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The Burmese alphabet (, MLCTS: ''mranma akkha.ya'', ) is an abugida used for writing Burmese, based on the Mon–Burmese script. 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 orthography is deep, with an indirect spelling-sound correspondence between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), due to its long and conservative written history and voicing rules.

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 grammatical complications. There are several systems of transliteration into the Latin alphabet; for this article, the MLC Transcription System is used.

The rounded and even circular shapes dominating the script are thought to be due to the historical writing material, palm leaves, drawing straight lines on which can tear the surface.

History

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 or Pallava alphabet. 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, as petroglyphs were a primary writing medium in Old Burmese.

The medial diacritic ''la hswe'' (လဆွဲ) was 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   .Herbert et al. (1989): 5–2MLC (1993) Similarly, until the Innwa period, ''ya pin'' was also combined with ''ya yit'' to form . During the early Bagan period, the rhyme , now represented with the diacritic was represented with .

The transition to Middle Burmese in the 16th century included phonological changes (e.g., mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) that were accompanied by changes in the underlying orthography. The high tone marker was introduced in the 16th century (the high tone was previously indicated with ဟ်). Moreover, , which disappeared by the 16th century, was subscripted to represent the creaky tone (it is now indicated with ). The diacritic combination disappeared in the mid-1750s, having been replaced with the combination, introduced in 1638. The rounded cursive format of Burmese took hold from the 17th century when popular writing led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as parabaiks.Lieberman (2003): 136 A stylus would rip these leaves when making straight lines.

The standard tone markings found in modern Burmese can be traced to the 19th century. During this time, replaced to indicate the rhyme . From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged. British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers.

In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named the ''Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan'' (မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း), was compiled in 1978 by the commission.

Alphabet

Arrangement

As with other Brahmic scripts, the Burmese alphabet is traditionally arranged into groups called ''wet'' (ဝဂ်, from Pali ), each consisting of five letters for stop consonants based on articulation. Within each group:

* the first letter is tenuis and unaspirated (သိထိလ, from Pali ),
* the second is the aspirated homologue (ဓနိတ, from Pali ,
* the third and fourth are the voiced homologues (လဟု, from Pali ), and
* the fifth is the nasal homologue (နိဂ္ဂဟိတ, from Pali ).

This is true of the first twenty-five letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as ''wek byi'' (ဝဂ်ဗျည်း, from Pali ), based on articulation:

* The first group of letters, called ''ka wet'' (ကဝဂ်), are velars (ကဏ္ဍဇ, from Pali ),
* the second group of letters, called ''sa wet'' (စဝဂ်) are palatals (တာလုဇ, from Pali ),
* the third group of letters, called ''ta wet'' (ဋဝဂ်) are alveolars (မုဒ္ဓဇ, from Pali ),
* the fourth group of letters, called ''ta wet'' (တဝဂ်) are classified as dentals (ဒန္တဇ, from Pali ) but pronounced as alveolars, and
* the fifth group of letters, called ''pa wet'' (ပဝဂ်) are labials (ဩဋ္ဌဇ, from Pali )

The remaining eight letters , , , , , , , are grouped together as ''a-wek'' (အဝဂ်, Pali , ), as they are not arranged according to phonemic principles.

Consonant letters

The Burmese alphabet has 33 letters to indicate the initial consonant of a syllable and four diacritics to indicate additional consonants in the onset. Like other abugidas, including the other members of the Brahmic family, each consonant has an inherent vowel (often reduced to ), while other vowels are indicated in by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character.

The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and as transcription in MLC, and the letter's name in Burmese (which may describe the letter's form or is simply sound of the letter), arranged in the traditional order:

*
*
*
*
*
*
* () and () are exclusively used in academic works to transcribe Sanskrit words.
* () and () are exclusively used in academic works to transcribe Sanskrit words.

Vowel letters

Burmese also has seven letters to indicate independent vowels; these are primarily used when spelling words of Pali or Sanskrit etymology:

Consonant stacking

Burmese uses stacked consonants called ''hna-lon-zin (''နှစ်လုံးစဉ်), whereby specific two-letter combinations can be written one atop the other, or ''stacked'' — the first consonant letter is written normally (i.e., not super- or subscripted), while the second is stacked underneath the first one. Consonant stacking has an implied ''virama'' , thus suppressing the inherent vowel of the first letter. For instance, 'world' is read (''kambha''), not ''kamabha'').

Stacked consonants are largely used in loan words from Indic languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for 'self' (via Pali ) is spelt , not , although both are pronounced identically. Stacked consonants are generally not found in native Burmese words, except as informal abbreviations. For example, the word ('daughter') is sometimes abbreviated to , even though the stacked consonants do not belong to the same row in the and a vowel is pronounced between. Similarly, 'tea' is commonly abbreviated 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 the seven five-letter groups of letters (called ''wet'' or ဝဂ်). Consonants not found in the rows beginning with or can only be doubled — that is, stacked with themselves. The combination of is written , instead of .

Stroke order

Burmese letters are written with a specific stroke order. The letter forms 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: , , , , , , , , , . Some versions of stroke order may be slightly different.

The Burmese stroke order can be learned from (''Burmese Grade 1, 2017-2018''), a textbook published by the Burmese Ministry of Education. The book is available under the LearnBig project of UNESCO. Other resources include the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University and an online learning resource published by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.

Diacritics

Burmese employs numerous combinations of diacritics to mark medial consonants, vowels and tones.

Medial diacritics

Burmese has 5 medial diacritics. Consonant letters may be modified by up to three medial diacritics at a time, to indicate additional consonants before the vowel. These diacritics are:

All of the possible medial diacritic combinations are listed below, using with as a sample letter:

Tone and vowel diacritics

Burmese has several vowel diacritics that also indicate an inherent tone:

Final diacritics

Burmese finals are indicated by the following diacritics:

Orthography

Burmese has a deep orthography, with a one-to-many relationship between phonemes and graphemes. While the pronunciation can be deduced for the majority of words, many Burmese words have spellings with irregular pronunciations, especially words of Indic and foreign etymology. Several phonemic changes, including vowel weakening and voicing of consonants (e.g., in compound words) is not transcribed. An example is the words 'to link' () and 'hook' (), both of which are spelt .

Burmese orthography remains conservative, with spellings that preserve rhymes and consonants that have since merged. Due to its conservatism, Burmese spellings have been used to reconstruct earlier stages of the Burmese language and in Tibeto-Burman historical linguistics. Since the earliest stages of the language, Burmese has assimilated thousands of Indic words, especially from the classical languages of Pali and Sanskrit. These borrowings can be deduced from orthography, with later borrowings adopting more orthographically correct loans. Examples include words like (''sa.bhau'', 'disposition') and (''sa.bhava.'', 'nature'), both from Pali .

Burmese orthography has preserved all the nasalized finals , which have merged to in spoken Burmese. Similarly, Burmese orthography has preserved the consonantal finals , which have since been reduced to . Burmese has retained a number of phonetically redundant graphemes (; ), including separate letters that are used to spell words of Indic origin:

Syllable rhymes

The following lists all the permissible syllable rhymes (i.e., vowels and any consonants that may follow them within the same syllable) and their spellings (graphemes); these rhymes are written using a combination of diacritic marks and consonant letters.

Open syllables

Below are the possible combinations of open syllable rhymes in Burmese spelling, used with the letter as a sample. is the inherent vowel, and is not indicated by any diacritic. In theory, virtually any written syllable that is not the final syllable of a word can be pronounced with the vowel (with no tone and no syllable-final or ) as its rhyme. In practice, the bare consonant letter alone is the most common way of spelling syllables whose rhyme is .

Closed glottal stop syllables

Below are the possible combinations of glottal stop syllable rhymes in Burmese spelling, used with the letter as a sample. Burmese spelling retains the consonantal finals that have since merged to the glottal stop in spoken Burmese.

Closed nasalised syllables

Below are the possible combinations of nasalised syllable rhymes in Burmese spelling, used with the letter as a sample.

Numerals

Burmese uses a decimal numbering system based on the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, with unique numerals for the digits from zero to nine. Separators, such as commas, are not traditionally used to group numbers. For instance, the number 1945 is written .

Punctuation and other symbols

Burmese has two native punctuation marks. Burmese also uses Western-style punctuation marks, including parentheses, ellipses, and slashes. Others like the exclamation mark and question mark are more sparingly used.

The literary register of Burmese also uses several symbols used to abbreviate frequently used grammatical particles:

Unicode

The Burmese script was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.

The Unicode block for Myanmar is U+1000–U+109F:

See also

* Romanization of Burmese
* Mon–Burmese script
* Burmese Braille
* 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 AwarenessALA-LC romanization system for BurmeseBGN/PCGN romanization system for Burmese

Fonts supporting Burmese characters

* Burmese Wikipedia:Font page
Burmese Unicode & NLP Research Centre

Font сonverters

Legacy Font-Unicode ConverterZawgyi-Unicode Converter

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Mon–Burmese script
Scripts with ISO 15924 four-letter codes
Writing systems without word boundaries
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