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Burmese (written Burmese) (spoken Burmese) |
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| Pronunciation: | [mjàNmàsà] | |||
| Spoken in: | Burma, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Laos and Singapore | |||
| Total speakers: | First language: 32 million Second language: 10 million |
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| Ranking: | 34 | |||
| Language family: | Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Lolo-Burmese Burmish Southern Burmese |
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| Writing system: | Burmese abugida | |||
| Official status | ||||
| Official language in: | Burma | |||
| Regulated by: | Myanmar Language Commission | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1: | my | |||
| ISO 639-2: | bur (B) | mya (T) | ||
| ISO 639-3: | mya | |||
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The Burmese language 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 Brāhmī script.
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Burmese 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": စာ ca [sà] refers to written, literary language, and စကား ca.ka: [zəgá] refers to spoken language. Burmese therefore can mean either မြန်မာစာ mranma ca (written Burmese), or မြန်မာစကား mranma ca.ka: (spoken Burmese). The မြန်မာ mranma portion of these names may be pronounced [mjàmmà] or, more colloquially, [bəmà].
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" (ဖတ်တော့အသံ၊ ရေးတော့အမှန် [pʰaʔ dɔ̰ əθàn jé dɔ̰ əm̥àn]) 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 transcriptions 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 မှာ (hma) in colloquial Burmese.
Colloquial Burmese has various politeness levels. The actual first and second person pronouns of the language ငါ (nga [ŋà]; "I; me") and နင် ([nìn]; "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 the elders, teachers and strangers, the polite speech employs feudal era third person pronouns in lieu of first and second person pronouns. One must refer to oneself in third person ကျွန်တော် (kya. nau [tʃənɔ̀]) for males, and ကျွန်မ (kya. ma. [tʃəma̰]) for females, both meaning "your servant") and refer to the addressee as မင်း (min [mín]; "your highness") , ခင်ဗျား (khin bya: [kəmyá]; "master lord")[1] or ရှင် (shin [ʃìn]; "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 (ဒဂါ (da. ga [dəgà]), or dabyidaw/dabyidawma. (Burmese monks may speak to fellow monks using Pāli, and it is expected of faithful Burmese Buddhists to have a basic knowledge of Pāli.)
Despite the large differences, Burmese speakers rarely distinguish formal and colloquial Burmese as separate languages, but rather as two registers of the same language.
A newer system of orthography for Burmese (one based on phonology) has been proposed to accommodate such differences. In addition, some Burmese linguists have proposed to shift away from formal Burmese, as seen in the gradual changes in form on television broadcasts. However, formal Burmese remains well-established in Burmese society. Another 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.
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 ကျွန်တော် (kya. nau [tʃənɔ̀]) for both males and females, whereas in Yangon, ကျွန်မ (kya. ma. [tʃəma̰]) refers to females. Moreover, Upper Burmese speech still differentiates maternal and paternal sides of relatives whereas Lower Burmese speech no longer does.
However, more distinctive accent and word usage differences emerge in the peripheral areas of the Ayeyarwady valley. 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 [r] sound, which has become a [j] 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 [-l-] medial, which is only found in Old Burmese transcriptions. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among the dialects.
The majority of Burmese vocabulary is of Tibeto-Burman stock. However, the Burmese language has been influenced by Pali, English, and Mon, and to a lesser extent, by Chinese, Sanskrit and Hindi.
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 လ (la̰̰; Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း ([sàndà]/[sán]); Pali derivatives of chanda), or သောတာ ([θɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit).
The written Burmese dates to the reign of King Kyanzittha (r. 1084-1113). The Mon script, which descended from the Brāhmī 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.
The Burmese script is characterized by its circular letters and diacritics. It is an abugida, with all letters having an inherent vowel အ (a. [a̰] or [ə]). 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 ([-n, m, -ŋ]), which have merged to [-n] in spoken Burmese. The exception is [-ɲ], which, in spoken Burmese, can be one of many open vowels ([i, e, ɛ]). Likewise, other consonantal finals ([-s, -p, -t, -k]) have been reduced to [-ʔ]. Similar merges 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. During colonial rule under the British, spelling was standardized through dictionaries and spellers.
The transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet.
The consonants of Burmese are as follows:
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar and palatal |
Velar and labiovelar |
Glottal | Placeless | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive and Affricate | pʰ p b | tʰ t d | tʃʰ tʃ dʒ | kʰ k g | ʔ | ||
| Nasal | m̥ m | n̥ n | ɲ̥ ɲ | ŋ̊ ŋ | N | ||
| Fricative | θ (ð) | sʰ s z | ʃ | h | |||
| Approximant | (ɹ) | j | (ʍ) w | ||||
| Lateral | ɬ l | ||||||
The approximant /ɹ/ is rare, and is only used in place names that have preserved Sanskrit or Pali pronunciations (e.g. Amarapura, which is pronounced [àməɹa̰pùra̰]) and in English-derived words. Historically, /ɹ/ became /j/ in Burmese, and is usually replaced by /j/ in Pāli loanwords, e.g. ရဟန္တာ (ra.hanta) /jəhàNdà/ "monk", ရာဇ (raja.) /jàza̰/ "king". Occasionally it is replaced with /l/, as in the case of the Pali-derived word for "animal" တိရစ္ဆာန် (ti.rac hcan), which can be pronounced [təɹeiʔ sʰàn] or [təleiʔ sʰàn]. Likewise, /ʍ/ is rare, having disappeared from modern Burmese, except in transcriptions of foreign names. [ð] is uncommon, except as a voiced allophone of /θ/.
The phones /pʰ, p/ are often pronounced as /b/, /kʰ, k/ as /g/, /tʃʰ, tʃ/ as /dʒ/, and /sʰ, s/ as /z/ in compound words. /dʒ/, when following a nasalised final can become a /j/ sound. For example, "blouse" (အင်္ကျီ ang kyi) can be pronounced /èiNdʒí/ or /èiNjí/. However, this effect only occurs in compound words.
The placeless nasal /N/ is realized as nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a nasal homorganic to the following consonant; thus /mòuNdáiN/ "storm" is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ].
In many Burmese words, aspirated and unaspirated consonants indicate active or passive voice in verbs. Examples include the verb "cook," where the aspirated version ချက် ([ʧʰeʔ]) means "cook," while the unaspirated ကျက်([ʧeʔ]) means "to be cooked." Another example is "lessen," where the aspirated version ဖြေ ([pʰjè]) means "lessen" while the unaspirated version ပြေ ([pjè]) means "to lessen."
The vowels of Burmese are:
| Monophthongs | Diphthongs | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Front | Back | Front offglide | Back offglide | |
| Close | i | u | ||
| Close-mid | e | o | eɪ | oʊ |
| Mid | ə | |||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | ||
| Open | a | aɪ | aʊ | |
The monophthongs /e/, /o/, /ə/, and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda); the diphthongs /ei/, /ou/, /ai/, and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda).
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 /a/ as an example; the phonetic descriptions are from Wheatley (1987).
| Tone name | Symbol (shown on a) |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| Low (နိမ့်သံ) | à | Normal phonation, medium duration, low intensity, low (often slightly rising) pitch |
| High (တက်သံ) | á | Sometimes slightly breathy, relatively long, high intensity, high pitch; often with a fall before a pause |
| Creaky (သက်သံ) | a̰ | tense or creaky phonation (sometimes with lax glottal stop), medium duration, high intensity, high (often slightly falling) pitch |
| Checked (တိုင်သံ) | aʔ | 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:
In syllables ending with /N/, the Checked tone is excluded:
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 rhyme 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 /ʔ/ and /N/. Some representative words are:
A syllable whose vowel is /ə/ has some restrictions:
Some examples of words containing /ə/-syllables:
The word order of the Burmese language is subject-object-verb. The only exception to this rule is the verb 'to be', က (kà. [ga̰]), which is placed directly after the subject. 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 စား (ca: [sà]), and remains the same.
Adjectives may precede a noun (e.g. ချောတဲ့လူ hkyau: tai. lu [tʃʰɔ́ dɛ̰ lù] "beautiful" + တဲ့ + "person") or follow a noun (e.g. လူချော lu hkyau: [lù tʃʰɔ́] "person" + "beautiful"). Superlatives are usually indicated with the prefix အ (a. [ʔə]) + adj. + ဆုံး (hcum: [zóuN]). Numeric adjectives follow the noun.
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 စား (ca: [sá]) which means "eat".
The suffix တယ် tai [dɛ̀] can be viewed as a particle marking the present tense and/or a factual statement.
The suffix ခဲ့ (hkai. [gɛ̰]) 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 emphasise that the action happened before another event that is also currently being discussed, the particle becomes imperative. Note that the suffix တယ် (tai [dɛ̀]) in this case denotes a factual statement rather than the present tense.
နေ (ne [nè]) is a particle used to denote that the action is in progression, and is equivalent to the English '-ing'.
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 ပြီ (pri [bjì]) is used.
This particle is used to indicate the future tense or an action which is yet to be performed.
The particle တော့ (tau. [dɔ̰]) is used when the action is about to be performed immediately. Therefore it could be termed as the "immediate future tense particle". The particle မယ် (mai mɛ̀]) is still imperative in this case.
Nouns in Burmese are pluralised by the addition of the suffix တွေ (twe [dè] or [tè] if the word ends in a glottal stop). The suffix များ mya [mjà] (or nè, which means "few") is also used, which by itself means "many". The suffix day, which also pluralises nouns, is only used colloquially and mya is used literally and formally.
The plural suffix however is not used when the noun is quantified by being counted.
Burmese, just as in neighbouring languages such as Thai, Bengali, and Chinese, uses nominal classifiers when nouns are being 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 ခလေး၅ (hka.le: nga: [kʰəlé ŋà] literally "children five") is ungrammatical. There are many classifiers in Burmese, and some of the most commonly used ones are shown below.
| Burmese | MLC transcription | Phonetic transcription | Usage | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ပါး | pa: | [bá] | for people | Used exclusively for monks and nuns of the Buddhist order |
| လှီး | hli: | [l̥í] | for slices | Used in context of food |
| ကောင် | kaung | [kàuN] | for animals | |
| ခု | hku. | [kʰṵ] | general classifier | Used with almost all nouns except for animate objects |
| ခွက် | hkwak | [kʰwɛʔ] | For open containers with liquid | |
| လုံး | lum: | [lóuN] | for round objects | |
| ပြား | pra: | [pjá] | for flat objects | |
| စင်း | cang: | [síN] or [zíN] | for vehicles | |
| စု | cu. | [sṵ] or [zṵ] | for groups | |
| ဦး | u: | [ʔú] | for people | Used in formal context and also used for monks and nuns |
| ယောက် | yauk | [jauʔ] | for people | Used in informal context |
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, စမ်း (sán) is a grammatical particle used to indicate the imperative mood. While လုပ်ပါ ("work" + particle indicating politeness) does not indicate the imperative, လုပ်စမ်းပါ ("work" + particle indicating imperative mood + particle indicating politeness) does. Some particles modify the word's part of speech. The particle အ ([ə]) is prefixed to verbs and adjectives to form nouns or adverbs.
Subject pronouns begin sentences. In the imperative forms, the subject is omitted. There are certain pronouns used for different audiences. Object pronouns must have a -go attached immediately after the pronoun. Proper nouns are often substituted for pronouns. In addition, nga and nein are rarely used. One's status (wa) in relation to the audience determines the pronouns used. The basic pronouns are:
| Burmese | MLC transcription | Phonetic transcription | English | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ငါ | nga | [ŋà] | I/me | Informal, used with family and friends |
| ငါတို့ | nga tui. | [ŋà do̰] or [ŋà to̰] | we | Informal |
| ကျွန်တော် ကျွန်မ |
kywan tau kywan ma. |
[tʃənɔ̀] [tʃəma̰] |
I/me | Formal, used by males Formal, used by females |
| ဒဂါ ဒဂာမ |
da. ga da. ga ma. |
[dəgà] [dəgàma̰] |
I/me | Formal, used while speaking to a monk or nun (lit. "donor") exclusively |
| တပည့်တော် တပည့်တော်မ |
ta. pany. tau ta. pany. tau ma. |
[dəbɛ̀dɔ̀] [dəbɛ̀dɔ̀ma̰] |
I/me | Formal, used while speaking to a monk or nun (lit. "disciple") exclusively |
| နင် | nang | [nèiN] or [nìN] | you | Informal |
| နင်တို့ | nang tui. | [nìNdo̰] | you all | Informal |
| မင်း | mang: | [míN] | you | Informal, used among close friends |
| အရှင် | a hrang | [ʔəʃìN] | you | Formal, used by females |
| ခင်ဗျား | hkang bya: | [kʰəmjá] or [kʰìNmjá] | you | Formal |
| သူ | su | [θù] | he/she | Informal |
| သူတို့ | su tui. | [θùdo̰] | they | Informal |
| အဲ(ဒာ)ဟာ | ai: (da) ha | [ʔɛ́ (dà) hà] | it/that | Informal, used rudely to refer to animate objects |
Reduplication is prevalent in colloquial Burmese, and is used to intensify or weaken adjectives' meanings. For example, ချော (hkyau: [tʃʰɔ́]), which means "beautiful" is reduplicated, the intensity of the adjective's meaning increases.
There is no official romanisation 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 Pāli-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.
