai. [məsá nɛ̰] Don't eat

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

မစားဘူး ma.ca: bhu: [məsá bú] "[I] don't eat"

Nouns

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

မြစ် mrac [mjɪʔ] "river"

မြစ်တွေ mrac twe [mjɪʔ tè] "rivers" (colloquial)

မြစ်များ mrac mya: [mjɪʔ mjá] "rivers" (formal)

မြစ်တို့ mrac tou: [mjɪʔ to̰] "rivers"

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

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 particles: ထီး hti: [tʰí], ဖ hpa [pʰa̰], or ဖို hpui [pʰò], depending on the noun, and feminized with the particle မ ma. [ma̰]. Examples of usage are below:

ကြောင်ထီး kraung hti: [tɕàʊɴ tʰí] "male cat"

ကြောင်မ kraung ma. [tɕàʊɴ ma̰] "female cat"

ကြက်ဖ krak hpa. [tɕɛʔ pʰa̰] "rooster/cock"

ထန်းဖို htan: hpui [tʰáɴ pʰò] "male toddy palm plant"

Numerical classifiers

Like its neighboring languages such as Thai, Bengali, and Chinese, Burmese uses numerical classifiers (also called measure words) when nouns are counted or quantified. 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 ungrammatical, because the measure word for people ယောက် yauk [jaʊʔ] 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.

Particles

The Burmese language makes prominent usage of particles (called ပစ္စည်း in Burmese), which are untranslatable words that are suffixed or prefixed to words to indicate level of respect, grammatical tense, or mood. According to the Myanmar–English Dictionary (1993), there are 449 particles in the Burmese language. For example, စမ်း [sáɴ] is a grammatical particle used to indicate the imperative mood. While လုပ်ပါ ("work" + particle indicating politeness) does not indicate the imperative, လုပ်စမ်းပါ ("work" + particle indicating imperative mood + particle indicating politeness) does. Particles may be combined in some cases, especially those modifying verbs.

Some particles modify the word's part of speech. Among the most prominent of these is the particle 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. Also, 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 əòʊɴ].

Pronouns

Subject pronouns begin sentences, though the subject is generally omitted in the imperative forms and in conversation. Grammatically speaking, subject marker particles က [ɡa̰] in colloquial, သည် [θì] in formal) must be attached to the subject pronoun, although they are also generally omitted in conversation. Object pronouns must have an object marker particle ကို [ɡò] in colloquial, အား [á] in formal) attached immediately after the pronoun. Proper nouns are often substituted for pronouns. One's status in relation to the audience determines the pronouns used, with certain pronouns used for different audiences.

Polite pronouns are used to address elders, teachers and strangers, through the use of feudal-era third person pronouns in lieu of first and second person pronouns. In such situations, one refers to oneself in third person: ကျွန်တော် kya. nau [tɕənɔ̀] for men and ကျွန်မ kya. ma. [tɕəma̰] for women, both meaning "your servant", and refer to the addressee as မင်း min [mɪ́ɴ] "your highness", ခင်ဗျား khang bya: [kʰəmjá] "master, lord" (from Burmese သခင်ဘုရား, meaning 'lord master') or ရှင် hrang [ʃɪ̀ɴ] "ruler/master". So ingrained are these terms in the daily polite speech that people use them as the first and second person pronouns without giving a second thought to the root meaning of these pronouns.

When speaking to a person of the same status or of younger age, ငါ nga [ŋà] "I/me" and နင် nang [nɪ̀ɴ] "you" may be used, although most speakers choose to use third person 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: [θá] "son" or သမီး sa.mi: [θəmí] "daughter".

The basic pronouns are:

* 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: [ʔəʃɪ̀ɴ pʰəjá] "your lordship" are used depending on their status ဝါ when referring to oneself, terms like တပည့်တော် ta. paey. tau "royal disciple" or ဒကာ da. ka [dəɡà], "donor" are used. When speaking to a monk, the following pronouns are used:

^† The particle ma. မ is suffixed for women.^‡ Typically reserved for the chief monk of a kyaung (monastery_.

In colloquial Burmese, possessive pronouns are contracted when the root pronoun itself is low toned. 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] "I" + ရဲ့ (postpositional marker for possessive case) = ငါ့ [ŋa̰] "my"

နင် [nɪ̀ɴ] "you" + ရဲ့ (postpositional marker for possessive case) = နင့် [nɪ̰ɴ] "your"

သူ [θù] "he, she" + ရဲ့ (postpositional marker for possessive case) = သူ့ [θṵ] "his, her"

The contraction also occurs in some low toned nouns, making them possessive nouns (e.g. အမေ့ or မြန်မာ့, "mother's" and "Myanmar's" respectively).

Family terms

Minor pronunciation differences do exist within regions of Irrawaddy valley. For example, the pronunciation [sʰʊ́ɴ] of ဆွမ်း "food offering [to a monk]" is preferred in Lower Burma, instead of [sʰwáɴ], which is preferred in Upper Burma. However, the most obvious difference between Upper Burmese and Lower Burmese is that Upper Burmese speech still differentiates maternal and paternal sides of a family:

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 countrified speech, or at best regional speech. In fact, some usages are already considered strictly regional Upper Burmese speech, and are likely dying out. For example:

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

Reduplication is prevalent in Burmese and is used to intensify or weaken adjectives' meanings. For example, ချော [tɕʰɔ́] "beautiful" is reduplicated, 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] "country", means "many countries," as in အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ [əpjì pjì sʰàɪɴ 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)

Romanization and transcription

There is no official romanization system for Burmese. 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 orthography 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 [wɪ́ɴ] may be variously romanized as Win, Winn, Wyn, or Wynn, while ခိုင် [kʰàɪɴ] may be romanized as Khaing, Khine, or Khain.

Computer fonts and standard keyboard layout

The Burmese script can be entered from a standard QWERTY keyboard. The most popular Burmese font, Zawgyi, is not Unicode-compliant, but 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.