Language, the local one, has always been important for a people, and even the Gottama Buddha had to step in to settle the language problem:
-- Cullavagga, V. 33. 1
Burmese Written Language in Roman Script
intro
U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), Deep River, Ontario, Canada. Not for sale. No copyright. Free for everyone. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR .
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indx-rbm | Top | Contents of this page
Introduction
Origin of words - commonality between Burmese and
Pali
Burmese-Myanmar language and script
Monophthongs and diphthongs
Is Burmese-Myanmar monosyllabic or
poly-syllabic?
Myanmar script, ASCII, and Unicode
Letters of Latin alphabet used
Romabama Rule 1 - ASCII characters
Romabama Rule 2 - English-Latin alphabet (use of capital
letters)
Romabama Rule 3 - Extended Latin alphabet
Romabama Rule 4 - Silent e
Romabama Rule 5 - Killed consonants
Romabama Rule 6 - {king:si:} vowel-sign
Romabama Rule 7 - Fossilized killed consonants
Romabama Rule 8 - Non-alphabetic characters
Romabama Rule 9 - Extension of Myanmar akshara row 2 to
accommodate medials
UKT notes
Language, the local one, has always been important for a people, and even the Gottama Buddha had to step in to settle the language problem:
After coming back from the 1995 Myanmar Independence Day reception held in Ottawa, hosted by our family friends Ambassador Dr. Kyaw Win and his wife Daw Kyi Kyi, it dawned on me that I should embark on a program to write e-mails for people who could speak Burmese. Since I had already written a system - Burmese for Foreign Friends - which could be easily adapted for this purpose, I started writing to my Burmese friends on the Internet. The following were parts of the various emails which I had sent out:
Meit sway hkin bya:
Burmese speaking people on the Internet should be able to email in Burmese. As a temporary measure it would be appropriate to develop a Burmese-Roman script which we would be able to type out using the English keyboard.
I've been trying to come up with a system similar to Malay. In fact I've been trying to do something like this off and on for the last fifty years or so -- since I was in my teens using my father's typewriter -- that was before Burmese typewriters came into use. However, if I were to transliterate based on English system of pronunciation, soon I got into irresolvable difficulties. Why do the English pronounce PUT one way and BUT differently? I think we should use some French way of pronunciation which is more consistent with the spelling.
My system which I'm trying to perfect is based on the Burmese way of spelling - not on the Burmese way of pronunciation. So my first rule is to write down the letters of the alphabet with vowels points or points to differentiate the stress. The first 3 letters of the Burmese alphabet: ka. / hka. / ga. /. The dot following ka. is to indicate the stress and is not "full stop" or "period". Can you decipher the following?
ka. / ka / ka: // hka. / hka / hka: // ga. / ga / ga: // gna. / gna / gna: //
sa. / sa / sa: // hsa. / hsa / hsa: // za. / za / za:// nga. / nga / nga: //
ta. / ta / ta: // hta. / hta / hta: // da. / da / da: // na. / na / na: //
pa. / pa / pa: // hpa. / hpa / hpa: // ba. / ba / ba: // ma. / ma / ma: /
ya. / ya / ya: // ra. / ra / ra: // la. / la / la: // wa. / wa / wa: // tha. / tha / tha: //
aa. / aa / aa: //
Quite a few responses came back all written in Romabama!
UKT: Please note that when I wrote the above email, I did not know the difference between an alphabet and an abugida. I have been going over the following pages over and over again, and have incorporated new findings (at least new to me) and ideas. And you will find many inconsistencies, my oversight, the leftovers from previous versions.
After launching Romabama on the Internet in 1995, and getting encouragements from places as far as Sweden, I began to develop it further. And, in order to come across uncommon spellings and usages in Burmese-Myanmar, I embarked in 2005, on a project on medicinal plants of Myanmar. I am in the process of developing a database, Myanmar Medicinal Plants DataBase (MMPDB). In the process, I came to see the possibility of using Burmese-Myanmar (and Romabama) as a phonemic script to introduce International Phonetic Script (IPA) to the Burmese-Myanmar speakers, and in some ways to help them learn English-Latin. In the following files, whenever you come across /{...}/, please note that Romabama is being used as a phonemic script and its spelling is not necessarily correct.
{byoap~pat} - n. origin or derivation of words;
etymology (Pali:{byoap~pa.ti}) -- MEDict 317
UKT regret: Burmese-Myanmar has incorporated many Pali-Myanmar words such as
{pa.Ña} (MLC transcript: /|pjin nja|/ MEDict 249 - notice the /j/ which stands for {ya.ping.}). In such words, {Ña.kri:} behaves as if it were a horizontal conjunct of two {ña.lé:}, and because of this, I have been writing
In the following pages, I will be referring to MLC's Burmese-English Dictionary. The dictionary gives the MLC transliteration and the origin of many Burmese-Myanmar words. See Romabama vowels. One of my questions is: how close was Burmese to Pali. Did Burmese originated in areas east of present day Myanmar or in areas west? Is it really true that the group of people speaking Burmese migrated into Myanmar from areas of China? Is it possible that they migrated from India? Or, is it possible that the Burmese-speaking people had developed independently in areas of Pondaung? I do not expect to get definite answers, but a comparison of words of Burmese to Pali should throw some light on my question.
(Note: the discovery of pre-human remains at the turn of the century in areas of Pondaung shows that this area had been inhabited by pre-humans. This in turn suggests that humans must have lived in this area even in prehistoric times. Humans, being humans, must have spoken a language. And the theories of migrations, particularly those of the migration routes should be questioned.)
Since Burmese-Myanmar and Pali-Myanmar scripts do not use white-spaces to separate the one word from another, we (more specifically, I) have no way of knowing whether a group of syllables form a word, or is just a group of separate monosyllabic words. A case is to consider is the word {Ñan} /|njan|/.
{Ñän} /|njan|/ (1) - v. be noisy. -- MEDict157
{Ñän} /|njan|/ (2) - v. archaic be silent. -- MEDict157
{hsait-Ñän} /|hsei' njan|/ - v. archaic be silent; be still. -- MEDict143See Romabama Rule 3 (Extended Latin alphabet) on diacritics and other signs for the introduction of • än for {thé:thé:ting} for
We find a curious case of word-meaning development in
{Ñän} /|njan|/ which has an archaic meaning in
{tau:kri: hsait-Ñän} v. be silent -- MEDict 157. My question is: why does
{Ñän} have such contradictory meanings over the years. Or, is it a case of mis-interpretation by MEDict?
Is it possible that {hsait-Ñan} is a single disyllabic word? In that case
giving {Ñän} as "be silent" is wrong. Whatever the case may be, Burmese-Myanmar writers
should be taking care of white spaces to separate one word from the next. A case
for my peers in Myanmar Language Commission (MLC), the publisher of MEDict, to consider.
I have talked (on Christmas Day of 2006) to my good friend U Tun Tint (retired editor, now advisor to MLC) about this problem and have pointed out the importance of white-spaces. One of his responses is that Burmese language has been described as a monosyllabic language, and that every syllable (even in a "disyllabic" word) has a meaning of its own -- as claimed by Sanskrit-Devanagari writers. I pointed out to him that it is probably true in writing Myanmar script, and, in writing Devanagari script. However, when we need to transcript Burmese-Myanmar to English-Latin for international use, we do need white-spaces. This point, my good friend accepts.
A direct quote from: http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch10.pdf
"The Myanmar script is used to write Burmese, the majority language of Myanmar (formerly called Burma). Variations and extensions of the script are used to write other languages of the region, such as Shan and Mon, as well as Pali and Sanskrit. The Myanmar script was formerly known as the Burmese script, but the term "Myanmar" is now preferred.
"The Myanmar writing system derives from a Brahmi-related script borrowed from South India in about the eighth century for the Mon language. The first inscription in the Myanmar script dates from the eleventh century and uses an alphabet almost identical to that of the Mon inscriptions. Aside from rounding of the originally square characters, this script has remained largely unchanged to the present. It is said that the rounder forms were developed to permit writing on palm leaves without tearing the writing surface of the leaf.
"Because of its Brahmi origins, the Myanmar script shares the structural features of its Indic relatives: consonant symbols include an inherent "a" vowel; various signs are attached to a consonant to indicate a different vowel; ligatures and conjuncts are used to indicate consonant clusters; and the overall writing direction is left to right. Thus, despite great differences in appearance and detail, the Myanmar script follows the same basic principles as, for example, Devanagari."
Before proceeding further, I would have to make clear two technical definitions: Language and Script. By 'language' we mean the "spoken language", and by 'script' we mean the "written language". In the country of Myanmar, the script we use to write the spoken word is the Myanmar script. The majority of the population, write their speech - the Burmese speech - in Myanmar script. Similarly, the Karens, the Mons, the Shans and few other minority ethnic groups write their speech in Myanmar script. Thus, when I write Burmese-Myanmar, it is not a redundancy, but a necessity.
The same can be said of the Devanagari script. Hindi and Sanskrit are written in Devanagari. Thus we can say Hindi-Devanagari, and Sanskrit-Devanagari.
Burmese-Myanmar script is phonemically very similar to Hindi-Devanagari. This is due to the fact that both Devanagari and Myanmar are descended from a script found on the stone pillars of the Emperor Asoka, who reigned in the area where Gottama Buddha was born about 250 years before. The language of the Buddha and Asoka was known as Magadhi which was later known as Pali. Pali is the sacred language of the Theravada Buddhism, the religion of the majority of the population in Myanmar.
Though we have no vocal recordings of the Buddha's words, if only we can glean from the script the information about the phonemic principles used, we would be able to guess the way the Buddha had spoken. This question is very dear to my heart as to many Buddhists the world over.
Therefore, I am interested in the earliest script that was found on stone pillars on the Indian subcontinent. That script was found on Asoka pillars, and so the script should be rightly called the Asoka script. However, due to various historical events, the script is now known as the Brahmi, or the script developed by the Brahmans. We should note that the Brahmans were in the employ of Asoka as scribes and secretaries, and the question remains who was the person responsible for developing the script: the employer or the employee.
The first recorded script, the Brahmi, was clearly built on phonological principles, and unlike the alphabet, is a syllabic script and it should be rightly called an alpha-syllabic script. Such scripts are now known technically as abugidas.
UKT note: Here we must again differentiate between the spoken language (technically, the language), and the written language (technically, the script). The spoken language or speech can be recorded nowadays electronically. Electronic recording has become a reality only in the last century. However, the scripts were developed, thousands of years before, to record the speech. Thus, when I was asked years ago on my first trip outside Myanmar, how many vowels were there in Burmese-language I had answered more than 10. The response was that Burmese-language is more complicated than English-language which had only 5. Little did we realised that a human speech, whether Burmese or English, have the same number of consonants and vowels. It is only in the script that there is a difference. I should have answered Burmese-Myanmar has more than 10 vowel-letters compared to 5 of the English-Latin.
Devanagari and Myanmar are abugidas in which most symbols stand for a consonant
plus an inherent vowel (usually the sound /a/). Myanmar akshara is made up of
33 consonants,
{byæÑ:} and over 10 vowel-letters,
{tha·ra.}) all of which can be pronounced and some have meanings of their own.
The vowel-letters (e.g.
{I} ) are stand-alone characters and are not used for forming words except in a few
cases. Instead of the vowel-letters, the script uses another set of
glyphs known as vowel-signs (e.g.
{i}) for forming words.
UKT: The word /|bji:|/ (MLC transcript -- MEDict 317) meaning 'consonant' can be represented by two entirely different glyphs:
{byi:} both of which have the same pronunciation. To bring out the difference, the Romabama word would have to be spelled as close as possible to the Burmese-Myanmar orthography:
{byi:}. Here the correct spelling is
Now, a word about Pali and Sanskrit. Both were ancient languages of India. Pali is the holy language of Buddhism whereas Sanskrit is the holy language of Hinduism. Myanmar Buddhist monks in the course of their religious training have to learn Pali. Some, after mastering Pali, continue to learn Sanskrit. The script used for writing Pali and Sanskrit in Myanmar is the Burmese-Myanmar script. Hence Pali as pronounced by Myanmar monks is bound be influenced by the Burmese-Myanmar and consequently by Burmese pronunciation. To bring out the difference from Pali as pronounced by the Buddhists from Sri Lanka and India I will refer to it as Pali-Myanmar.
Pali as pronounced by Sri Lankans and Indians is bound to be influenced by their
own languages. As an example, the Burmese-Myanmar
{tha.} is pronounced exactly like the English-Latin <th> as in <thin> /θɪn/ and
<that> /ðæt/. However, the Sri Lankans and Indians pronounce the corresponding
akshara स (U0938) similar the English-Latin <s>. Consequently,
the Pali adopted by the Europeans who came into contact with it
through Sri Lanka and India -- the so-called "International Pali" -- is
lacking in
{tha.} sounds. The question now arises which pronunciation of Pali is nearer to
that of Buddha and Asoka -- Pali-Myanmar or
International-Pali, the Pali-Latin? Since this paper is about Burmese-Myanmar
and Pali-Myanmar spoken in Myanmar, we will leave aside the contentious issue
of the "authenticity" of the Pali pronunciation.
Pali is written in many scripts, such as Myanmar, Devanagari,
Latin (or loosely called "English" in Myanmar), Sinhala and Thai.
Pali-Latin (International-Pali)
has a pronunciation quite different from Pali-Myanmar.
In this work, whenever I write Pali words I will be following the
Burmese-Myanmar script in which च (U091A [Ca.])
and स (U0938 [Sa.]) of Devanagari will be written as
{sa.}
and
{tha.}.
UKT: To see how Pali is written in different scripts, see United States of America Library of Congress ALA-LC Romanization Tables http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/pali.pdf
See the downloaded pdf file in TIL-Library.
According to Ven.
Narada Thera author of An Elementary Pali Course, Buddha Dhamma
Association, Inc. (Sri Lanka)
www.buddhanet.net , the Pali language has 8 vowels
(Sinhala sara; Burmese-Myanmar
{tha·ra.}) and 33 consonants (Sinhala vyañjana ; Burmese-Myanmar
{byæiÑ:}). The 8 vowels are: a, ā, i, ī, u, ū
, e, o. The 33 consonants by groups are: Gutturals
{ka.} group
(velar consonant); Palatals
{sa.} group (Sinhala ca group); Cerebrals
{Ta.}
group (Sinhala tta group); Dentals
{ta.} group;
Labials
{pa.} group; and the rest not really forming any group.
Myanmar script has many characters corresponding to Devanagari (and other
Asoka-scripts). At least, in the following characters, we find the similarity:
• virama ्
-- (
{a.thut}-sign
),
• visarga -- (
{wus~sa. pauk} or simply
{wus~sa.})
[UKT: How should I spell
:
{wus~sa.} or
{wis~sa.}? See rim02.htm.]
• anusvara ं -- (
{auk-mris} sign
)
• anunāsika, also called 'chandrabindu' ("moon and dot") -- (
{thé:thé:ting}-sign
)
• danda । -- (
{poad-hti:} or
{poad-hprat}-sign
)
• double danda ॥ -- (
{poad-ma.}-sign
).
UKT: I was not sure to what Myanmar diacritic Anusvara do correspond until I came across an unequivocal statement in Wikipedia:
" In the Burmese alphabet, the anusvara is represented as a dot underneath a nasalised final to indicate a creaky tone (with a shortened vowel)." -- WikipediaThe term "creaky tone" (used in Wikipedia) is the same as "checked tone". The latter term is used by MLC in MEDict. See
Anunaasika (anunāsika), also called 'chandrabindu' ("moon and dot"), is a dot on top of a breve above a letter (मँ) [UKT:
{män}], used as a diacritic in Sanskrit and other Indo-Aryan languages written in Devanagari script to represent vowel nasalization. When transliterated, it is represented with a tilde above the letter ( ~ ). -- Wikipedia
There are other similar characteristics as well, and a one-to-one transcription between Burmese-Myanmar and the various Brahmi-derived scripts is a reality. Now what I am trying to do is to derive at a transliteration (transcription would be too complex) between Burmese-Myanmar and Burmese-Latin which could be used for introducing Phonetics to Burmese-Myanmar learners.
The strong similarity of the Myanmar and Devanagari consonants and the
similarity in the names (given in Windows XP character map) can be seen in
Myanmar consonants.
Of course there are differences. Speakers of Hindi-Devanagari and Sinhala
(language of the majority of Sri Lanka)
do not have the ability to pronounce some Burmese-Myanmar consonants such as
{tha.}
/θ/ which they usually pronounce as "Sa" /s/. This inability to pronounce
{tha.} is also seen in some minority groups such as Inthas in Myanmar Shan State.
Myanmar script, as well as Devanagari, "constitutes abugidas -- a cross between syllabic writing systems and alphabetic writing systems. The effective unit of these writing systems is the orthographic syllable, consisting of a consonant and vowel (CV) core and, optionally, one or more preceding consonants, with a canonical structure of (((C)C)C)V. The orthographic syllable need not correspond exactly with a phonological syllable, especially when a consonant cluster is involved, but the writing system is built on phonological principles and tends to correspond quite closely to pronunciation." -- http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch10.pdf
When I speak Burmese, I rarely use diphthongs which I use when I speak English. I am an ethnic Burmese born (1934) and educated in Burma. I went, in early childhood, to a secular vernacular school which was founded as a Burmese-Buddhist monastic school. Though both my parents speak English well, we speak in a pure Burmese accent (that of the Irrawaddy Delta) at home. Later, I went to an English school ran by Anglo-Burmese, and my English pronunciation could be described as Anglo-Burmese. However, after coming to the US in the 1950's, I made a point of studying the American (the mid-west) accent. There, I learned to pronounce words like <boy> and <oil> which few native-Burmese could pronounce. A year in Australia, taught me that <cow> should be pronounced as a diphthong. Now, after spending some 20 years in Canada, I am sure I know the difference between monophthongs and dipthongs, and I maintain that Burmese is almost a pure monophthongal language, and what has been described as diphthongs in Burmese are in fact monophthongal digraphs which have to be used in transcription of Burmese into English-Latin.
To those who would like to disagree with me, I will say this: I am a scientist, and is always ready to change my views and admit my errors in the face of experimental evidence, for example, from acoustical phonetics.
This question has come up lately between my good friend U Tun Tint (of MLC) and me. He maintains that it is monosyllabic where every syllable has meaning. To this, I cannot wholly agree. For instance, what is {mran-ma}? Is it a disyllabic word made up of {mran} and {ma}? Or, is it a combination of two monosyllabic words? Whatever the case may be, in Romabama, which is actually Burmese-Latin, we would have to differentiate between words and syllables, and insert white spaces in between words. Within one word, there are no white spaces between syllables. This is one of the major differences between MLC transcripts, which separates syllables with white spaces, bringing in non-differentiation between words and syllables. U Tun Tint maintains that when we are using Latin alphabet for transcription, white spaces are needed (note: the policy of MLC), and when I brought up the question of white spaces in Romabama to separate words, he concedes that it would be acceptable and pointed out to me that Burmese is a monosyllabic language.
• Like most Tibeto-Burman languages, Burmese shows a tendency toward monosyllabicity. Each syllable has C1 (initial consonant), V (vowel) and T (tone) always present. Syllables can be full, i.e. with all components receiving their full phonetic value, or reduced to a schwa in certain contexts. Final consonants are not pronounced, and consonant clusters are absent in the Burmese sound system. As a result, loan words with final consonants or consonant clusters such as "black" or "brake", for instance, are usually pronounced with an extra vowel inserted between the consonants. -- http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/Profile.aspx?LangID=72&menu=004
When you look into the following pages, you will come across many entries from MEDict, the meanings of which you will not know even if you are well versed in Burmese-Myanmar. I am saying this from personal experience. Though I do not claim to be an expert in Burmese language, I maintain that I am quite knowledgeable. I was born and educated in Myanmar and was in the university service for over 30 years, out which for the last 20 odd years the medium of instruction was in Burmese-Myanmar. I was quite surprised to find that there are many entries in MEDict, whose meanings are strange to me unless I take them to be syllables in a polysyllabic word. e.g. the entry
{hoan:} /|houn:|/ - v. roar. -- MEDict533
The word <roar> brings to mind, a lion roaring. However, the Burmese-Myanmar for the <roar> of a lion is {hain:}.
{hain:} /|hein:|/ - v. 1. (of tigers, leopards, etc.) roar. -- MEDict533
Then, I looked further, and came across:
{hoan:hoan:tauk} /|houn: houn: tau'|/ - v. be ablaze. -- MEDict533
What MEDict should have given is:
{hoan:} /|houn:|/ - v. (of flames) roar. -- MEDict533
Or,
{hoan:hoan:tauk} /|houn: houn: tau'|/ - v. be ablaze. -- MEDict533
It is very difficult to write Myanmar script on the Internet. The commonly used WinInnwa font is suitable for writing ink-on-paper pages, but not for writing web pages. Moreover, the commonly used Unicode fonts, such as Arial Unicode MS, and Lucida Sans Unicode do not display U1000-109F, the slot assigned by Unicode for Myanmar. To overcome this drawback, I have inserted my gif-glyphs whenever necessary. My gif-glyphs are based on Arial Unicode MS and WinInnwa. I have to standardise my gif-glyphs for two sizes:
• Arial Unicode MS size 12, used with WinInnwa size 16. The height is set at 22
pixels.
See font22design
• Arial Unicode MS size 16, used with WinInnwa size 24. The height is set at 32 pixels.
In both cases I have make some minor changes to the what was printed out by WinInnwa.
| c1 | c2 | c3 | c4 | c5 | |
| r1 | {ka.} | {hka.} | {ga.} | {Ga.} | {nga.} |
| r2 | {sa.} {kya.} |
{hsa.} {hkya.} |
{za.} {gya.} |
{Za.} | {Ña.} |
| r3 | {Ta.} | {Hta.} | {ða.} | {Ða.} | {Na.} |
| r4 | {ta.} | {hta.} | {da} | {Da.} | {na.} |
| r5 | {pa.} | {hpa.} | {ba.} | {Ba.} | {ma.} |
| r6 | {ya.} | {ra.} | {la.} | {wa.} | {tha.} |
| r7 | {ha.} | {La.} | {a.} |
Romabama Rule 01 - ASCII characters
Romabama is designed for writing e-mails without using any special fonts.
Thus only ASCII characters are used.
Romabama Rule 02 - English-Latin alphabet
The 26 letters of the English-Latin alphabet are expanded to 52 letters by
differentiating between the 26 small letter and 26 capital letters. Use of
capital letters is rare in Romabama. However, the use of capital letters for
"killed" c2 is preferable. eg. for
{moaK} seems to be better than {moahk}. The rational for this is, English <k> is
pronounced nearer to {hka.} than {ka.}. See Rule 03 for the use of capital
letters of the extended Latin alphabet.
Romabama Rule 03 - Extended Latin alphabet
Diacritics and other suitable signs are introduced:
• ä (Alt0228) in än for
{thé:thé:ting} for
:
• à (Alt0224) for denoting {re:hkya. a·thut}
ending in a killed non-nasal, as in {àt}
[I have been writing <aa> for this. However, I found
that it is not suitable
for writing vowels ending in killed non-nasals, I am
using à (Alt0224) tentatively.
• æ (Alt0230) in combination with Ñ (Alt0209) to denote {Ña.kri:thut} as in 
{kyæÑ}
• Æ (Alt0198) in combination with Ñ (Alt0209) to denote {vowel-letter Ña.kri:thut}
• É (Alt0201) for
{É},
• é (Alt0233) for
{é},
• è (Alt0232) for
{è}.
• ð (Alt0240) in row-3 akshara
{ða.}
(Caution: the vd-pronunciation of English-Latin
<th> is also given as /ð/)
• Ð (Alt0208) for row-3 akshara 
{Ða.}
• ï (Alt0239) and ~ to represent {king:si:}
• ì (Alt0236) for denoting {re:hkya. a·thut}
ending in a killed nasal, as in
{ ìñ}
• ñ (Alt0241) for
{ña.} and (Alt0209) for
{Ña.} both corresponding to <ny>;
• ý (Alt0253) for "killed {ya.}"
{ya.thut}
Note: Diacritics in Romabama are chosen in a way so that even if a diacritic is
lost, the effect would be minimal.
Continue reading on more extended Latin alphabet
Romabama Rule 5
Romabama Rule 04 - Silent e
• e without diacritic (the silent e) will be used occasionally for sounds of vowels followed by
"killed" consonants, e.g.
- 
{kate} (preferred {kait})
- 
{kane} (preferred
{kain})
• however, an <e> forming part of the peak vowel is not to be confused with the
silent e.
- 
{keik} -- the <e> present here is part of the peak vowel-digraph <ei>. It is a
monophthong.
- 
{keing}
(
{king}) -- the <e> present here is part of the peak vowel-digraph <ei>.
- 
{kauk} -- here <au> is the peak vowel-digraph. It is not a diphthong: it is a
monophthongal digraph.
Romabama Rule 05 - Killed consonants
- For specialized "killed" consonants
• 
{kyiñ}
• {kyæÑ}
• 
{kèý}
We find more problems with r2c5 rimes in the following:
There are theoretically 6 families involving r2c5 syllables. Only some are
realised in practice, however, I have given the tentatively chosen rimes:
1. 
-- {ñiñ}
2. 
/|njin. njin njin:|/ (MEDict 155) -- {ñìñ}
3. 
/|njin. njin njin:|/ (MEDict 158) -- {ñiñ}
4. 
-- {ñæÑ}
5. 
-- {ñàÑ}
6. 
/|nji. nji nji:|/ (MEDict 158) -- {ÑæÑ}
The rational for choosing the above is: though Romabama is meant only to show
the Burmese-Myanmar spelling, it should -- if possible -- show the
pronunciation. And, therefore the peak vowel is chosen arbitrarily, and it and
the following consonant (together the rime) is meant to show the pronunciation.
Go back to
Romabama Rule 3 - Extended Latin alphabet
Romabama Rule 06 - {king:si:} vowel-sign
{king:si:}
/|kin: si:|/ - n. ortho. miniature symbol of devowelized nga
superscripted on the following letter. -- MEDict016
Compare the way in which the two words
{hsing-kan:} and
{thïn~kan:} are written. The first is written horizontally, but the second is written with the {king:si:} (literally: "centipede-ridden") sign
.
There are two cues to show that a {king:si:} is involved: use of umlaut over the
peak vowel e.g. ï (Alt0239) and ~. The {king:si:} is actually not a conjoined
sign and may be written horizontally. It is usually found in words derived from
Pali and Sanskrit, e.g. Sanskrit-Myanmar
{koän~ku.ma.} (n. saffron -- MEDict024) equivalent to Burmese-Myanmar
{koän-ku.män}.
Romabama Rule 07 - Fossilized killed
consonants.
(Based on personal communication with U Tun Tint, formerly of MLC)
There are 4 fossilized characters dating back to the 13 century:
•
{nhÉIk}
derived from
{nheik}
•
{rwÉ}
derived from
{ruèý}
pronounced as /
/ /{rwé.}/
•
{iÉ}
derived from
{é.} --> {i.}
•
{lÉ-kaung:}
derived from
{læÑ-kaung:}
The derivation of
{rwÉ}
is illustrating. In the Pagan period (11th century to the 13th) and a few
centuries after, the vowel {tis-hkaung:nging ya.thut} had existed, but it has given way to
{kuèý} -->
{kwé}
{hsuèý} -->
{hswé}
{ruèý}
--> {rwé}
Romabama Rule 08 - non-alphabetic characters
- ASCII characters that are not considered to be part of the Latin alphabet will be used.
• {poad-hprat} (instead of 'comma') - /
• {poad-ma.} (instead of 'period' or 'full-stop') - //
• 'period' or 'full-stop' and 'colon' are used for the so-called "tones".
• 'hyphen' for separating syllables in the same word
• "middle dot" (Alt0183) will be used occasionally to show that
{a.} is to be pronounced as /ə/, e.g.
{a·ni}.
• ~ (tilde) will be used occasionally to show a ligature of two
akshara-consonants
• parentheses ( ) will be used by Romabama since it has been adopted as part of
Burmese-Myanmar.
Romabama Rule 09 - Extension of Myanmar akshara
row 2 to accommodate medials
- Though Burmese-Myanmar (and Pali-Myanmar) akshara matrix is strictly for base
consonants, Romabama has to admit the medial consonants
{kya.},
{hkya.} and
{gya.}
into row 2, to bring it in line with Pali-Latin akshara matrix.
Rule 09 may have to be further extended to accept {cha.} where <ch> will be considered not to be aspirated <c>, but as a diagraph as in <ng>.
Romabama gives only broad transcriptions.
("It's common to distinguish between two kinds of transcription, based on
how many details the transcribers decide to ignore:
• Narrow transcription: captures as many aspects of a specific
pronunciation as possible and ignores as few details as possible. Using
the diacritics provided in the IPA, it is possible to make very subtle
distinctions between sounds.
• Broad transcription (or phonemic transcription): ignores as many
details as possible, capturing only enough aspects of a pronunciation to
show how that word differs from other words in the language.
... one of the unspoken principles of broad transcription is that,
when you're given a choice between two symbols and when all other considerations
are equal (sometimes even when they aren't), you'll pick the one that's easier
to type." -- University of Manitoba, Linguistics Dept.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/index.shtml)
•
abugida:
An abugida, also called an
alphasyllabary, is a
writing system wherein the basic symbols represent a
consonant plus an
unmarked vowel. When a different vowel is wanted, a
diacritic or some other modification is made to the sign. The sign used to
indicate the vowel is dropped is called a
virama,
or a "
vowel killer".
The word "abugida" comes from the first few signs of the
Ethiopic
Amharic script, which is an example of an abugida.
Devanagari is another abugida, used in
India.
From:
http://www.everything2.org/index.pl?node=abugida -- For hyper-links in this
note to work go on-line.
Go back abugi-b1 | abugi-b
• alphabet
- n. 1. The letters of a language, arranged in the order fixed by
custom. 2. A system of characters or symbols representing sounds or
things. 3. The basic or elementary principles; rudiments. [Middle English
alphabete from Latin alphabētum from
Greek alphabētosalpha alpha; See alpha
b ēta beta; See beta ] -- AHTD
Go back alphabet-b
•
{auk-mris}
(dot-below)
n. Orthography name of symbol
; subscripted dot employed to produce a checked tone. -- MEDict 620.
Go back auk-mris-b |
auk-mris-b2
• Myanmar English Dictionary (MEDict)
by
MLC
(Myanmar Language Commission), 1993, pp 635
Please remember, that the present work is not a dictionary. Whenever you come
across a dictionary meaning attributed to MEDict, there is a strong possibility
that it is my interpretation of the original entry in the MEDict. And if there
were a mistake, it is mine.
Go back MEDict-b
• Sanskrit-Devanagari
The following is from: Introduction Why Study Sanskrit,
Introduction,
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/why_sans.php
• " Sanskrit, the vocabulary of which is derived from root syllables, is ideal
for coining new scientific and technological terms. The need to borrow words or
special scientific terms does not arise. "
• "Sanskrit comprises fifty one letters or aksharas. In other languages, we
refer to the letters of the alphabet of the language. We know that the word
alphabet is derived from the names of the first two letters of Greek. The term
alphabet has no other meaning except to denote the set of letters in the
language.
"In contrast, the word "akshara" in Sanskrit denotes something
fundamental and significant. One of the direct meanings of the word is that it
denotes the set of letters of Sanskrit from the first to the last. The word also
means that the sound of the letter does not ever get destroyed and thus
signifies the eternal quality of the sound of the letters. The consequence of
this meaning is that the sound of a word is essentially the sounds of the
aksharas in the word, a concept which will help simplify text to speech
applications with computers.
"There are two aspects of non destruction in the above explanation. The
first one refers to the phonetic characteristics of the language, i.e., in any
word, the aksharas retain their sound. The second aspect of non destruction,
amazingly, is that the aksharas retain their individual meanings as well! To
give an example, the word "guru" consisting of the aksharas "gu" and "ru" stands
for a teacher -- one who dispels darkness (ignorance) of the the mind (person). "gu"
means darkness and "ru" means the act of removal."
Curiously, all the three official publications of MLC, MOrtho, MEDict and
MMDict do not list {gu.ru.}. The following is from {pa-Li. a·Bi.Daan-hkyoap} by
{lèý-ti paN~ði.ta.} U Maung Gyi: (in Burmese-Myanmar)
• {gu.ru.} - n. teacher. -- p200.
Go back Sanskrit-b
• Velar consonant
Derived from the word "velar" adjective for velum or soft palate. Velar
consonants are formed by articulation with the back of the tongue touching or
near the soft palate, as /g/ in <good> and /k/ in <cup>.
These consonants
are usually described by Pali scholars as "gutturals".
velar adj. 1. a. Of or relating to a velum. b. Concerning or using the soft palate. 2. Linguistics Articulated with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate, as (g) in good and (k) in cup. n. Linguistics 1. A velar sound. -- AHTD
guttural adj. 1. Of or relating to the throat. 2. Having a harsh, grating quality, as certain sounds produced in the back of the mouth. 3. Linguistics Velar. [French from New Latin gutturālis from Latin guttur throat] -- AHTD
Go back velar-con-b
End of TIL file
