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Languages Of Myanmar
There are approximately a hundred languages spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma). Burmese language, Myanmar, spoken by two-thirds of the population, is the official language. Languages spoken by ethnic minorities represent six language families: Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic languages, Austro-Asiatic, Kra–Dai languages, Tai–Kadai, Indo-European languages, Indo-European, Austronesian languages, Austronesian and Hmong–Mien languages, Hmong–Mien, as well as an incipient national standard for Burmese sign language. Burmese Burmese is the First language, native language of the Bamar people and related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar, as well as that of some ethnic minorities in Burma like the Mon people, Mon. In 2007, Burmese was spoken by 33 million people as a first language.Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in ''Nationalencyklopedin'' Burmese is spoken as a second language by anot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burmese Language
Burmese ( my, မြန်မာဘာသာ, MLCTS: ''mranmabhasa'', IPA: ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma), where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the country's principal ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Chittagong Hill Tracts (Rangamati, Bandarban, Khagrachari, Cox's Bazar) in Bangladesh, Tripura state in Northeast India. Although the Constitution of Myanmar officially recognizes the English name of the language as the Myanmar language, most English speakers continue to refer to the language as ''Burmese'', after Burma, the country's once previous and currently co-official name. Burmese is the common lingua franca in Myanmar, as the most widely-spoken language in the country. In 2007, it was spoken as a first language by 33 million, primarily the Burman people and related ethnic groups, and as a second language by 10 million, particularly ethnic mino ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mon People
The Mon ( mnw, ဂကူမည်; my, မွန်လူမျိုး, ; th, มอญ, ) are an ethnic group who inhabit Lower Myanmar's Mon State, Kayin State, Kayah State, Tanintharyi Region, Bago Region, the Irrawaddy Delta, and several areas in Thailand (mostly in Pathum Thani province, Phra Pradaeng and Nong Ya Plong). There are also small numbers of Mon people in West Garo Hills, calling themselves Man or Mann, who also came from Myanmar to Assam, ultimately residing in Garo Hills. The native language is Mon, which belongs to the Monic branch of the Mon-Khmer language family and shares a common origin with the Nyah Kur language, which is spoken by the people of the same name that live in Northeastern Thailand. A number of languages in Mainland Southeast Asia are influenced by the Mon language, which is also in turn influenced by those languages. The Mon were one of the earliest to reside in Southeast Asia, and were responsible for the spread of Theravada Bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bamar People
The Bamar (, ; also known as the Burmans) are a Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan ethnic group native to Myanmar (formerly Burma) in Southeast Asia. With approximately 35 million people, the Bamar make up the largest ethnic group in Myanmar, constituting 68% of the country's population. The geographic homeland of the Bamar is the Irrawaddy River, Irrawaddy River basin. Burmese language, Burmese is the native language of the Bamar, as well as the national language and lingua franca of Myanmar. Ethnonyms In the Burmese language, Bamar (ဗမာ, also transcribed Bama) and Myanmar (မြန်မာ, also transliterated Mranma and transcribed Myanma) have historically been interchangeable Endonym and exonym, endonyms. Burmese is a Diglossia, diglossic language; "Bamar" is the diglossic low form of "Myanmar," which is the diglossic high equivalent. The term "Myanmar" is extant to the early 1100s, first appearing on a stone inscription, where it was used as a cultural identi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
First Language
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers to the language or dialect of one's ethnic group rather than one's first language. The first language of a child is part of that child's personal, social and cultural identity. Another impact of the first language is that it brings about the reflection and learning of successful social patterns of acting and speaking. Research suggests that while a non-native speaker may develop fluency in a targeted language after about two years of immersion, it can take between five and seven years for that child to be on the same working level as their native speaking counterparts. On 17 November 1999, UNESCO designated 21 February as International Mother Language Day. Definitions One of the more widely accepted definitions of native sp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hmong–Mien Languages
The Hmong–Mien languages (also known as Miao–Yao and rarely as Yangtzean) are a highly tonal language family of southern China and northern Southeast Asia. They are spoken in mountainous areas of southern China, including Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Hubei provinces; the speakers of these languages are predominantly "hill people", in contrast to the neighboring Han Chinese, who have settled the more fertile river valleys. Relationships Hmong (Miao) and Mien (Yao) are closely related, but clearly distinct. For internal classifications, see Hmongic languages and Mienic languages. The largest differences are due to divergent developments in their phonological systems. The Hmongic languages appear to have kept the large set of initial consonants featured in the protolanguage but greatly reduced the distinctions in the syllable finals, in particular losing all glides and stop codas. The Mienic languages, on the other hand, have largely preserved syllable finals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indo-European Languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, and Spanish, have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic; and another nine subdivisions that are now extinct. Today, the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Hindi–Urdu, Spanish, Bengali, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kra–Dai Languages
The Kra–Dai languages (also known as Tai–Kadai and Daic) are a language family in Mainland Southeast Asia, Southern China and Northeast India. All languages in the family are tonal languages, including Thai and Lao, the national languages of Thailand and Laos respectively. Around 93 million people speak Kra–Dai languages, 60% of whom speak Thai. ''Ethnologue'' lists 95 languages in the family, with 62 of these being in the Tai branch. Names The name "Kra–Dai" was proposed by Weera Ostapirat (2000), as Kra and Dai are the reconstructed autonyms of the Kra and Tai branches respectively. "Kra–Dai" has since been used by the majority of specialists working on Southeast Asian linguistics, including Norquest (2007), Pittayaporn (2009),Pittayaporn, Pittayawat. 2009. The phonology of Proto-Tai. Ph.D. Thesis, Cornell UniversityPeter Jenks and Pittayawat PittayapornKra-Dai Languages Oxford Bibliographies in "Linguistics", Ed. Mark Aranoff. New York: Oxford University Press. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sino-Tibetan Languages
Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese (33 million) and the Tibetic languages (6 million). Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented. Several low-level subgroups have been securely reconstructed, but reconstruction of a proto-language for the family as a whole is still at an early stage, so the higher-level structure of Sino-Tibetan remains unclear. Although the family is traditionally presented as divided into Sinitic (i.e. Chinese) and Tibeto-Burman branches, a common origin of the non-Sinitic languages has n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language Families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists therefore describe the ''daughter languages'' within a language family as being ''genetically related''. According to ''Ethnologue'' there are 7,151 living human languages distributed in 142 different language families. A living language is defined as one that is the first language of at least one person. The language families with the most speakers are: the Indo-European family, with many widely spoken languages native to Europe (such as English and Spanish) and South Asia (such as Hindi and Bengali); and the Sino-Tibetan fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
