Burmese Phonology
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Burmese Phonology
The phonology of Burmese is fairly typical of a Southeast Asian language, involving phonemic tone or register, a contrast between major and minor syllables, and strict limitations on consonant clusters. Consonants Burmese has 34 consonant phonemes. Stops and affricates make a three-way contrast with voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. A two-way voicing contrast is also present with nasals and all approximants except for . Phonetic notes: :, which was */s/ in Pali and OB, but was shifted forward by the shift of */ts/→/s/, is often transliterated as ⟨s⟩ and transcribed /θ/ in MSB but its actual pronunciation is closer to , a dental flap, often accompanied by aspiration or a slight dental fricative, although it can also be voiced. It has a short release generated by moving the tongue back sharply from an interdental position, and will sound to English speakers like a short dental fricative combined with elements of a tap or stop. is the voiced allophone of an ...
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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 ...
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Fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German (the final consonant of ''Bach''); or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh (appearing twice in the name ''Llanelli''). This turbulent airflow is called frication. A particular subset of fricatives are the sibilants. When forming a sibilant, one still is forcing air through a narrow channel, but in addition, the tongue is curled lengthwise to direct the air over the edge of the teeth. English , , , and are examples of sibilants. The usage of two other terms is less standardized: "Spirant" is an older term for fricatives used by some American and European phoneticians and phonologists. "Strident" could mean just "sibilant", but some authors include also labiodental and uvular fricatives in ...
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Aspirated Consonant
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most South Asian languages (including Indian) and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive. In dialects with aspiration, to feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say ''spin'' and then ''pin'' . One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with ''pin'' that one does not get with ''spin''. Transcription In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier letter , a superscript form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricative . Fo ...
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Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function of the adjacent words. Sandhi belongs to morphophonology. Sandhi occurs in many languages, particularly in the phonology of Indian languages (especially Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Pali, Kannada, Bengali, Assamese, Malayalam). Many dialects of British English show linking and intrusive R. A subset of sandhi called tone sandhi more specifically refers to tone changes between words and syllables. This is a common feature of many tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese. Types Internal and external sandhi Sandhi can be either * internal, at morpheme boundaries within words, such as ''syn- + pathy'': ''sympathy'', or * external, at word boundaries, such as the pronunciation " ...
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Burmese Orthography
The Burmese alphabet ( my, မြန်မာအက္ခရာ ''mranma akkha.ra'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit. 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.) 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 is used. Alphabet History The Burmese alphabet was derived from the Pyu script, the Old Mon script, or directly from a South Indian script,Lieberman 2003: 114 either the Kadamba o ...
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Anusvara
Anusvara (Sanskrit: ') is a symbol used in many Indic scripts to mark a type of nasal sound, typically transliterated . Depending on its location in the word and the language for which it is used, its exact pronunciation can vary. In the context of ancient Sanskrit, ''anusvara'' is the name of the particular nasal sound itself, regardless of written representation. Sanskrit In Vedic Sanskrit, the anusvāra (lit. "after-sound" or "subordinate sound") was an allophonic (derived) nasal sound. The exact nature of the sound has been subject to debate. The material in the various ancient phonetic treatises points towards different phonetic interpretations, and these discrepancies have historically been attributed to either differences in the description of the same pronunciation or to dialectal or diachronic variation. In a 2013 reappraisal of the evidence, Cardona concludes that these reflect real dialectal differences. The environments in which the anusvara could arise, however, ...
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Sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing. Appearance In both hiragana and katakana, the sokuon appears as a ''tsu'' reduced in size: Use in Japanese The main use of the sokuon is to mark a geminate consonant, which is represented in most romanization systems by the doubling of the consonant, except that Hepburn romanization writes a geminate ''ch'' as ''tch''. It denotes the gemination of the initial consonant of the symbol that follows it. Examples: The sokuon never appears at the beginning of a word or before a vowel (''a'', ''i'', ''u'', ''e'', or ''o''), and rarely appears before a syllable that begins with the consonants ''n'', ''m'', ''r'', ''w'', or ''y''. (In words and loanwords that require geminating these consonants, ''n'', ''mu'', ''ru'', ''u'', and ''i'' are usually used, respectively, instead of th ...
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N (kana)
ん, in hiragana or ン in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. ん is the only kana that does not end in a vowel sound (although in certain cases the vowel ending of kana, such as す, is unpronounced). The kana for ''mu'', む/ム, was originally used for the ''n'' sound as well, while ん was originally a hentaigana used for both ''n'' and ''mu''. In the 1900 Japanese script reforms, hentaigana were officially declared obsolete and ん was officially declared a kana to represent the n sound. In addition to being the only kana not ending with a vowel sound, it is also the only kana that does not begin any words in standard Japanese (other than foreign loan words such as "Ngorongoro", which is transcribed as ンゴロンゴロ) (see Shiritori). Some regional dialects of Japanese feature words beginning with ん, as do the Ryukyuan languages (which are usually written in the Japanese writing system), in which words starting with ン are common, ...
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Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ...
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Amarapura
Amarapura ( my, အမရပူရ, MLCTS=a. ma. ra. pu ra., , ; also spelt as Ummerapoora) is a former capital of Myanmar, and now a township of Mandalay city. Amarapura is bounded by the Irrawaddy river in the west, Chanmyathazi Township in the north, and the ancient capital site of Ava (Inwa) in the south. It was the capital of Myanmar twice during the Konbaung period (1783–1821 and 1842–1859) before finally being supplanted by Mandalay north in 1859. It is historically referred to as Taungmyo (Southern City) in relation to Mandalay. Amarapura today is part of Mandalay, as a result of urban sprawl. The township is known today for its traditional silk and cotton weaving, and bronze casting. It is a popular tourist day-trip destination from Mandalay. Etymology ''Amarapura'' comes from pi, Amarapura (), which means "The Immortal city".''amara'' = immortality; ''pūra'' = city. History Amarapura was founded by King Bodawpaya of the Konbaung Dynasty. He founded Amarapu ...
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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 Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rig Veda, a colle ...
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Toponymy
Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of ''toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of any geographical feature, and full scope of the term also includes proper names of all cosmographical features. In a more specific sense, the term ''toponymy'' refers to an inventory of toponyms, while the discipline researching such names is referred to as ''toponymics'' or ''toponomastics''. Toponymy is a branch of onomastics, the study of proper names of all kinds. A person who studies toponymy is called ''toponymist''. Etymology The term toponymy come from grc, τόπος / , 'place', and / , 'name'. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' records ''toponymy'' (meaning "place name") first appearing in English in 1876. Since then, ''toponym'' has come to replace the term ''place-name'' in professional discourse among geographers. Toponym ...
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