A Brief Outline of the Myanmar Language

1
A Brief Outline of the Myanmar Language

• The Rajakumar stone inscriptions(popularly known
  as the Myazedi stone inscriptions) bears the date
  equivalent to 1113 A.D. and carries the same
  message in four languages, Myanmar, Mon, Pyu and
  Pali.
• Since this is the earliest dated inscription in
  Myanmar surviving to this day, it suggests that
  the Myanmar language in its written form has
  been in existence for at least 900 years.

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A Brief Outline of the Myanmar Language

• In spite of this tradition however, the fact that
  a modem and universally accepted orthography and
  a dictionay recording a substantial part of the
  lexicon had yet to published as late as two
  decades ago shows the state of neglect that had
  transpired to handicap its development as a
  language even in the country of its origin.

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A Brief Outline of the Myanmar Language
4
Classification
The Myanmar language belongs to the Sino-Tibetan
family of languages of which the Tibeto-Myanmar
(Tibeto-Burman) subfamily forms a part. It is a
tonal language , that is to say, the meaning of a
syllable or word changes with the tone expressed.
It has been classified by linguists as a
monosyllabic or isolating language with
agglutinative features.
5
Speech Sounds

• According to traditional tones on grammar, the
  Myanmar language is said to have either ten,
  eleven or twelve vowels and either 33, 34 or 35
  consonants.
• Later studies with modern phonetics have
  determined that there are
• 51 vowels sounds,
• 39 consonant sounds and
• 3 tones.

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Consonants
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Independent Vowels
t Myanmar Letter A Myanmar Letter I þ Myanmar
Letter II O Myanmar Letter U OD Myanmar Letter
UU Myanmar Letter E Bo Myanmar Letter
O aBomf Myanmar Letter AU
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Dependent Vowels
-m MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN AA -d MYANMAR VOWEL
SIGN I -D MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN II -k MYANMAR
VOWEL SIGN U -l MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN
UU a- MYANMAR VOWEL SIGN E -J MYANMAR VOWEL
SIGN AI
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Various Signs and Punctuations
-H MYANMAR SIGN ANUSVARA -h MYANMAR SIGN DOT
BELOW - MYANMAR SIGN VISARAGA -f MYANMAR SIGN
VIRAMA ? MYANMAR SIGN LITTLE SECTION /
MYANMAR SIGN SECTION ü MYANMAR SYMBOL
LOCATIVE í MYANMAR SYMBOL COMPLETED if
MYANMAR SYMBOL AFOREMENTIONED \ MYANMAR
SYMBOL GENITIVE
10
Myanmar Digits
0 MYANMAR DIGIT ZERO 1 MYANMAR DIGIT ONE 2
MYANMAR DIGIT TWO 3 MYANMAR DIGIT THREE 4
MYANMAR DIGIT FOUR 5 MYANMAR DIGIT
FIVE 6 MYANMAR DIGIT SIX 7 MYANMAR DIGIT
SEVEN 8 MYANMAR DIGIT EIGHT 9 MYANMAR
DIGIT NINE
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Consonants Sounds
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Vowel Sounds
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Vowel Sounds (Cont)
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Syllable Structure
Syllables in the Myanmar language consists of
either a vowel by itself or a consonant combined
with a vowel. Eg. þ O OD ud uD uk ul
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Syllable change
Two types of change in the production of
syllables, from voiceless to voiced in the case
of some consonants and to a neutral vowel sound
in the case of some vowels, are encountered in
the Myanmar language. Some of the changes in the
pronunciation of syllables have the results of
either changing the meaning of a word or its part
of speech.
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Syllable change (cont)
vlBuDvlaumif vlsDvlagif Lu kji lu
kaun Lu gji lu gaun pOfpmyg
pOfZmbm sin sa pa sin Za
ba olawmfaumif ola'agif thu to kaun
thu do gaun
17
Script
The letters of the alphabet used in Myanmar
script are said to have been derived from the
Brahmi script which has flourished in the Indian
subcontinent between 5th Century B.C and 3rd
Century A.D. Existing records of original Myanmar
script from votive tablets, terracotta plaques,
stone inscriptions, painted glosses on murals,
palm leaf inscriptions, bell inscriptions and
inscriptions made on writing tablets made of
handmade paper, gold or copper foil, show that
earliest surviving records can be dated as far
back as 5th Century of the Myanmar Era (12th
Century AD).
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System of Writing
The system employs a letter to represent each
syllable and consists of 34 symbols for
consonants, 11 vowel symbol and various symbol to
represent vowel sounds, tone marks, specified
symbols and punctuation marks.
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Writing Myanmar Characters
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Myanmar Words

• Words in the Myanmar language can be divided into
  simple words, compound words and complex words.
• Simple words consisting of free morphemes such as
  hmin (ink) and o (pot, round receptacle etc)
  combine together to form an attributive compound,
  hmin o (ink pot)
• coordinative compound such as yaun we (yaun to
  sell combined with we to buy to mean buying
  and selling, trading, dealing in commerce
  etc.)
• sein le su (sein, diamond, combined with le,
  hand or finger and su put on, pull on etc,
  taken together to mean a diamond ring)

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Myanmar Words

• complex compounds by the use of either prefixes
  (a. , noun forming particle kaun , good, well
  etc a. kaun "sth good, well meant act etc"),
• infixes tei' hsei' "quiet" ta , particle tei'
  ta hsei' "quietly"),
• (hka lei , "child" nge "small, young etc"
  hka lei nge," baby, infant")
• combinations of such affixes or replication
  (myan, "quick, fast etc" , replicated to form
  myan myan, "quickly" a particle hta' , "layer
  or again" ahta' hta' , "in layers" or "again
  and again, repeatedly").

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Grammar , Parts of speech and Sentence Level

• Categorization of words into various parts of
  speech differ on whether the approach being mode
  is based on Pali grammar, English grammar or
  linguistic theory.
• Some have discerned as little as 2 while various
  authors have assigned 3,4,6,7,8 or 9 parts of
  speech.
• In 1980 the Myanmar Language Commission adopted
  the stand that it is composed of nouns, pronouns,
  adjectives, verbs, adverbs, positional markers,
  particles, conjunctions and interjections.
• Two types of sentences, simple and complex are to
  be found.

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Publications

• Myanmar Grammar
• in 3 vols 7 parts
• (1983-87)

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Publications

• Myanmar Orthography (1986)

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Publications

• Myanmar Proverbs in Metaphor (1990)

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Publications

• Tales for moral rectitude (1990)

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Publications

• Myanmar Dictionary (1991)

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Publications

• Myanmar-English Dictionary (1993)

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Publications

• Myanmar Words Commonly misspelled and misused
  (1993)

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Publications

• Myanmar Sayings (1996)

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Publications

• Myanmar Dictionary
• (1999)

32
Publications

• English Myanmar Dictionary (2001)

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Publications

• Concise Myanmar Dictionary (5 vol)
• (1978-1980)

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Publications

• Myanmar Dictionary (1991)