creaky-tone.htm
U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
In preparation
To upload to www.tuninst.net : to be incorporatated into
LINGUISTICS index
Brahmi script -- U Kyaw Tun
Burmese-Myanmar Grammar in Romabama -- U Kyaw Tun
The Creaky tone in Burmese -- U Kyaw Tun 071105
Devanagari script -- U Kyaw Tun
English Pronouncing Dictionary , notes on -- U Kyaw Tun
History of Writing in India -- U Kyaw Tun
IPA -- U Kyaw Tun
Myanmar script -- U Kyaw Tun
Pali -- U Kyaw Tun
Contents of this page
What is that Creaky Tone in Burmese?
In Burmese language written in Myanmar script (Burmese-Myanmar to be differentiated from Karen-Myanmar, Mon-Myanmar, Shan-Myanmar, etc.), there are what the Western linguists and phoneticians call "tones" or "registers". By "creaky tone", what they are referring to is {a.} of the three vowels taught to the Myanmar children as {tha.ra.}: {a. a a:}.
See Burmese Language, online in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language download 071104
We must remember that "language" is a "deadly weapon" that can be exploited by unscrupulous persons that can result in genocides or "ethnic cleansing". In one instance mentioned in the Christian Bible in the story of Shibboleth, thousands lost their lives in a single day just because they could not pronounce a word correctly. Even today, language is used to discriminate, segregate and "tar and feather" a group of people, as caricatured in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.
So let's see how words "creaky" and "tone" are given in a dictionary, because it is where a layperson would look into to get a meaning.
creaky ( krē'kē) adj. creakier creakiest 1. Tending or likely to creak. 2. Dilapidated; decrepit. creak/i·ly adv. creak /i·ness n. -- From AHTD (American Heritage Talking Dictionary)
tone ( tōn) n. 3. a. The pitch of a word used to determine its meaning or to distinguish differences in meaning. b. The particular or relative pitch of a word, phrase, or sentence. 4. Manner of expression in speech or writing: took an angry tone with the reporters. -- AHTD
To the layman (I was one before I happened to stumble on Linguistics and Phonetics), Burmese language has a vowel (an inherent part of a language) that is simply "unacceptable". But to the scientists, the Linguists and the Phoneticians, "creaky tone" has become a technical term, and we the ethnic {ba.ma} of the country of Myanmar should know something about it. My writing is on this subject according to my understanding, admitting that I am a chemist by profession who has no formal training in either Linguistics or Phonetics.
----- this paper is still in the preparation stage ----
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