The Burmese alphabet ( my, မြန်မာအက္ခရာ ''mranma akkha.ra'', ) is an
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...
used for writing
Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a
Brahmic script
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
, either the
Kadamba or
Pallava alphabet
The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all of the relevant s ...
of
South India
South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...
. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Buddh ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
. In recent decades, other, related alphabets, such as
Shan and
modern Mon, have been restructured according to the standard of the Burmese alphabet (see
Mon–Burmese script
The Mon-Burmese script (မွန်မြန်မာအက္ခရာ)( mnw, အက္ခရ်မန်ဗၟာ, links=no) (also called the Mon script, Old Mon script and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Granth ...
.)
Burmese is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability and to avoid grammar ambiguity. There are several systems of transliteration into the Latin alphabet; for this article, the
MLC Transcription System
The Myanmar Language Commission Transcription System (1980), also known as the MLC Transcription System (MLCTS), is a transliteration system for rendering Burmese in the Latin alphabet. It is loosely based on the common system for romanization of ...
is used.
Alphabet
History
The Burmese alphabet was derived from the
Pyu script
The Pyu script is a writing system used to write the Pyu language, an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was mainly spoken in present-day central Burma. It was based on the Brahmi-based scripts of both north and south India. The best available ...
, the
Old Mon script, or directly from a South Indian script,
[Lieberman 2003: 114] either the
Kadamba or
Pallava alphabet
The Pallava script or Pallava Grantha, is a Brahmic script, named after the Pallava dynasty of South India, attested since the 4th century AD. As epigrapher Arlo Griffiths makes clear, however, the term is misleading as not all of the relevant s ...
.
[ The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984.][Aung-Thwin (2005): 167–178, 197–200] Burmese calligraphy 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
The Arecaceae is a family of perennial flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees. ...
and folded paper known as parabaik
Folding-book manuscripts are a type of writing material historically used in Mainland Southeast Asia, particularly in the areas of present-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. They are known as ''parabaik'' in Burmese,; . ''samut thai'' in Tha ...
s.[ A stylus would rip these leaves when making straight lines.][Lieberman (2003): 136] The alphabet has undergone considerable modification to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language.
Arrangement
As with other Brahmic scripts
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient Ind ...
, the Burmese alphabet is arranged into groups of five letters for stop consonants called ''wek'' (ဝဂ်, from Pali ) based on articulation. Within each group, the first letter is tenuis ("plain"), the second is the aspirated homologue, the third and fourth are the voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refer ...
homologues and the fifth is the nasal homologue. This is true of the first twenty-five letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as ''wek byi'' (ဝဂ်ဗျည်း, from Pali ). The remaining eight letters (, , , , , , , ) are grouped together as ''a wek'' (အဝဂ်, ), as they are not arranged in any particular pattern.
Letters
A letter is a consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
or consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
that occurs before the vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
of a syllable. The Burmese alphabet has 33 letters to indicate the initial consonant of a syllable and four diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s to indicate additional consonants in the onset. Like other abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel n ...
s, including the other members of the Brahmic family
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
, vowels are indicated in Burmese alphabet by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character. A consonant character with no vowel diacritic has the inherent vowel An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. For example, if the Latin alphabet used 'i' as an inherent vowel, "Wikipedia" could be rendered as "W ...
(often reduced to when another syllable follows in the same word).
The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and the way the letter is referred to in Burmese, which may be either a descriptive name or just the sound of the letter, arranged in the traditional order:
*ဃ (), ဈ (), ဋ (), ဌ (), ဍ (), ဎ (), ဏ (), ဓ (), ဘ (), and ဠ () are primarily used in words of Pali origin.
*ၐ () and ၑ () are exclusively used in Sanskrit words, as they have merged to သ in Pali.
*ည has an alternate form ဉ, used with the vowel diacritic ာ as a syllable onset and alone as a final.
*With regard to pronunciation, the corresponding letters of the dentals and alveolars are phonetically equivalent.
*In formal speech, ရ is often pronounced in words of Pali or foreign origin.
*အ is nominally treated as a consonant in the Burmese alphabet; it represents an initial glottal stop in syllables with no other consonant.
*The letter န (''n'') uses a different form when there is a diacritic under it like in နု (''nu.'')
Consonant letters may be modified by one or more medial diacritics (three at most), indicating an additional consonant before the vowel. These diacritics are:
*''Ya pin'' (ယပင့်) - Written ျ (MLCTS ''-y-'', indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant
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).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive an ...
(, , , ))
*''Ya yit'' (ရရစ်) - Written ြ (MLCTS ''-r-'', indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant
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).
Since the velar region of the roof of the mouth is relatively extensive an ...
)
*''Wa hswe'' (ဝဆွဲ) - Written ွ (MLCTS ''-w-'', usually indicating /w/ medial)
*''Ha hto'' (ဟထိုး) - ှ (MLCTS ''h-'', indicating that a sonorant consonant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels are ...
is voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...
)
A few Burmese dialects
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 countr ...
use an extra diacritic to indicate the /l/ medial, which has merged to /j/ in standard Burmese:
*''La hswe'' (လဆွဲ) - Written ္လ (MLCTS ''-l'', indicating /l/ medial
All the possible diacritic combinations are listed below:
Stroke order
Letters in the Burmese alphabet are written with a specific stroke order. The letter forms of the Burmese script are based on circles. Typically, one circle should be done with one stroke, and all circles are written clockwise. Exceptions are mostly letters with an opening on top. The circle of these letters is written with two strokes coming from opposite directions.
The ten following letters are exceptions to the clockwise rule: ပ, ဖ, ဗ, မ, ယ, လ, ဟ, ဃ, ဎ, ဏ. Some versions of stroke order may be slightly different.
The Burmese stroke order can be learned from ပထမတန်း မြန်မာဖတ်စာ ၂၀၁၇-၂၀၁၈ (''Burmese Grade 1, 2017-2018''), a textbook published by the Burmese Ministry of Education. The book is available under the LearnBig project of UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
. Other resources include the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University and an online learning resource published by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.[緬甸語25子音筆順動畫. 新住民語文數位學習教材計畫, Ministry of Education, Taiwan. Retrieved 9 March 2020 from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHG5O5tNcuTL9VsxDe5hd0JBVJnzdlNHD]
Syllable rhymes
Syllable rhyme
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...
s (i.e. vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s and any consonants that may follow them within the same syllable) are indicated in Burmese by a combination of diacritic mark
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s and consonant letters marked with the virama
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit vir ...
character ် which suppresses the inherent vowel An inherent vowel is part of an abugida (or alphasyllabary) script. It is a vowel sound which is used with each unmarked or basic consonant symbol. For example, if the Latin alphabet used 'i' as an inherent vowel, "Wikipedia" could be rendered as "W ...
of the consonant letter. This mark is called ''asat'' in Burmese (, ), which means "nonexistence" (see Sat (Sanskrit)
''Satya'' (Sanskrit: सत्य; IAST: ''satya)'' is a Sanskrit word loosely translated as truth, essence. A. A. Macdonell, ''Sanskrit English Dictionary'', Asian Educational Services, , pp. 330–331 It also refers to a virtue in Indian relig ...
).
Diacritics and symbols
One or more of these accents can be added to a consonant to change its sound. In addition, other modifying symbols are used to differentiate tone and sound, but are not considered diacritics.
History
''La hswe'' (လဆွဲ) used in old Burmese from the Bagan to Innwa periods (12th century - 16th century), and could be combined with other diacritics (''ya pin'', ''ha hto'' and ''wa hswe'') to form ္လျ ္လွ ္လှ.[Herbert et al (1989): 5–2][MLC (1993)] Similarly, until the Innwa period, ''ya pin'' was also combined with ''ya yit'' to form ျြ. From the early Bagan period to the 19th century, ဝ် was used instead of ော် for the rhyme Early Burmese writing also used ဟ်, not the high tone marker း, which came into being in the 16th century. Moreover, အ်, which disappeared by the 16th century, was subscripted to represent creaky tone (now indicated with ့). During the early Bagan period, the rhyme (now represented with the diacritic ဲ) was represented with ါယ်). The diacritic combination ိုဝ် disappeared in the mid-1750s (typically designated as Middle Burmese), having been replaced with the ို combination, introduced in 1638. The standard tone markings found in modern Burmese can be traced to the 19th century.
Stacked consonants
Certain sequences of consonants are written one atop the other, or ''stacked''. A pair of stacked consonants indicates that no vowel is pronounced between them, as for example the ''m-bh'' in ကမ္ဘာ ''kambha'' "world". This is equivalent to using a ''virama
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit vir ...
'' ် on the first consonant (in this case, the ''m''); if the ''m'' and ''bh'' were not stacked, the inherent vowel ''a'' would be assumed (*ကမဘာ ''kamabha''). As Stacked consonants are always homorganic (pronounced in the same place in the mouth), which is indicated by the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet into five-letter rows of letters called ဝဂ်. Consonants not found in a row beginning with ''k, c, t,'' or ''p'' can only be doubled – that is, stacked with themselves.
When stacked, the first consonant (the final of the preceding syllable, in this case ''m'') is written as usual, while the second consonant (the onset of the following syllable, in this case ''bh'') is subscripted beneath it.
Stacked consonants are largely confined to loan word
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
s from languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for "self" (via Pali ) is spelt အတ္တ, not *အတ်တ, although both would be read the same. Stacked consonants are generally not found in native Burmese words, with a major exception being abbreviation. For example, the Burmese word သမီး "daughter" is sometimes abbreviated to သ္မီး, even though the stacked consonants do not belong to the same row and a vowel is pronounced between. Similarly, လက်ဖက် "tea" is commonly abbreviated to လ္ဘက်. Also, ''ss'' is written ဿ, not သ္သ.
Digits
A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as Hindu–Arabic numeral
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers such as ...
s.
The digits from zero to nine are: ၀၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉ (Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
1040 to 1049). The number 1945 would be written as ၁၉၄၅. Separators, such as commas, are not used to group numbers.
Punctuation
There are two primary break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes: ၊ (called ပုဒ်ဖြတ်, ပုဒ်ကလေး, ပုဒ်ထီး, or တစ်ချောင်းပုဒ်) and ။ (called ပုဒ်ကြီး, ပုဒ်မ, or နှစ်ချောင်းပုဒ်), which respectively act as a comma and a full stop. There is a Shan exclamation mark ႟. Other abbreviations used in literary Burmese are:
* ၏ — used as a full stop if the sentence immediately ends with a verb.
-possessive particle( 's, of)
* ၍ — used as a conjunction
Conjunction may refer to:
* Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech
* Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator
** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic
* Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies ...
.
* ၌ — locative ('at').
* ၎င်း — ditto (used in columns and lists)
See also
* Romanization of Burmese
Romanization of the Burmese alphabet is representation of the Burmese language or Burmese names in the Latin alphabet.
Official transcription systems
The MLC romanization system (1980) is promoted inside Myanmar. Inside and outside Myanmar severa ...
* Mon–Burmese script
The Mon-Burmese script (မွန်မြန်မာအက္ခရာ)( mnw, အက္ခရ်မန်ဗၟာ, links=no) (also called the Mon script, Old Mon script and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Granth ...
* Burmese Braille
Burmese Braille is the braille alphabet of languages of Burma written in the Burmese script, including Burmese and Karen. Letters that may not seem at first glance to correspond to international norms are more recognizable when traditional rom ...
* Burmese respelling of the English alphabet
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*Hosken, Martin. (2012)
"Representing Myanmar in Unicode: Details and Examples"
(ver. 4). ''Unicode Technical Note 11''.
*
* Sawada, Hideo. (2013)
"Some Properties of Burmese Script"
Presented at the ''23rd Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (SEALS23)'', Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.
External links
at Omniglot
Myanmar Unicode Character Picker
Myanmar Unicode Implementation Public Awareness
Myanmar3 keyboard layout
myWin2.2
ALA-LC romanization system for Burmese
BGN/PCGN romanization system for Burmese
Myanmar Language SIG
Myanmar Word Segmentation using Syllable level Longest Matching
Myanmar-English dictionary
Burmese fonts guide 2017. Using Burmese fonts on a computer
Fonts supporting Burmese characters
* Burmese Wikipedia:Font page
Burmese Unicode & NLP Research Centre
Parabaik Myanmar Unicode Project GPLed and OFLed
Ayar Myanmar online dictionary and download
Download KaNaungConverter_Window_Build200508.zip from the Kanaung project page and UnzipKa Naung Converter Engine
*http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/myanmar/
Padauk
- Free Burmese Unicode font distributed by SIL International
U.N.O.B. USA
has separate download links for Zawgyi font
Zawgyi font is a predominant typeface used for Burmese language text on websites. It is also known as Zawgyi-One or zawgyi1 font although updated versions of this font were not named Zawgyi-two. Prior to 2019, it was the most popular font on Bur ...
for Windows, MAC-Apple, and iPhone/iPad.
Font сonverters
A Guide to Using Myanmar Unicode: Convert from old Myanmar fonts to Unicode
Zawgyi Unicode Converter , Myanmar Tools - Open Source Zawgyi-One & Standard Myanmar Unicode Converter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burmese Script
Brahmic scripts
Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
Writing systems without word boundaries
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...