Rakhine language
Rakhine, also known as Arakanese, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in western Myanmar, primarily in the Rakhine State, parts of south-eastern Bangladesh and parts of southern Tripura in India. Closely related to Burmese, the language is spoken by the Rakhine and Marma peoples; it is estimated to have around one million native speakers and it is spoken as a second language by a further million.
Though Arakanese has some similarity with standard Burmese, Burmese speakers find it difficult to communicate with Arakanese speakers. Thus, it is often considered to be a dialect or variety of Burmese. As there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Arakanese. There are three dialects of Arakanese: Sittwe–Marma, Ramree, and Thandwe.
Vocabulary
While Arakanese and Standard Burmese share the majority of lexicon, Arakanese has numerous vocabulary differences. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like 'sarong'. Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is 'hospital', which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သိပ်လှိုင် in Arakanese, from English sick lines. Other words simply have different meanings. Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese. A more unique difference is the 'Hra' sound which is not found in Burmese: only in Arakanese. e.g. ဟြာ and Hraa.Comparison
A gloss of vocabulary differences between Standard Burmese and Arakanese is below:| English | Standard Burmese | Arakanese | Notes |
| thirsty | ရေဆာ | ရီမွတ် | |
| go | သွား | လား | Arakanese for 'go' was historically used in Standard Burmese. |
| kick a ball | ဘောလုံးကန် | ဘောလုံးကျောက် | |
| stomach ache | ဗိုက်နာ | ဝမ်းနာ | Arakanese prefers ဝမ်း to Standard Burmese ဗိုက် for 'stomach'. |
| guava | မာလကာသီး | ဂိုယံသီး | Standard Burmese for 'guava' is derived from the word Malacca, whereas Arakanese for 'guava' is from Spanish guayaba, from. |
| papaya | သင်္ဘောသီး | ပဒကာသီး | Standard Burmese for 'papaya' literally means 'boat'. |
| soap | ဆပ်ပြာ | သူပုန် | From Portuguese "sabão". In Standard Burmese, 'သူပုန်' means 'rebel' or 'insurgent'. |
| superficial | အပေါ်ယံ | အထက်ပေါ်ရီ | |
| blanket | စောင် | ပုဆိုး | ပုဆိုး in Standard Burmese refers to the men's longyi. |
| dark | မှောင် | မိုက် | The compound word မှောင်မိုက် is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |
| pick a flower | ပန်းခူး | ပန်းဆွတ် | The compound word ဆွတ်ခူး is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |
| wash | လျှော် | ဖွပ် | The compound word လျှော်ဖွပ် is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |
Phonology
The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet.Consonants
The consonants of Arakanese are:Arakanese largely shares the same set of consonant phonemes as standard Burmese, though Arakanese more prominently uses, which has largely merged to in standard Burmese. Because Arakanese has preserved the sound, the medial is still distinguished in the following Arakanese consonant clusters:. For example, the word "blue," spelt ပြာ, is pronounced in standard Burmese, but pronounced in Arakanese. Moreover, there is less voicing in Arakanese than in Standard Burmese, occurring only when the consonant is unaspirated. Unlike in Burmese, voicing never shifts from to.
Vowels
The vowels of Arakanese are:While Arakanese shares the same set of vowels as Burmese, Arakanese rhymes also diverge from Standard Burmese for a number of open syllables and closed syllables. For instance, Arakanese has also merged various vowel sounds, such as ဧ to ဣ. Hence, a word like 'blood', which is spelt သွေး, pronounced in standard Burmese, is pronounced in Arakanese. Similarly, Arakanese has a number of closed syllable rhymes that do not exist in Standard Burmese, including.
The Arakanese dialect also has a higher frequency of open vowels weakening to than Standard Burmese. An example is the word for 'salary',, which is in standard Burmese, but in Arakanese.
Differences from standard Burmese
The following is a summary of consonantal, vowel and rhyme differences from Standard Burmese found in the Arakanese dialect:| Written Burmese | Standard Burmese | Arakanese | Notes |
| -စ် | e.g. စစ် 'genuine' and စိုက် 'plant' are both pronounced in Arakanese | ||
| ိုက် | |||
| -က် | -ɛʔ | -ɔʔ | |
| -ဉ် | e.g. ဥယျာဉ် 'garden', from Standard Burmese →. Irregular rhyme, with various pronunciations. In some words, it is . In a few words, it is . | ||
| ိုင် | |||
| -င် | |||
| -န် ွန် | ွန် is | ||
| -ည် | A few exceptions are pronounced, like ကြည် 'clear', pronounced | ||
| -ေ | e.g. ချီ 'carry' and ချေ 'cancel' are pronounced and respectively in Standard Burmese, but merged to in Arakanese | ||
| -တ် ွတ် | |||
| ိန် | |||
| -ုန် | |||
| Nasal initial + -ီ Nasal initial + -ေ | e.g. နီ 'red' is in Standard Burmese, but in Arakanese In some words, the rhyme is unchanged from the standard rhyme There are few exceptions where the nasal rhyme is even without a nasal initial . | ||
| Nasal initial + -ု -ူ -ူး | e.g. နု 'tender' is in Standard Burmese, but in Arakanese | ||
| ွား | e.g. ဝါး 'bamboo' is in Standard Burmese, but in Arakanese | ||
| ြွ | Occurs in some words | ||
| ရှ- | |||
| ချ- | Occasionally occurs | ||
| တ- → ရ- | e.g. The present tense particle တယ် corresponds with ရယ် in Arakanese e.g. The plural particle တို့ corresponds with ရို့ in Arakanese | ||
| ရှ- ယှ- ယျှ- | Found in some words only | ||
| -ယ် ဲ | -ɛ | -e |
Writing system
Arakanese is written using the Burmese script, which descends from Southern Brahmi. Rakhine speakers are taught Rakhine pronunciations using written Burmese, while most Marma speakers are only literate in Bengali.The first extant Arakanese inscriptions, the Launggrak Taung Maw inscription and the Mahathi Crocodile Rock inscription, date to the 1300s, and the epigraphic record of Arakanese inscriptions is unevenly distributed between the 1400s to 1800s. In the early 1400s, Arakanese inscriptions began to transition from the square letters associated with stone inscriptions, to rounder letters that is now standard for the Burmese script. This coincided with developments in Arakanese literature, which was stimulated by the rise of Mrauk U during the 1400s.
What is now Rakhine State is home to Sanskrit inscriptions that date from the first millennium to the 1000s. These inscriptions were written in Northern Brahmic scripts, which are ancestral to the Bengali script. However, these inscriptions are not ancestral to Arakanese epigraphy, which uses the Mon–Burmese script. While some Arakanese have coined the term "Rakkhawunna" to describe a script that predates the usage of written Burmese, there is no contemporary lithic evidence to support the existence of such a script.
Dialect variations
Contemporary Rakhine exhibits considerable regional variation. Dialects differ across areas such as Sittwe, Kula-taung, Myit Wa, Chaungtha, and among historical Rakhine populations in present-day Bangladesh and India. Even within Rakhine State, towns such as Kyaukphyu, Ramree, Mrauk-U, Thandwe, Ann, and Pauktaw show geographical dialectal variation. Coastal areas closer to central Burma, including Thandwe and Taungup, tend to exhibit softer tones and pronunciations influenced by proximity to Burmese-speaking regions.Rakhine is often described in literature as a "purer" or "more ancient" form of Burmese. This claim is based on certain phonological features retained in Rakhine but lost in Standard Burmese, such as distinctions between Written Burmese r and y, and between aŋ and añ. Rakhine also merges rhymes such as at and an with wat and wan, and exhibits less extensive voicing.
Conversely, Standard Burmese preserves distinctions—such as between ac, añ and uik, uir, or wa and o—that have been lost in Rakhine. It also tends to preserve vowel clarity and shows less phonetic weakening.