/
{É} ए (e) -
e2-042top-2.htm 
/
{È} - ऐ (ai) - ei3-043b1-2.htm
/
{au:}/{AU:} - ओ (o) short -
au3-043b2-3.htm 
/
{au}/{AU} - औ (au) long -
au2-043b2-4.htm SED-vow-dissim-indx.htm
from: Online Sanskrit Dictionary , February 12, 2003 . http://sanskritdocuments.org/dict/dictall.pdf 090907
Downloaded, set in HTML, and edited by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), Daw Khin Wutyi, B.Sc., and staff of TIL Computing and Language Centre, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale. No copyright. Free for everyone.
indx-BEPS
|Top
SED-vow-dissim-indx.htm
/
{É} ए (e) -
e2-042top-2.htm
/
{È} - ऐ (ai) - ei3-043b1-2.htm
/
{au:}/{AU:} - ओ (o) short -
au3-043b2-3.htm
/
{au}/{AU} - औ (au) long -
au2-043b2-4.htm
The vowel
Of the two front mid-vowels,
/
{É} ए (e) and
/
{È} - ऐ (ai), A. W. Lonsdale, Burmese Grammar and Grammatical Analysis
, 1899, Ch01 para 009, says the second is distinctly Burmese and not to be found
in Pali, although there are letters in Sanskrit nearly corresponding to it in
sound.
UKT: I have identified the front mid vowels
{É} as /e/ and
{È} as /ɛ/, each with its 3 pitch-registers:
¤ /e/ -{é.} ,
{é:}
¤ /ɛ/ -{è.} ,
{èý} ,
In the low back-vowels ओ (o) and औ (au) and their derivatives, the
Two-three tone problem that exists between Indo-European languages (IE)
(exemplified by English and Sanskrit) and Tibeto-Burman (Tib-Bur) (exemplified
by Burmese) becomes very prominent. As for Pali and Magadhi, I remain uncommitted as to whether they
were IE or Tib-Bur. Though this problem is present for all vowels, it becomes
very prominent in the low back-vowels. It should be noted that Lonsdale
considers औ
{AU} to be distinctly Burmese because it is not found in Pali.
The back-vowels are more complicated than the front, because lip-rounding and jaw movements are involved. In Bur-Myan, the front-vowels are lip-spread but the back-vowels are lip-rounded, or simply "rounded". I have noticed various Bur-Myan speakers sing their back-vowels with varying degrees of roundness which would surely confuse the foreigners even if they were trained "phoneticians".
UKT: It seems that Bur-Myan
{o} falls between the back mid vowel /o/ and /ɔ/, whereas
¤ /?/ -{o.} ,
{o:}
¤ /?/ -{au.} ,
Thus, I would say the dissimilar pair (with modal register) is
by UKT
Our task of comparing English to Burmese is not easy because English have only two "tones" for vowels the short and the long, whereas Burmese has three - the creak, the modal, and the emphatic. The one way to reconcile them is to think in terms of 5 registers:
creak, short, modal, long, emphatic
The English short vowel is sometimes close to creak and sometimes to modal. Similarly the English long vowel is between modal and emphatic. For the vowel /a/, we have
{aa.}, {a}, {/ə/}, {aa}, {aa:}
-- the short-a and the long-a are transcribed as a and ā in Pali-Latin. I am citing Pali because it can serve as the bridge between Burmese and English. Since both Burmese and English do not have dedicated graphemes to represent the central vowel, schwa /ə/, I have to use {/ə/} for the modal. The Burmese schwa is found in words like{a.ni} meaning the "color red" in which schwa is represented by {a.}. In most Burmese-Myanmar words
{a.} stands for the sound of
{aa.} of the series
{aa. aa aa:} . Note that in Romabama, for simplicity sake, this series is usually represented as
{a. a a:}.
This problem (as far as I know) lacks a concise name, because of which I will refer to it as the two-three tone problem.
Go back two-three-note-b
End of TIL file