Burmese alphabet

The Burmese alphabet 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. Burmese orthography is deep, with an indirect spelling-sound correspondence between graphemes and phonemes, 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

The Burmese alphabet was derived from the Pyu script, the Old Mon script, or directly from a South Indian script, 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. Burmese calligraphy originally followed a square format, as petroglyphs were a primary writing medium in Old Burmese.
The medial diacritic la hswe was used in old Burmese from the Bagan to Innwa periods, and could be combined with other diacritics to form . 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 that were accompanied by changes in the underlying orthography. The high tone marker was introduced in the 16th century. Moreover,, which disappeared by the 16th century, was subscripted to represent the creaky tone. 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. 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 to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named the Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan, was compiled in 1978 by the commission.

Alphabet

Arrangement

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

the first letter is tenuis and unaspirated,
the second is the aspirated homologue, and
the fifth is the nasal homologue.

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

The first group of letters, called ka wet, are velars,
the second group of letters, called sa wet are palatals,
the third group of letters, called ta wet are alveolars,
the fourth group of letters, called ta wet are classified as dentals but pronounced as alveolars, and
the fifth group of letters, called pa wet are labials

The remaining eight letters,,,,,,, are grouped together as a-wek, 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, while other vowels are indicated 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, arranged in the traditional order:

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

Vowel letters

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

Letter
Equivalent

Consonant stacking

Burmese uses stacked consonants called hna-lon-zin, whereby specific two-letter combinations can be written one atop the other, or stacked — the first consonant letter is written normally, 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 .
Stacked consonants are largely used in loan words from Indic languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for 'self' 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 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, which is indicated by the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet into the seven five-letter groups of letters. 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, 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:

Diacritic	Name	Usage
	ya pin	Indicates medial /j/ or palatalization of velar consonants such as,,,.
	ya yit	Functions similarly to ; also indicates medial /j/ or palatalization of velars.
	wa hswe	Indicates medial /w/ in open syllables, or /ʊ̀/ ~ /wà/ in closed syllables. May combine with vowel marks to add /w/ before the vowel. Rarely used in, to represent English /ɔɪ/.
	ha hto	Indicates voicelessness of a sonorant consonant.
	la hswe	Represents a medial /l/ in a few conservative dialects; now obsolete in standard Burmese.

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

Diacritic	Base medial	with -h-	with -w-	with -h- + -w-

Tone and vowel diacritics

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

Diacritic	Name	Usage
	အောက်မြစ်	Creates creaky tone. Used only with nasal finals or vowels which inherently indicate a low or high tone.
	ဝစ္စပေါက်, ဝိသဇ္ဇနီ, ရှေ့ကပေါက်, ရှေ့ဆီး	Visarga; creates high tone. Can follow a nasal final marked with virama, or a vowel which inherently implies creaky tone or low tone.
	ရေးချ, မောက်ချ, ဝိုက်ချ	When used alone, it indicates. Generically referred to as, this diacritic takes two distinct forms. By default, it is written which is called /waɪʔtʃʰa̰/ for specificity. Although typically not permissible in closed syllables, solitary ◌ာ or ◌ါ can be found in some words of Pali origin such as ဓာတ် or မာန်.
	မောက်ချ	When used alone, it indicates. It is used when combined with the consonants ခ ဂ င ဒ ပ ဝ, it is written tall as ◌ါ and called /maʊʔtʃʰa̰/, to disambiguate similarly looking letters.
	သဝေထိုး	Indicates. Generally only permissible in open syllables, but occasionally found in closed syllables in loan words such as .
	–	A combination of and or. Indicates in open syllables or before or. The low-tone variant of this vowel in open syllables is written or.
		used to denote in some letters to avoid confusion for.
	နောက်ပစ်	Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
	တစ်ချောင်းငင်	When used alone, indicates in open syllables or in closed syllables.
	နှစ်ချောင်းငင်	Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
	လုံးကြီးတင်	Indicates in open syllables, or in closed syllables.
	လုံးကြီးတင်ဆံခတ်	Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
	–	Indicates in open syllables, or before or. A combination of the i and u vowel diacritics.

Final diacritics

Burmese finals are indicated by the following diacritics:

Letter	Name	Usage
	အသတ်, တံခွန်, ရှေ့ထိုး	Virama; this mark is called asat in Burmese, meaning "nonexistence." It deletes the inherent vowel, creating a final consonant. Common after ; also found in loanwords. Used as a marginal tone mark: e.g.,,, . In this role, it's called .
	ကင်းစီး	Superscripted form of representing nasalization as final. Found mainly in Pali and Sanskrit loanwords.
	သေးသေးတင်	Anusvara; marks a homorganic nasal in multisyllabic words, or a final -m that changes the vowel and implies a low tone. May occur with tone markers for high or creaky tone. Often appears with,, or. Common combinations include,, and, with rhymes respectively.

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 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 transparent loans. Examples include words like and, 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:

Phoneme	Grapheme	Grapheme	Grapheme	Grapheme
			-	-
			-	-




			-	-
			-	-
			-	-
			-	-

			-	-
			-	-
			-	-

			-	-

			-	-
			-	-

Phoneme	Grapheme	Grapheme

Syllable rhymes

The following lists all the permissible syllable rhymes and their spellings ; 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 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 traditionally not 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 used more sparingly.

Symbol	Usage
	Called pot-phyat, pod-gale. Equivalent to a comma, used to introduce a break within a sentence. Also called pot-hti or ta-chaung-pot.
	Called pot-ma. Equivalent to a full stop, used at the end of a complete sentence. Also called pot-gyi or hna-chaung-pot.

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

Symbol	Usage
	possessive, also used as a full stop if the sentence immediately ends with a verb
	conjunction
	locative
	'ditto' or 'ibid.'. Abbreviation of.

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:

Fonts supporting Burmese characters

Burmese Wikipedia:Font page

Font converters

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