Burmese (written Burmese) (spoken Burmese)
Pronunciation:	[mjàNmàsà]
Spoken in:	Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Laos and Singapore
Total speakers:	First language: 32 million Second language: 10 million
Ranking:	34
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan  Tibeto-Burman   Lolo-Burmese    Burmish     Southern      Burmese
Writing system:	Burmese abugida
Official status
Official language of:	Myanmar
Regulated by:	Myanmar Language Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	my
ISO 639-2:	bur (B)	mya (T)
ISO 639-3:	mya
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar. Although the government officially recognises the language as Myanmar, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the mother tongue of the Bamar, Rakhine, and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar. Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman languages, which is a subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. It is spoken by 32 million as a first language, and as a second language by minorities in Myanmar. Burmese is a tonal and analytic language. The language utilises the Burmese script, which derives from the Mon script and ultimately from the Brāhmī script. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... This is a list of languages placed in order by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Sino-Tibetan languages form a putative language family composed of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. ... The Tibeto-Burman family of languages (often considered a sub-group of the Sino-Tibetan language family) is spoken in various central and south Asian countries, including Myanmar (Burma), northern Thailand, and parts of Western China (Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai (Amdo), Gansu, Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hunan), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal... Writing systems of the world today. ... Myazedi (Yazakuma) Stone Instription The oldest surviving Burmese inscription, written in Burmese, Pyu, Mon, and Pali, it is the story of Prince Yazakuma. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Image File history File links Example. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... First language (native language, mother tongue, or vernacular) is the language a person learns first. ... The Bamar (Burmese: ; MLCTS: ; IPA: , also called Burman), are the dominant ethnic group of Myanmar, constituting approximately 68% (30,000,000) of the population. ... The Rakhine people (Burmese: ; formerly Arakanese) are a sub-ethnic group of the Bamar. ... The Tibeto-Burman linguistic subfamily of the proposed Sino-Tibetan language family is spoken in various central and south Asian countries: Myanmar (Burmese language), Tibet (Tibetan language), northern Thailand (Mong language), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and the Ladakh region of... The Sino-Tibetan languages form a putative language family composed of Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... An isolating language is a language in which the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged words. By contrast, in a synthetic language, a word is composed of agglutinated or fused morphemes that denote its syntactic meanings. ... This article or section uses Burmese characters which may be rendered incorrectly. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ...

Names of the language

Burmese has two words for "language": စာ ca [sà] refers to written language, and စကား ca.ka: [zəgá] refers to spoken language. There are therefore two names for Burmese: mranma ca means "written Burmese", while mranma ca.ka: means "spoken Burmese". The မ္ရန္‌မာ mranma portion of these names may be pronounced [mjàNmà] or, more colloquially, [bəmà]. The Burmese saying "the pronunciation is merely the sound, whilst the orthography is correct" (ဖတ္‌တော့အသံ၊ရေးတော့အမ္ဟန္‌။ [pʰaʔ dɔ̰ əθàn jé dɔ̰ əm̥àn]) reflects upon the differences between spoken and written Burmese, as spelling is often not an accurate reflection of pronunciation. Image File history File links MyanmaSa. ... Image File history File links Mranmacaka. ...

Dialects and accents

The standard dialect of Burmese comes from Yangon, because of its media influence, but there are several distinctive dialects in Upper Myanmar and Lower Myanmar. Dialects include Merguese, Yaw, Palaw, Beik (Myeik), and Dawei (Tavoyan). The most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its use of the pronoun က္ယ္ဝန္‌တော‌‌္‌ (kya. nau [tʃənɔ̀]) for both males and females, whereas in Yangon, က္ယ္ဝန္‌မ (kya. ma. [tʃəma̰]) refers to females. The Rakhine dialect (Arakanese) is most reminiscent of archaic Burmese, especially in its usage of the [r] sound, which has become a [j] sound in standard Burmese. Dialects in Tanintharyi Division (such as Beik) often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop. The Dawei dialect has preserved the [-l-] medial, which is only found in Old Burmese transcriptions. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among the dialects. Myazedi (Yazakuma) Stone Instription The oldest surviving Burmese inscription, written in Burmese, Pyu, Mon, and Pali, it is the story of Prince Yazakuma. ... Graphite is a programmable Unicode-compliant smart-font rendering system developed by SIL International. ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... Yangon (Burmese: , population 5,000,000 (nearly) (2007 census), formerly Rangoon, is the largest city and former capital of Myanmar (previously known as Burma, prior to 1989). ... Mandalay (Burmese: ) is the second largest city in Myanmar (formerly Burma) with a population of 927,000 (2005 census), agglomeration 2,5 million. ... Tanintharyi Division, better known by the old name Tenasserim, is a division of Myanmar, covering the long narrow southern part of the country on the Kra Isthmus. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Burmese is classified into two categories. One is formal, which is used in literary works, official publications, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches. The other is colloquial, which is used in daily conversation. There are various branches of the colloquial form as well. One form is used when speaking to elders and teachers. Different pronouns referring to oneself (such as the usage of က္ယ္ဝန္‌တော‌‌္‌ or က္ယ္ဝန္‌မ) are used. When speaking to a person of the same status or of younger age, ငာ (nga [ŋà]) is used. When speaking to a monk, a person must refer to the monk as poun-poun and to himself as ဒဂာ (da. ga [dəgà]). Burmese monks may speak to fellow monks using Pāli, and it is expected of faithful Burmese Buddhists to have a basic knowledge of Pāli. A Buddhist Monk in Sri Lanka In Pāli, a bhikkhu (male) or bhikkhuni (female) is a fully ordained Buddhist monk. ... Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ... Buddhism in Myanmar belongs to the Theravada tradition or the southern school. ...

Diglossia

Diglossia occurs to a large extent in Burmese. The discrepancy is quite large, and many linguists consider formal Burmese to be a separate language from colloquial Burmese. The written and prestige form of Burmese has undergone only a few changes and tends not to accommodate the colloquial phonology of standard Burmese today. In addition, different particles (to modify nouns and verbs) are used in the prestige form than in the spoken form. Literate Burmese speakers are able to intuitively interpret ancient Burmese despite transcriptions that date many centuries due innate pronunciation rules. For example, ၌ (hnai.), which serves as a postposition after nouns is only used in formal Burmese, and is မ္ဟာ (hma) in colloquial Burmese. Look up Diglossia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ...

Despite the large differences, Burmese speakers rarely distinguish formal and colloquial Burmese as separate languages, but rather as two parts of the same language.

Many have contended that a newer system of orthography for Burmese be created (one based on phonology), to accommodate such differences. In addition, some Burmese linguists have proposed to shift away from formal Burmese, as seen in the gradual changes in form on television broadcasts. However, formal Burmese remains well-established in Burmese. Another obstacle in reforming Burmese orthography are conservative Burmese dialects (that retain older pronunciations more similar to formal Burmese), which primarily come from coastal areas. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ... Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... The West Coast of New Zealand The coast is defined as the part of the land adjoining or near the ocean. ...

Romanisation and transcription

Main article: MLC Transcription System

There is no official romanisation 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 Pāli-based transcription system in existence, which was devised by the Myanma 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. This article or section uses Burmese characters which may be rendered incorrectly. ... A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ... Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ...

Transcription of Burmese is not standardised, as seen in the varying English transcriptions of Burmese place names.

Script

Main article: Burmese script

The Burmese script is characterised by its circular letters and diacritics. It is an abugida, with all letters having an inherent vowel အ (a. [a̰] or [ə]). Tone markings are in the form of diacritics placed to the left, right, top, and bottom of letters, but are not always indicative of the proper tone. Likewise, written Burmese has preserved all nasalised finals ([-n, m, -ŋ]), which have merged to [-n] 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 mergings are seen in other languages, including Shanghainese, and to a lesser extent, Cantonese. This article or section uses Burmese characters which may be rendered incorrectly. ... An inscription of Swampy Cree using Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, an abugida developed by Christian missionaries for Aboriginal Canadian languages An abugida, alphasyllabary, or syllabics is a writing system in which consonant signs (graphemes) are inherently associated with a following vowel. ... Shanghainese (上海言话 [] in Shanghainese), sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai. ... Standard Cantonese is a variant, and is generally considered the prestige dialect of Cantonese Chinese. ...

Evidence of written Burmese dates to the early 1100s, from the Myazedi stone inscription (written 1113), which was a story written about Prince Yazukuma in Pyu, Mon, Pali, and Burmese. During the reign of King Anawrahta, the Mon script, which descended from the Brāhmī script, was adopted for transcribing Burmese. Many changes to suit the phonology of Burmese were made. Standardised tone marking was not achieved until the 1700s. Much of the orthography in written Burmese today can be traced back to middle Burmese, which had a wider range of finals. However, during colonial rule under the British, spelling was standardised through dictionaries and spellers. Centuries: 11th century - 12th century - 13th century Decades: 1050s 1060s 1070s 1080s 1090s - 1100s - 1110s 1120s 1130s 1140s 1150s Years: 1100 1101 1102 1103 1104 1105 1106 1107 1108 1109 Events and Trends 1107 Emperor Toba ascends the throne of Japan The great Buddhist centre of learning at Nalanda is... Pyu (also written Pyuu, or Pyus) refers to an ancient kingdom (and its language) found in the central and northern regions of what is now Burma. ... The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken in Myanmar and Thailand. ... Pali (IAST: ) is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ... Anawrahta (Burmese: ; IPA: ; reigned 1044-1077), also spelled Aniruddha or Anoarahtâ or Anoa-ra-htá-soa, was a ruler of the kingdom of Bagan and the first ruler of a unified Burma. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ... Events and trends The Bonneville Slide blocks the Columbia River near the site of present-day Cascade Locks, Oregon with a land bridge 200 feet (60 m) high. ...

Phonology

The transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ...

Consonants

The consonants of Burmese are as follows:

The approximant /r/ is rare, and is only used in place names that have preserved Sanskrit or Pali pronunciations (e.g. Amarapura, which is pronounced [àməra̰pùra̰]) and in English-derived words. Historically, /r/ became /j/ in Burmese, and is usually replaced by /j/ in Pāli loanwords, e.g. ရဟန္တာ (ra.hanta) /jəhàNdà/ "monk", ရာဇ (raja.) /jàza̰/. Occasionally it is replaced with /l/, as in the case of the Pali-derived word for "animal" တိရစ္ဆာန္‌ (ti.rac hcan), which can be pronounced [təreiʔ sʰàn] or [təleiʔ sʰàn]. Likewise, /ʍ/ is rare, having disappeared from modern Burmese, except in transcriptions of foreign names. [ð] is uncommon, except as a voiced allophone of /θ/. In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the superior teeth. ... Postalveolar (or palato-alveolar) consonants are consonants articulated with the tip of the tongue between the alveolar ridge (the place of articulation for alveolar consonants) and the palate (the place of articulation for palatal consonants). ... Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ... A labiovelar consonant is a consonant made with two blockages, one at the lips (labial) and the other at the soft palate (velar). ... Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. ... A stop or plosive or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. ... Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... Laterals are L-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. ... In geography and cartography, a toponym is a place name, a geographical name, a proper name of locality, region, or some other part of Earths surface or its natural or artificial feature. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Pali (IAST: ) is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ... Amarapura (City of Immortality) is a city in the Mandalay division of Myanmar, situated 11 km to the south of Mandalay. ... A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

The phones /pʰ, p/ are often pronounced as /b/, /kʰ, k/ as /g/, /tʃʰ, tʃ/ as /dʒ/, and /sʰ, s/ as /z/ in compound words. /dʒ/, when following a nasalised final can become a /j/ sound. For example, "blouse" (အင္က္ယီ ang kyi) can be pronounced /èiNdʒí/ or /èiNjí/. However, this effect only occurs in compound words. In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme. ...

The placeless nasal /N/ is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a nasal homorganic to the following consonant; thus /mòuNdáiN/ "storm" is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ]. In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... Sagittal section of nose mouth, pharynx, and larynx. ...

Vowels

The vowels of Burmese are: Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

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). A monophthong (in Greek μονόφθογγος = single note) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

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. There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example; the phonetic descriptions are from Wheatley (1987) This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... It has been suggested that Tonal language be merged into this article or section. ... Pitch is the perceived fundamental frequency of a sound. ... In phonetics, phonation is the use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ...

For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone: In phonetics, phonation is the use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Breathy voice or murmured voice is a phonation in which the vocal folds are vibrating as in normal voicing, but the glottal closure is incomplete, so that the voicing is somewhat inefficient and air continues to leak between the vocal folds throughout the vibration cycle with audible friction noise. ... Tenseness is a term used in phonology to describe a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. ... Creaky voice (also called laryngealisation, pulse phonation or, in singing, vocal fry or glottal fry), is a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together; as a result, the vocal folds are compressed rather tightly, becoming relatively slack and compact, and forming a... The glottal stop or voiceless glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in many spoken languages. ... In linguistics, citation form is the way a word is prononunced when it is spoken carefully and in isolation, such as when reading a list of words. ...

• Low /kʰà/ 'shake'
• High /kʰá/ 'be bitter'
• Creaky /kʰa̰/ 'fee'
• Checked /kʰaʔ/ 'draw off'

In syllables ending with /N/, the Checked tone is excluded:

• Low /kʰàN/ 'undergo'
• High /kʰáN/ 'dry up'
• Creaky /kʰa̰N/ 'appoint'

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 rhyme 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 /N/. Some representative words are: A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... In phonetics and phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a syllable that precedes the syllable nucleus. ... Semivowels (also glides, more rarely: semiconsonants) are non-syllabic vowels that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels. ... In the study of phonology in linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

• CV /mè/ 'girl'
• CVC /mɛʔ/ 'crave'
• CGV /mjè/ 'earth'
• CGVC /mjɛʔ/ 'eye'
• CVVC /màuN/ (term of address for young men)
• CGVVC /mjáuN/ 'ditch'

A syllable whose vowel is /ə/ has some restrictions:

• 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 the final syllable of the word

Some examples of words containing /ə/-syllables:

• /kʰə.louʔ/ 'knob'
• /pə.lwè/ 'flute'
• /θə.jɔ̀/ 'mock'
• /kə.lɛʔ/ 'be wanton'
• /tʰə.mə.jè/ 'rice-water'

Grammar

The word order of the Burmese language is subject-object-verb. The only exception to this rule is the verb 'to be', က (kà. [ga̰]), which is placed directly after the subject. Pronouns in Burmese vary according to the gender and status of the audience. Burmese is monosyllabic, that is, every word is a root to which a particle but not another word may be prefixed (Ko, 1924, p viii). Sentence structure determines syntactical relations, and verbs are not conjugated but have particles suffixed to them. For example, the verb 'to eat' is စား (ca: [sà]), and remains the same. In linguistic typology, word order is the order in which words appear in sentences. ... According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the other being its predicate. ... An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of speech that is made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with one or more optional phones (single sounds or phonetic segments). Syllables are often considered the phonological building blocks of words. ...

Adjectives

Adjectives may precede a noun (e.g. ေခ္ယာတဲ့လူ hkyau: tai. lu [tʃʰɔ́ dɛ̰ lù] "beautiful" + တဲ့ + "person") or follow a noun (e.g. လူ​ေခ္ယာ lu hkyau: [lù tʃʰɔ́] "person" + "beautiful"). Superlatives are usually indicated with the prefix အ (a. [ʔə]) + adj. + ဆုံး (hcum: [zóuN]). Numeric adjectives follow the noun. In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... For the noun case, see superlative case. ...

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. In fact, the only time in which no particle is attached to a verb is in 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. A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

The most commonly used verb particles and their usage are shown below with the verb root စား (ca: [sá]) which means "eat".

• စားတယ္ (ca: tai [sá dɛ̀]) - I eat

The suffix တယ္ tai [dɛ̀] can be viewed as a particle marking the present tense and/or a factual statement.

• စားခဲ့တယ္ (ca: hkai. tai [sá gɛ̰ dɛ̀]) - I ate

The suffix ခဲ့ (hkai. [gɛ̰]) 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 emphasise that the action happened before another event that is also currently being discussed, the particle becomes imperative. Note that the suffix တယ္ (tai [dɛ̀]) in this case denotes a factual statement rather than the present tense.

• စား​ေနတယ္ (ca: ne tai [sá nè dɛ̀]) - I am eating

ေန (ne [nè]) is a particle used to denote that the action is in progression, and is equivalent to the English '-ing'.

• (စ)စားပ္ရီ ((ca.) ca: pri [(sə) sá bjì]) - I am eating (now)

This particle or tense has no equivalence in English. It is used when an action which another person or persons expected to be performed by the subject is finally being performed. So in the above example, if someone had been expecting you to eat and you have finally started eating, the particle ပ္ရီ (pri [bjì]) is used.

• စားမယ္ (ca: mai [sá mɛ̀]) - I will eat

This particle is used to indicate the future tense or an action which is yet to be performed.

• စား​ေတာ့မယ္ (ca: tau. mai [sá dɔ̰ mɛ̀]) - I will eat (straight-away)

The particle ေတာ့ (tau. [dɔ̰]) is used when the action is about to be performed immediately. Therefore it could be termed as the "immediate future tense particle". The particle မယ္ (mai mɛ̀]) is still imperative in this case.

Nouns

Nouns in Burmese are pluralised by the addition of the suffix ေတ္ဝ (twe [dè] or [tè] if the word ends in a glottal stop). The suffix မ္ယား mya [mjà] (or nè, which means "few") is also used, which by itself means "many". The suffix day, which also pluralises nouns, is only used colloquially and mya is used literally and formally. In English, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ...

• န္ဝား (nwa: [nwà]) - cow
• န္ဝားမ္ယား (nwa: mya: [nwà mjà]) - cows
• မ္ရစ္ (mrac [mjiʔ]) - river
• မ္ရစ္‌မ္ယား (mrac mya: [mjiʔ mjà]) - rivers

The plural suffix however is not used when the noun is quantified by being counted.

• ခလေး၅ေယာက္ (hka.le: nga: yauk [kʰəlé ŋà jauʔ]) is in the order ခလေး "child" + ၅ "five" + ေယာက္ (classifier), which is equivalent to "five children".

Numerical classifiers

Burmese, just as in neighbouring languages such as Thai, Bengali, and Chinese, uses nominal classifiers when nouns are being counted or quantified. This approximately equates to English expressions such as "two slices of bread" or "a cup of coffee". In the above example, yauk is the classifier used when referring to people. Classifiers are imperative when counting nouns, so ခလေး၅ (hka.le: nga: [kʰəlé ŋà] literally "children five") is ungrammatical. There are many classifiers in Burmese, and some of the most commonly used ones are shown below. Bengali or Bangla (IPA: ) is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit, Pāli and Sanskrit languages. ...

Pronouns

Subject pronouns begin sentences. In the imperative forms, the subject is omitted. There are certain pronouns used for different audiences. Object pronouns must have a -go attached immediately after the pronoun. Proper nouns are often substituted for pronouns. In addition, nga and nein are rarely used. One's status (wa) in relation to the audience determines the pronouns used. The basic pronouns are: In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ...

​​​| တပည္‌့​ေတာ္
တပည္‌့​ေတာ္|| ta. pany. tau
ta. pany. tau ma. || [dəbɛ̀dɔ̀]
[dəbɛ̀dɔ̀ma̰]|| I/me || Formal, used while speaking to a monk or nun (lit. "disciple") exclusively

Reduplication

Reduplication is prevalent in colloquial Burmese, and is used to intensify or weaken adjectives' meanings. For example, ေခ္ယာ (hkyau: [tʃʰɔ́]), which means "beautiful" is reduplicated, the intensity of the adjective's meaning increases. Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ...

Vocabulary

The majority of Burmese vocabulary is of Tibeto-Burman stock. However, the Burmese language has been influenced by Pali, English, and Mon, and to a lesser extent, by Chinese, Sanskrit and Hindi. Pali loan words are often related to religion, government, arts, and science. Loan words from English are often related to technology, measurements and modern institutions. However, there are some loan words from Sanskrit, Chinese, and Hindi, but they are found less abundantly in Burmese. Mon has heavily influenced Burmese, and many loan words have become so well incorporated in the Burmese language that they are not distinguished as loan words. Burmese language also has many synonyms of the same word, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example is the word "moon", which can be sanda or san (both Pali derivatives of chanda), la or thaw-da (from Sanskrit). The Tibeto-Burman linguistic subfamily of the proposed Sino-Tibetan language family is spoken in various central and south Asian countries: Myanmar (Burmese language), Tibet (Tibetan language), northern Thailand (Mong language), Nepal, Bhutan, India (Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and the Ladakh region of... Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ... A loanword (or a borrowing) is a word taken in by one language from another. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Hindi ( , Devanagari: or , IAST: , IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union along with English. ... The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken in Myanmar and Thailand. ...

The following are examples of loan words found in Burmese from various languages:

• suffering: ဒုက္ခ ([doʔkʰa̰]), which comes from Pāli dukkha
• eggroll: ကော္‌ပ္ရန္‌့ ([kɔ̀pja̰n]), which comes from Hokkien 潤餅 (jūn-piáⁿ)
• wife: ဇနီး ([zəní]), which comes from Hindi jani
• radio: ရေဒီယုိ ([rèdìyò]), which comes from English "radio"
• dish: ပန္‌းကန္‌ ([bəgàn]), which comes from Mon
• noodle: ခောက္‌ဆ္ဝဲ ([kʰaʊʔ sʰwé), which comes from Shan khauk suing

Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ... Hokkien is a Min nan word corresponding to Standard Mandarin Fujian. It can refer to: Min Nan, a Chinese language/dialect, also called Minnan, Min Nan or Minnanyu (meaning Southern Fujian). ... Hindi ( , Devanagari: or , IAST: , IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is the official language of the Union along with English. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken in Myanmar and Thailand. ... The Shan language is related to the Thai language and is commonly called Tai-Yai, or Tai Long. ...

References

• Becker, Alton L. (1984). "Biography of a sentence: A Burmese proverb.", in In E. M. Bruner (ed.): Text, play, and story: The construction and reconstruction of self and society. Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society, 135–55. 
• Bernot, Denise (1980). Le prédicat en birman parlé (in French). Paris: SELAF. ISBN 2-85297-072-4. 
• Cornyn, William Stewart; D. Haigh Roop (1944). Outline of Burmese grammar. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America. 
• Cornyn, William Stewart; D. Haigh Roop (1968). Beginning Burmese. New Haven: Yale University Press. 
• Green, Antony D. (2005). "Word, foot, and syllable structure in Burmese.", in In J. Watkins (ed.): Studies in Burmese linguistics. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 1–25. ISBN 0-85883-559-2. 
• Okell, John (1969). A reference grammar of colloquial Burmese. London: Oxford University Press. 
• Roop, D. Haigh (1972). An introduction to the Burmese writing system. New Haven: Yale University Press. 
• Taw Sein Ko (1924). Elementary handbook of the Burmese language. Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press. 
• Watkins, Justin W. (2001). "Illustrations of the IPA: Burmese". Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31 (2): 291–95. 
• Wheatley, Julian K. (1987). "Burmese.", in In B. Comrie (ed.): Handbook of the world's major languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 834–54. ISBN 0-19-520521-9. 
• (1989) in Patricia M Herbert, Anthony Milner: South East Asia Languages and Literatures: Languages and Literatures: A Select Guide. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1267-0. 

This article is about the University of Hawaii system. ...

External links

Burmese language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Burmese language at Ethnologue
• Online Burmese lessons
• Omniglot: Burmese Language
• Burmese language resources from SOAS
• Myanmar NLP Research Center [1]
• Myanmar NLP Team Blogs [2]
• MyMyanmar Projects - Myanmar (Burmese) Language Research and Developments for Technologies [3]
• Online Burmese Bible
• Myanmar Character Picker