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.
Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာစကား (or) ဗမာဘာသာစကား) is aTibeto-Burman language spoken inMyanmar,[2] where it is theofficial language, lingua franca, and the native language of theBamar, the country's largest ethnic group. TheConstitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as theMyanmar language in English,[3] though most English speakers continue to refer to the language asBurmese, afterBurma—a name with co-official status until 1989 (seeNames of Myanmar). Burmese is the most widely spoken language in the country, where it serves as thelingua franca.[4] In 2019, Burmese was spoken by 42.9 million people globally, including by 32.9 million speakers as a first language and 10 million as a second language.[5][2] A 2023World Bank survey found that 80% of the country's population speaks Burmese.[6] Burmese dialects are also spoken by some of the indigenous tribes in Bangladesh'sChittagong Hill Tracts, China'sYunnan province, and India'snortheastern states, as well as byBurmese diaspora.
Most Burmese speakers, who live throughout theIrrawaddy 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:
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 oflexical similarity between major Burmese dialects:[11]
Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers,[12] particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. Thestandard dialect of Burmese (theMandalay-Yangondialect continuum) originates from the Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers fromUpper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), calledanya tha (အညာသား) and speakers fromLower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), calledauk tha (အောက်သား), largely occur in vocabulary, not pronunciation. Minor lexical and rhyme differences exist throughout the Irrawaddy River valley.[13] For instance, for the termဆွမ်း, "food offering [to a monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use[sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of[sʰwáɰ̃], 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. Formerly, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The Mandalay dialect's most noticeable feature is its continued use of the first-person pronounကျွန်တော်,kya.nau[tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women. In Yangon, only male speakers use the same pronoun, while female speakers useကျွန်မ,kya.ma.[tɕəma̰]. Moreover, with regard tokinship terminology, Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family while 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, as in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in most Tibeto-Burman languages.[14] This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties and is considered sub-standard.
More distinctive nonstandard varieties of Burmese emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley. These varieties include theYaw, Palaw,Myeik (Merguese),Tavoyan andIntha dialects. Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects, especially withlanguage convergence.
Dialects inTanintharyi Region, including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative compared to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved the/l/ medial, which is only found inOld Burmese inscriptions. These dialects also often reduce the intensity of theglottal stop. Beik has 250,000 speakers[15] and Tavoyan 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese.[14]
The most pronounced feature of theArakanese language ofRakhine 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 theဧ[e] andဣ[i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood"သွေး is pronounced[θwé] in standard Burmese and[θwí] in Arakanese.
The Burmese language's early forms includeOld Burmese andMiddle Burmese. Old Burmese dates from the 11th to the 16th century (Pagan toAva dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century (Toungoo to earlyKonbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century. Burmese phonology has evolved significantly, butword 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]
TheMyazedi inscription, dated to AD 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription of the Burmese language.
The earliest attested form of the Burmese language isOld Burmese, dating to the 11th- and 12th-century stone inscriptions ofPagan. The earliest evidence of theBurmese alphabet dates 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 thePagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via thePyu language.[14] These indirect borrowings can be traced 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 callednissaya (နိဿယ) emerged.[9] They 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 than in colloquial Burmese.[9]
The transition toMiddle Burmese occurred in the 16th century.[16] The transition included phonological changes (e.g. mergers ofsound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in the underlyingorthography.[16]
From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace'sliteracy rate, which manifested 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 ofBurmese literature in both genres and works.[20] During this period, theBurmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used inpalm-leaf manuscripts as opposed to the square block-form letters used in earlier periods.[20] The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced to Middle Burmese.
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 Burmese language's uniformity was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (kyaung) in Burmese villages. These 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. The1891 Census of India, conducted five years after the annexation of the entireKonbaung 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 ofBritish 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 intoLower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s,Mon, anAustroasiatic 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-speakingKonbaung Dynasty's victory over the Mon-speakingRestored 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 theIrrawaddy 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 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 theEnglish 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 independentUniversity of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university byPe Maung Tin, modeled onAnglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford.[13] Student protests in December of that year, triggered by the introduction of English intomatriculation 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 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 leadup to Burmese independence in 1948.[13]
The 1948Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as theofficial language of the newly independent nation. TheBurma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal to modernize 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 accelerated by theBurmese Way to Socialism.[13] In August 1963, the socialistUnion Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor to theMyanmar Language Commission) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. In 1978, the commission compiled the latest spelling authority, theMyanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan (မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း).[23]
Literary High (H) form[26] (မြန်မာစာmranma ca): the high variety (formal and written), used in literature (formal writing), newspapers, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches
Spoken Low (L) form[26] (မြန်မာစကားmranma 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.[18] Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since the 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools.[13][27]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.[28] Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms:
Gloss
Literary
HIGH
Spoken
LOW
"this" (pronoun)
ဤi
ဒီdi
"that" (pronoun)
ထိုhtui
ဟိုhui
"at" (case)
၌hnai.[n̥aɪʔ]
မှာhma[m̥à]
plural (suffix)
များmya:
တွေtwe
possessive (case)
၏i.
ရဲ့re.
"and" (conjunction)
နှင့်hnang.
LOWနဲ့ne.
"if" (conjunction)
လျှင်hlyang
ရင်rang
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 favor of the spoken vernacular form.[29][30] Some Burmese linguists, such asMinn Latt, a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether.[31] The literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), but 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.[18] The following examples demonstrate significant differences in the pronouns, verbs, and other markers used between the literary and spoken forms (contrasts inbold):
Burmese has politeness levels andhonorifics that take into account the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience. The suffixပါ (pa) is frequently used after a verb to express politeness.[32] Moreover,Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect.[33] Polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third-person pronouns orkinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns.[34][35]
Honorific vocabulary is used in Burmese to distinguish Buddhist clergy from the laity (householders), especially when speaking to or aboutbhikkhus (monks).[36] Distinct honorific vocabulary (often euphemistic) also distinguishes 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:
Burmese has primarily inherited its monosyllabic vocabulary from Sino-Tibetan stock. The language has also adopted polysyllabic loanwords fromIndo-European languages like Pali and English, as well assesquisyllabic words from Mon, an Austroasiatic language.[17] Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in the form ofnouns.[17]
Of the Indo-European languages,Pali, the liturgical language ofTheravadaBuddhism, had the profoundest influence on enriching the Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due tophonotactic similarities between the languages and the Burmese script's inherent ability to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy.[37] Paliloanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science.[37][non-primary source needed] Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms:
Direct loan: direct import of Pali words with no alteration in orthography
Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by theMon people ofLower 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.[42] Mon loans often relate to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music.[23]
As a natural consequence ofBritish 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:
Direct loan: adoption of an English word, adapted to the Burmese phonology[43]
"democracy": Englishdemocracy → Burmeseဒီမိုကရေစီ
Neologism or calque: translation of an English word using native Burmese constituent words[44]
To a lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words fromSanskrit (religion),Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), andChinese (games and food).[23] Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such asPortuguese.
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 termရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit.'see picture, hear sound') in lieu ofတယ်လီဗီးရှင်း, a direct English transliteration.[46] Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officiallyယာဉ်[jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) butကား[ká] (from Englishcar) 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", formerlyယူနီဗာစတီ[jùnìbàsətì], from Englishuniversity, nowတက္ကသိုလ်[tɛʔkət̪ò], a Pali-derived neologism created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling ofTaxila (တက္ကသီလTakkasīla), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan.[46]
Some Burmese words have many synonyms, each with specific usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. An example is the word "moon", which can beလla̰ (native Tibeto-Burman),စန္ဒာ/စန်း[sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Palicanda 'moon'), orသော်တာ[t̪ɔ̀dà] (Sanskrit).[47]
According toJenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016:15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants ofသ are dental stops (/t̪,d̪/), rather than fricatives (/θ,ð/) or affricates.[50] These phonemes, alongside/sʰ/, are prone to merger with/t,d,s/.[51]
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 markanusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as inတံခါးtankhá 'door', andတံတားtantá 'bridge', or else replaces final-m⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after the OB vowel *u e.g.ငံngam 'salty', သုံးthóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံးsóum '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].
The monophthongs/e/,/o/,/ə/,/ɛ/ and/ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without asyllable coda); the diphthongs/ei/,/ou/,/ai/ and/au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda)./ə/ only occurs in aminor 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/. Thusနှစ်/n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically[n̥ɪʔ] andကြောင်/tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically[tɕàʊ̃].
Burmese is atonal language, which meansphonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of thetone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not onlypitch, but alsophonation, intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. Some linguists consider Burmese apitch-register language likeShanghainese.[52] Spoken Burmese exhibitstone sandhi in the form of a shift from a low to an induced creaky tone, to indicate possession.[18]
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:
Lowခါ/kʰà/ "shake"
Highခါး/kʰá/ "be bitter"
Creakyခ/kʰa̰/ "to wait upon; to attend on"
Checkedခတ်/kʰaʔ/ "to beat; to strike"
In syllables ending with/ɰ̃/, the checked tone is excluded:
Lowခံ/kʰàɰ̃/ "undergo"
Highခန်း/kʰáɰ̃/ "dry up (usually a river)"
Creakyခန့်/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) that encompass a variety of pitches.[54] The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor wrote, "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay."[55][56]
Spoken Burmese exhibitstone 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.[18] For the former, this does not occur in literary Burmese, which uses ၏[ḭ] as postpositional marker for possessive case instead ofရဲ့[jɛ̰]. Examples include:
Thesyllable structure of Burmese is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say theonset consists of a consonant optionally followed by aglide, and therime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in thecoda are/ʔ/ and/ɰ̃/. Some representative words are:
It has only a simple (C) onset (no glide after the consonant)
It must not be the final syllable of the word
TheMon language is attributed with the development of frequentsesquisyllabic reduction in Burmese words, a pattern that does not appear in other Burmic languages.[18] Some examples of words containing minor syllables:
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 anabugida, with all letters having an inherent vowelအa.[a̰] or[ə]. The consonants are arranged intosix consonant groups (calledဝဂ်vag) 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 Burmeseက္လောင်[klɔŋ] →ကျောင်း[tɕã́ʊ̃] in modern Burmese).[57] 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 likeShanghainese and, to a lesser extent,Cantonese.
Written Burmese dates to theearly 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 wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known asparabaiks (ပုရပိုက်).[58]
The basicword order of the Burmese language in syntactic construction issubject-object-verb. Pronouns vary according to the gender and status of the audience and are often omitted. Affixes are used to convey information. Verbs are almost always suffixed and nouns declined.
In Burmese, words do not always clearly fall into a part of speech. Generally, words are split intonominals, verbs, adverbs and markers.[59]
Burmese is anagglutinative language with an extensivecase 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.[60]
The roots of Burmeseverbs almost always have affixes that convey information like tense, aspect, intention, politeness, mood, etc. Many affixes also have formal/literary and colloquial equivalents. In fact, the only case in which no suffix is attached to a verb is in imperative commands.
Burmese does not haveadjectives per se. Rather, it has verbs that carry the meaning "to be X", where X is equivalent to an English adjective.[61] These verbs, called property verbs, can modify a noun by means of the suffixတဲ့tai.[dɛ̰] in colloquial Burmese (literary form:သောsau:[t̪ɔ́]), which is suffixed as follows:
Property verbs may also form acompound with the noun (e.g.လူချောlu hkyau:[lùtɕʰɔ́] 'person' + 'be beautiful') and reduplicated with a verb to form an adverb (e.g.ကောင်ကောင်းသွားkaun kaun thwa:[kàuɰ̃.kàuɰ̃.θwá] meaning "to go well".[62]
Comparatives are usually ordered: X +ထက်ပိုhtak pui[tʰɛʔpò] + adjective, where X is the object being compared to.Superlatives are indicated with the prefixအa.[ʔə] + adjective +ဆုံးhcum:[zṍʊ̃].
Nouns in Burmese are pluralized by suffixingတွေtwe[dwè] (or[twè] if the word ends in a glottal stop) in colloquial Burmese orများmya:[mjà] in formal Burmese. The suffixတို့tou.[to̰], which indicates a group of persons or things, is also suffixed to the modified noun. Unlike in English, mass nouns can be modified with plural markers. An example is below:
The standard word order of quantified words is: quantified noun + numeral adjective + classifier, except inround 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 makes prominent use ofaffixes (calledပစ္စည်း)—wordsaffixed to words to indicate tense, aspect, case, formality etc. Clausal affixes often indicate various notions that do not directly translate to English, like insistence and emphasis. For example, the affixဆို [sʰò] conveys the speaker's attitude to the situation questioning the speaker and can be translated as "didn't you say that...".[63] Affixes also indicate the mood of the clause. For example,စမ်း[sã́] is a suffix used to indicate the imperative mood. Whileလုပ်ပါ ('work' + suffix indicating politeness) does not indicate the imperative,လုပ်စမ်းပါ ('work' + suffix indicating imperative mood + suffix indicating politeness) does.
Some affixes modify the word'spart of speech. Among the most prominent of these is the prefixအ[ə], which is prefixed to verbs to form nouns or adverbs. For instance, the wordဝင် means "to enter", but combined withအ, it means "entrance"အဝင်. Moreover, in colloquial Burmese, there is a tendency to omit the secondအ in words that follow the patternအ + noun/adverb +အ + noun/adverb, likeအဆောက်အအုံ, which is pronounced[əsʰaʊʔú] and formally pronounced[əsʰaʊʔəõ̀ʊ̃].
Burmese exhibitspronoun avoidance. Pronouns are avoided for politeness, with kinship terms, titles, or other forms of address used instead, This is called "negative politeness": speakers avoid directly addressing people. Pronouns account for social distinctions linguistically, reflecting gender, relative age, kinship, social status, and intimacy.[64][65]Burmese kinship terms are commonly substituted for pronouns. For example, an older person may useဒေါ်လေးdau le:[dɔ̀lé] ('aunt') orဦးလေးu: lei:[ʔúlé] ('uncle') to refer to himself, while a younger person may use eitherသားsa:[t̪á] ('son') orသမီးsa.mi:[t̪əmí] ('daughter').
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[ʔəjídʑí] (or[jídʑí])
အရီးလေး[ʔəjílé] (or[jílé])
ဒေါ်ကြီး[dɔ̀dʑí] (or[tɕítɕí])
ဒေါ်လေး[dɔ̀lé]
မိကြီး[mḭdʑí]
မိငယ်[mḭŋɛ̀]
Maternal aunt (older)
Maternal aunt (younger)
ဒေါ်ကြီး[dɔ̀dʑí] (or[tɕítɕí])
ဒေါ်လေး[dɔ̀lé]
Paternal uncle (older)
Paternal uncle (younger)
ဘကြီး[ba̰dʑí]
ဘလေး[ba̰lé]1
ဘကြီး[ba̰dʑí]
ဦးလေး[ʔúlé]
ဖကြီး[pʰa̰dʑí]
ဖငယ်[pʰa̰ŋɛ̀]
Maternal uncle (older)
Maternal uncle (younger)
ဦးကြီး[ʔúdʑí]
ဦးလေး[ʔúlé]
1 The youngest (paternal or maternal) aunt may be calledထွေးလေး[dwélé], and the youngest paternal uncleဘထွေး[ba̰dwé].
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[ɲìma̰]
ညီမ[ɲìma̰]
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 ofညီ ('younger brother to a male') andမောင် ('younger brother to a female'). Terms likeနောင် ('elder brother to a male') andနှမ ('younger sister to a male') now are used in standard Burmese only as part of compound words likeညီနောင် ('brothers') orမောင်နှမ ('brother and sister').
Reduplication is prevalent in Burmese and is used to intensify or weaken property verbs' meanings. For example, ifချော[tɕʰɔ́] "beautiful" is reduplicated, then the intensity of the verb's meaning increases. Many Burmese words, especially verbs with two syllables, such asလှပ[l̥a̰pa̰] "beautiful", when reduplicated (လှပ →လှလှပပ[l̥a̰l̥a̰pa̰pa̰]) becomeadverbs. 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 toအပြည်ပြည်[əpjìpjì], it means "many countries", as inအပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ[əpjìpjìsʰã̀ɪ̃jà] ('international'). Another example isအမျိုး, which means "a kind", but the reduplicated formအမျိုးမျိုး 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')
Burmese digits are traditionally written using a set of numerals unique to theMon–Burmese script, althoughArabic numerals are also used in informal contexts. Thecardinal forms of Burmese numerals are primarily inherited from theProto-Sino-Tibetan language, with some larger numbers like "ten million" borrowed from Sanskrit orPali. Theordinal forms of primary Burmese numerals are directly borrowed from Pali.[69] Ordinal numbers beyond ten are suffixedမြောက် (lit.'to raise').
Burmese numerals follow the nouns they modify, with the exception ofround numbers, which precede the nouns they modify and are subject totone sandhi shifts.
Burmese has no officialromanization system.[citation needed] There have been attempts to make one, but none has succeeded. Replicating Burmese sounds in Latin script is complicated. The Pali-based transcription systemMLC, devised by theMyanmar Language Commission (MLC), transcribes only sounds in formal Burmese and is based on theBurmese alphabet rather than the phonology.
Several colloquial transcription systems have been proposed but none is overwhelmingly preferred.
Transcription of Burmese is not standardized, as seen in the varying English transcriptions of Burmese names. For instance, a Burmese personal name likeဝင်း[wɪ̃́] may be variously romanized as Win, Winn, Wyn, or Wynn, whileခိုင်[kʰã̀ɪ̃] may be romanized as Khaing, Khine, or Khain.
Myanmar3, thede jure standard Burmese keyboard layout
The Burmese alphabet can be entered from a standardQWERTY keyboard and is supported by the Unicode standard, meaning it can be read and written on most modern computers and smartphones.
Burmese hascomplex character rendering requirements, where tone markings and vowel modifications are noted with diacritics. These can be placed before consonants (as withေ), above them (as withိ), or around them (as withြ). These character clusters are built with multiple keystrokes. In particular, the inconsistent placement of diacritics as a feature of the language presents a conflict between an intuitiveWYSIWYG 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 its ubiquitous use harms Myanmar languages, including Burmese, by preventing efficient sorting, searching, processing and analyzing Myanmar text through flexible diacritic ordering.[70]
Zawgyi is notUnicode-compliant, but occupies thesame 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 thede 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.[71] Facebook also supports Zawgyi as an additional language encoding for their app and website.[72] 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 that do not customize software for the local market.
Keyboards with a Zawgyi layout are the most commonly available for purchase domestically.
Until recently,[when?] 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[73] and recent[when?] versions of smartphone soft-keyboards includingGboard and ttKeyboard[74] 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 theMyanmar 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, much research remains to be done on Burmese, specifically for Natural Language Processing (NLP) areas like WordNet, Search Engine, development of parallel corpus for Burmese, and development of a formally standardized and dense domain-specific corpus of Burmese.[75]
The Myanmar government has designated 1 October 2019 as "U-Day" to officially switch to Unicode.[76] The full transition is estimated to take two years.[77]
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in English:[79]
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.
^"Burmese".Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 2019. Archived fromthe original on 2019-08-20.
^"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.
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