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Burmese language
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The Burmese language (; ; MLCTS: myanma bhasa) is the official language of Burma. Although the government officially recognizes the language as Myanmar in English, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the native language of the Bamar and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar. It is spoken by 32 million as a first language, and as a second language by ethnic minorities in Burma.
Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman languages, which is a subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
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Encyclopedia
The Burmese language (; ; MLCTS: myanma bhasa) is the official language of Burma. Although the government officially recognizes the language as Myanmar in English, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the native language of the Bamar and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar. It is spoken by 32 million as a first language, and as a second language by ethnic minorities in Burma.
Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman languages, which is a subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Burmese is a tonal and analytic language. The language uses the Burmese script, derived from the Mon script and ultimately from the Brahmi script.
Literary language and spoken language
Burmese language, literary and spoken, is called , with from Pali bhasa, which means language. The language is classified into two categories. One is formal, used in literary works, official publications, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches. The other is colloquial, used in daily conversation. This is reflected in Burmese words for "language": ca refers to written, literary language, and ca.ka: refers to spoken language. Burmese therefore can mean either mranma ca (written Burmese), or mranma ca.ka: (spoken Burmese). The mranma portion of these names may be or, more colloquially, .
Diglossia
Diglossia occurs to a large extent in Burmese. The discrepancy is quite large, and many linguists consider formal Burmese to be a separate language from colloquial Burmese. The written and prestige form of Burmese has undergone only a few changes and tends not to accommodate the colloquial phonology of standard Burmese today. The Burmese saying "the pronunciation is merely the sound, whilst the orthography is correct" reflects upon the differences between spoken and written Burmese, as spelling is often not an accurate reflection of pronunciation.
In addition, different particles (to modify nouns and verbs) are used in the prestige form than in the spoken form. Literate Burmese speakers are able to intuitively interpret ancient Burmese despite inscriptions that date many centuries due to innate pronunciation rules. For example, (hnai.), which serves as a postposition after nouns is only used in formal Burmese, and is (hma) in colloquial Burmese.
A newer system of orthography for Burmese (one based on phonology) has been proposed to accommodate such differences, but an obstacle in reforming Burmese orthography lies in the existence of conservative Burmese dialects that retain older pronunciations more similar to formal Burmese, which primarily come from coastal areas like Rakhine State. In addition, some Burmese linguists have proposed to shift away from formal Burmese, as seen in the on television broadcasts, which use the vernacular. However, formal Burmese remains well-established in Burmese society. Furthermore, since the mid-1960s, there has been a reform movement by some Burmese writers (particular leftist writers, who believe laymen's language ought to be used) to abandon the written style in favour of the vernacular style in writing, but the written style remains preferred form of Burmese writing, because "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". The formal written style remains used throughout Burmese literature, in radio news bulletins, formal letters, novels, journalism and books on serious or educational matters.
A sample sentence below reveals that much of the differences between formal and colloquial Burmese occur in the particles:
| Formal | ???????????????????? | ???? | ??????? | ?? | ???? | ????????? | ??? | ?????? | ?? | ??? | ???? | | Colloquial | ???????????????????? | ???? | ????? | ?? | ?????? | ????????? | ????? | ?? | | ??? | ???? | | Gloss | noun | verb | part. | noun | part. | adj. | part. | verb | part. | part. | part. | (8888 Uprising) | (happen) | (when it occurred) | (people) | (counter word) | 3,000 | (approx.) | (die) | (plural marker) | (past tense) | (sentence final) | | Translation | When the 8888 Uprising occurred, approximately 3,000 died. |
Colloquial Burmese has various politeness levels. The actual first and second person pronouns of the language (nga ; "I; me") and (; "you") are used with only the closest people of the same or younger age. The use of nga and nin with the elders and strangers is considered extremely rude or vulgar. To address elders, teachers and strangers, polite speech employs feudal-era third person pronouns in lieu of first and second person pronouns. One must refer to oneself in third person: (kya. nau ) for males, and (kya. ma. ) for females, both meaning "your servant") and refer to the addressee as (min ; "your highness") , (khin bya: ; "master lord") or (shin ; "ruler/master"). So ingrained are these terms in the daily polite speech that people use them as the first and second person pronouns without giving a second thought to the root meaning of these pronouns.
When speaking to a person of the same status or of younger age, nga and nin may be used. Still, most choose to use third person pronouns to be safe. For example, an older person may use daw-lay (aunt) or u-lay (uncle) to refer to oneself, and address the younger person as either tha (son) or thami (daughter). When speaking to a monk, a person must refer to the monk as poun-poun and to himself as daga ( (da. ga ), or dabyidaw/dabyidawma. (Burmese monks may speak to fellow monks using Pali, and it is expected of faithful Burmese Buddhists to have a basic knowledge of Pali.)
Despite the large differences, Burmese speakers rarely distinguish formal and colloquial Burmese as separate languages, but rather as two registers of the same language.
Dialects and accents
Despite its Upper Burmese origins, the standard dialect of Burmese today comes from Yangon, because of the largest city's media influence. It used to be that the speech from Mandalay represented standard Burmese. Still most differences between Yangon (Lower Burma) and Mandalay (Upper Burma) are not in the accent or pronunciation but in the vocabulary usage. For example, the most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its use of the pronoun (kya. nau ) for both males and females, whereas in Yangon, (kya. ma. ) refers to females. Moreover, Upper Burmese speech still differentiates maternal and paternal sides of relatives whereas Lower Burmese speech no longer does.
For example:
| Term | Lower Burmese | Upper Burmese |
|---|
- maternal aunt (older)
- maternal aunt (younger)
| daw-gyi (or kyikyi) daw-lay | daw-gyi (or kyikyi) daw-lay | | paternal aunt (older) paternal aunt (younger) | daw-gyi (or kyikyi) daw-lay | ah-yi-gyi or yi-gyi ah-yi-lay or yi-lay | | maternal uncle (older) maternal uncle (younger) | ba-gyi u-lay | u-gyi u-lay | | paternal uncle (older) paternal uncle (younger) | ba-gyi u-lay | ba-gyi ba-lay |
In a testament to the power of media, the Yangon-based speech is gaining currency even in Upper Burma. Upper Burmese-specific usage, while historically and technically accurate, is increasingly viewed as countrified speech, or at best regional speech.
More distinctive accent and word usage differences emerge as one moves farther away from the Ayeyarwady valley towards peripheral areas of the country. Dialects include Merguese, Yaw, Palaw, Beik (Myeik), and Dawei (Tavoyan). The Rakhine dialect (Arakanese) is most reminiscent of archaic Burmese, especially in its usage of the sound, which has become a sound in standard Burmese. Dialects in Tanintharyi Division (such as Beik) often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop. The Dawei dialect has preserved the medial, which is only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among the dialects.
Vocabulary
The majority of Burmese vocabulary is monosyllabic and is of Tibeto-Burman stock, although many words, especially those loaned from other languages, are polysyllabic. Burmese has been influenced greatly by Pali, English, and Mon, and to a lesser extent, by Chinese, Sanskrit and Hindi.
- Pali loan words are often related to religion, government, arts, and science.
- English loan words are often related to technology, measurements and modern institutions.
- Mon has heavily influenced Burmese, and many loan words have become so well incorporated in the Burmese language that they are not distinguished as loan words. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, music.
- Sanskrit (religion), Chinese (games and food), and Hindi (food, administration, and shipping) loan words are also found (albeit to a much lesser degree) in Burmese.
- Various other languages have also contributed vocabulary
Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese:
Burmese tends to have many synonyms of the same word, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example is the word "moon", which can be (; Tibeto-Burman), ; Pali derivatives of chanda), or ( (Sanskrit).
Burmese also has a tendency to 'double-loan' from Pali, where it adopts two different terms based on the same Pali root. An example is Pali mana, which in Burmese has two derivatives, , or 'arrogance' and , or 'pride').
Furthermore, Burmese loan words, especially from Pali, often attach Burmese words to Pali roots. An example is "airplane" (literally "air machine fly"), which includes (native Burmese word, "air"), (Pali loan derived from yana, "vehicle") and (native Burmese word, "fly"). A similar trend is seen in English, where native Burmese words are attached to English loans, such as in the verb "to sign" ( "sign inscribe"), with (English loan "sign") and (native Burmese word "inscribe"). In the case of Mon loans, they are indistinguishable in most cases because they were more often borrowed from speech rather than writing, because for several centuries, Burmese and Mon were interchangeably used in modern-day Burma.
At times, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans, especially from English. For example, in Burma, publications containing the word (directly transliterated from English 'television') must be replaced with a Burmese substitute , literally 'see picture, hear sound.' Another common English word loan that has fallen out of usage is , which has been replaced with a recent Pali loan , created by the Burmese government and named after an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan called Taxila.
Script
The Burmese language is generally divided into: Old Burmese, Middle Burmese and modern Burmese. Old Burmese dates from 11th to 16th century (Pagan (Bagan) and Ava (Innwa) dynasties); Middle Burmese from 16th to 18th century (Taungoo to Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century (Konbaung dynasty) to the present. These period divisions are largely because of orthography changes (which followed shifts in phonology, such as the merging of the and medials) rather than transformations in Burmese grammatical structure and phonology, which has not changed much from Old Burmese to modern Burmese.
Written Burmese dates to the reign of King Kyanzittha (r. 1084-1113). The Mon script, which descended from the Brahmi script, was adapted with many changes to suit the phonology of Burmese for transcribing spoken Burmese. The earliest evidence of written Burmese is the Myazedi stone inscription (written in 1113), which was a story about King Kyanzittha as told by his son Prince Yazakumar in four scripts: Pyu, Mon, Pali, and Burmese. During the Pagan era, the medial was transcribed in writing, which was been replaced by medials and in modern Burmese (e.g. "school" in old Burmese compared to modern Burmese .
The Burmese script is characterized by its circular letters and diacritics. It is an abugida, with all letters having an inherent vowel (a. or ). Tone markings are in the form of diacritics placed to the left, right, top, and bottom of letters, but are not always indicative of the proper tone. Likewise, written Burmese has preserved all nasalized finals , which have merged to in spoken Burmese. The exception is , which, in spoken Burmese, can be one of many open vowels . Likewise, other consonantal finals have been reduced to . Similar mergers are seen in other Sino-Tibetan languages like Shanghainese, and to a lesser extent, Cantonese.
Much of the orthography in written Burmese today can be traced back to Middle Burmese, which had a wider range of finals. Standardized tone marking was not achieved until the 1700s. From the 1800s onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of confusions and ambiguities arose over spelling sounds that had been merged. During colonial rule under the British, spelling was standardized through dictionaries and spellers. The latest spelling authority, named the Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan )), was compiled in 1978 at the request of the Burmese government.
Phonology
The transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Consonants
The consonants of Burmese are as follows:
The approximant is rare, and is only used in place names that have preserved Sanskrit or Pali pronunciations (e.g. Amarapura, which is pronounced ) and in English-derived words. Historically, became in Burmese, and is usually replaced by in Pali loanwords, e.g. (ra.hanta) "monk", (raja.) "king". Occasionally it is replaced with , as in the case of the Pali-derived word for "animal" (ti.rac hcan), which can be pronounced or . Likewise, is rare, having disappeared from modern Burmese, except in transcriptions of foreign names. is uncommon, except as a voiced allophone of .
The phones are often pronounced as , as , as , and as in compound words. , when following a nasalized final can become a sound. For example, "blouse" ( ang kyi) can be pronounced or . However, this effect only occurs in compound words. Burmese has a tendency to pronounce words with as when those phones are spelled in compound words. Examples include ???????? ("to consult" , commonly pronounced ), ????????? ("to apologize" , commonly pronounced ), ????????? ("airplane" , commonly pronounced ).
The placeless nasal is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a nasal homorganic to the following consonant; thus "storm" is pronounced .
In many Burmese words, aspirated consonant indicate active voice or a transitive verb, while unaspirated consonants indicate passive voice or an intransitive verb. Examples include the verb "cook," where the aspirated version means "cook", while the unaspirated means "to be cooked". Another example is "lessen", where the aspirated version means "lessen" (transitive) while the unaspirated version means "lessen" (intransitive).
Vowels
The vowels of Burmese are:
The monophthongs , , , and occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda); the diphthongs , , , and occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda).
Tones
Burmese is a tonal language, which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch, but also phonation, intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table the tones are shown marked on the vowel as an example; the phonetic descriptions are from Wheatley (1987).
| Tone name | Symbol
(shown on a) | Description |
|---|
| | Normal phonation, medium duration, low intensity, low (often slightly rising) pitch | | | Sometimes slightly breathy, relatively long, high intensity, high pitch; often with a fall before a pause | | | tense or creaky phonation (sometimes with lax glottal stop), medium duration, high intensity, high (often slightly falling) pitch | | | Centralized vowel quality, final glottal stop, short duration, high pitch (in citation; can vary in context) |
For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone:
- Low "shake"
- High "be bitter"
- Creaky "fee"
- Checked "draw off"
In syllables ending with , the Checked tone is excluded:
- Low "undergo"
- High "dry up"
- Creaky "appoint"
However, in present-day spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with a stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches. The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor has concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay."
Syllable structure
The syllable structure of Burmese is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide, and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are and . Some representative words are:
- CV 'girl'
- CVC 'crave'
- CGV 'earth'
- CGVC 'eye'
- CVVC (term of address for young men)
- CGVVC 'ditch'
A minor syllable has some restrictions:
- It contains as its only vowel
- It must be an open syllable (no coda consonant)
- It cannot bear tone
- It has only a simple (C) onset (no glide after the consonant)
- It must not be the final syllable of the word
Some examples of words containing minor syllables:
- 'knob'
- 'flute'
- 'mock'
- 'be wanton'
- 'rice-water'
Grammar
The word order of the Burmese language is subject-object-verb. Pronouns in Burmese vary according to the gender and status of the audience. Burmese is monosyllabic, that is, every word is a root to which a particle but not another word may be prefixed (Ko, 1924, p viii). Sentence structure determines syntactical relations, and verbs are not conjugated but have particles suffixed to them. For example, the verb 'to eat' is (ca: ), and remains the same.
Adjectives
Adjectives may precede a noun (e.g. hkyau: tai. lu "beautiful" + + "person") or follow a noun (e.g. lu hkyau: "person" + "beautiful"). Superlatives are usually indicated with the prefix (a. ) + adj. + (hcum: ). Numeric adjectives follow the noun.
Verbs
The roots of Burmese verbs are almost always suffixed with at least one particle which conveys such information as tense, intention, politeness, mood etc. In fact, the only time in which no particle is attached to a verb is in commands. However Burmese verbs are not conjugated in the same way as most European languages; the root of the Burmese verb always remains unchanged, and does not have to agree with the subject in person, number or gender.
The most commonly used verb particles and their usage are shown below with the verb root (ca: ) which means "eat".
The suffix tai can be viewed as a particle marking the present tense and/or a factual statement.
ca: hkai. tai ) - I ate
The suffix (hkai. ) denotes that the action took place in the past. However, this particle is not always necessary to indicate the past tense such that it can convey the same information without it. But to emphasize that the action happened before another event that is also currently being discussed, the particle becomes imperative. Note that the suffix (tai ) in this case denotes a factual statement rather than the present tense.
ca: ne tai ) - I am eating
(ne ) is a particle used to denote that the action is in progression, and is equivalent to the English '-ing'.
(ca.) ca: pri ) - I am eating (now)
This particle or tense has no equivalence in English. It is used when an action which another person or persons expected to be performed by the subject is finally being performed. So in the above example, if someone had been expecting you to eat and you have finally started eating, the particle (pri ) is used.
This particle is used to indicate the future tense or an action which is yet to be performed.
- (ca: tau. mai ) - I will eat (straight-away)
The particle (tau. ) is used when the action is about to be performed immediately. Therefore it could be termed as the "immediate future tense particle". The particle (mai ) is still imperative in this case.
Nouns
Nouns in Burmese are pluralized by the addition of the suffix (twe or if the word ends in a glottal stop). The suffix mya (or nč, which means "few") is also used, which by itself means "many". The suffix day, which also pluralizes nouns, is only used colloquially and mya is used literally and formally.
- (nwa: ) - cow
- (nwa: mya: ) - cows
- (mrac ) - river
- (mrac mya: ) - rivers
The plural suffix however is not used when the noun is quantified by being counted.
- (hka.le: nga: yauk ) is in the order "child" + "five" + (classifier), which is equivalent to "five children".
Numerical classifiers
Like its neighboring languages such as Thai, Bengali, and Chinese, Burmese uses nominal classifiers when nouns are counted or quantified. This approximately equates to English expressions such as "two slices of bread" or "a cup of coffee". In the above example, yauk is the classifier used when referring to people. Classifiers are imperative when counting nouns, so (hka.le: nga: literally "children five") is ungrammatical. The only exceptions are measurements of time, such as "hour," "day," or "month," where classifiers are not required. Below are some of the most commonly used classifiers in Burmese.
| Burmese | MLC transcription | Phonetic transcription | Usage | Remarks |
|---|
| pa: | | for people | Used exclusively for monks and nuns of the Buddhist order | | kaung | | for animals | | | hku. | | general classifier | Used with almost all nouns except for animate objects | | lum: | | for round objects | | | pra: | | for flat objects | | | cu. | | for groups | | | u: | | for people | Used in formal context and also used for monks and nuns | | yauk | | for people | Used in informal context |
In most cases, the classifier follows the number. But for the numbers divisible by 10 (except for the number 10 itself), the classifier precedes the noun being quantified:
- (person + numerical classifier + number) instead of (person + number + numerical classifier)
Particles
The Burmese language makes prominent usage of particles, which are untranslatable words that are suffixed or prefixed to words to indicate level of respect, grammatical tense, or mood. According to the Myanmar-English Dictionary (1993), there are 449 particles in the Burmese language. For example, is a grammatical particle used to indicate the imperative mood. While ("work" + particle indicating politeness) does not indicate the imperative, ("work" + particle indicating imperative mood + particle indicating politeness) does. Some particles modify the word's part of speech. The particle is prefixed to verbs and adjectives to form nouns or adverbs.
Pronouns
Subject pronouns begin sentences. In the imperative forms and in conversation, the subject is generally omitted. Grammatically speaking, subject marker particles (? ( in colloquial, ??? in formal) must be attached to the subject pronoun, although they are generally omitted in conversation. Object pronouns must have a object marker particle (??? in colloquial, ??? in formal) attached immediately after the pronoun. Proper nouns are often substituted for pronouns. One's status in relation to the audience determines the pronouns used. There are certain pronouns used for different audiences. The basic pronouns are:
| Burmese | MLC transcription | Phonetic transcription | English | Remarks |
|---|
| nga | | I/me | Informal, used with younger family members and friends of same age or younger | | nga tui. | | we | Informal | | kywan tau
kywan ma. | | I/me | Formal, used by males
Formal, used by females | | da. ga
da. ga ma. | | I/me | Formal, used while speaking to a monk or nun (lit. "donor") exclusively | | ta. pany. tau
ta. pany. tau ma. | | I/me | Formal, used while speaking to a monk or nun (lit. "disciple") exclusively | | nang | | you | Informal; used with younger family members, friends | | nang tui. | | you all | Informal | | mang: | | you | Informal, used among close friends | | a hrang | | you | Formal, used by females | | hkang bya: | | you | Formal | | su | | he/she | Informal | | su tui. | | they | Informal | | ai: (da) ha | | it/that | Informal, used rudely to refer to animate objects |
In colloquial Burmese, possessive pronouns are contracted when the root pronoun itself is low toned. However, this only occurs in colloquial Burmese, which uses ??? as postpositional marker for possessive case, whereas literary Burmese uses ? . Examples include the following:
- ?? ( "I") + ??? (postpositional marker for possessive case) = ??? ( "my")
- ??? ( "you") +???? ??? (postpositional marker for possessive case) = ???? ( "your")
- ?? ( "he, she") + ??? (postpositional marker for possessive case) = ??? ( "his, her")
Reduplication
Reduplication is prevalent in Burmese and is used to intensify or weaken adjectives' meanings. For example, (hkyau: ), which means "beautiful" is reduplicated, the intensity of the adjective's meaning increases. Many Burmese words, especially adjectives which consist of two syllables, such as (beautiful ), when reduplicated ( ? ) become adverbs. This is also true of many Burmese verbs, which become adverbs when reduplicated.
Romanization and transcription
There is no official romanization system for Burmese. There have been attempts to make one, but none have been successful. Replicating Burmese sounds in the Latin script is complicated. There is a Pali-based transcription system in existence, which was devised by the Myanmar Language Commission (MLC). However, it only transcribes sounds in formal Burmese and is based on the orthography rather than the phonology. Several colloquial transcription systems have been proposed, but none is overwhelmingly preferred over others.
Transcription of Burmese is not standardized, as seen in the varying English transcriptions of Burmese place names.
External links
- from SOAS
- Myanmar NLP Research Center
- Myanmar NLP Team Blogs
- Myanmar Language Technology
- MyMyanmar Projects - Myanmar (Burmese) Language Research and Developments for Technologies
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