Middle Burmese was a form of the
Burmese language spoken from the 16th century to the 18th century. Its beginning roughly corresponds with the rise of the
Taungoo Dynasty and its transition to Modern Burmese with the beginning of the
Konbaung Dynasty. Its transition to
Modern Burmese occurred in the 18th century.
Middle Burmese is characterized by stabilization of Burmese orthography and steady evolution of the Burmese phonology, which accelerated during the transition from Middle Burmese to Modern Burmese.
The transition from
Old Burmese to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g., mergers of
sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in the underlying
orthography.
The transition between Middle Burmese and Modern Burmese was dominated by substantial changes in pronunciation, more so than that between Old Burmese and Middle Burmese.
However, many features of Middle Burmese have been preserved in the literary tradition (high register) of written Modern Burmese, including grammatical markers and lexical particles.
, grammatical structure and vocabulary have remained markedly comparable, well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g.,
function word
In linguistics, function words (also called functors) are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ...
s).
References
{{Burmese language
Burmese language
Burmese, Old
Languages attested from the 16th century