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

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:
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:
DiacriticNameUsage
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:
DiacriticBase medialwith -h-with -w-with -h- + -w-

Tone and vowel diacritics

Burmese has several vowel diacritics that also indicate an inherent tone:
DiacriticNameUsage
အောက်မြစ်Creates creaky tone. Used only with nasal finals or vowels which inherently indicate a low or high tone.
ဝစ္စပေါက်, ဝိသဇ္ဇနီ, ရှေ့ကပေါက်, ရှေ့ဆီးVisarga; creates high tone. Can follow a nasal final marked with virama, or a vowel which inherently implies creaky tone or low tone.
ရေးချ, မောက်ချ, ဝိုက်ချWhen 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.
မောက်ချWhen 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.
သဝေထိုးIndicates. 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.
နောက်ပစ်Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
တစ်ချောင်းငင်When used alone, indicates in open syllables or in closed syllables.
နှစ်ချောင်းငင်Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
လုံးကြီးတင်Indicates in open syllables, or in closed syllables.
လုံးကြီးတင်ဆံခတ်Indicates. Only found in open syllables.
–Indicates in open syllables, or before or. A combination of the i and u vowel diacritics.