intro-vow.htm
by 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.
UKT: Based on
• Properties of Consonants and Vowels, Kevin Russell, Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA (Since the link no longer works, I have deleted it -- 071110)
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL), Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
(This source was downloaded in 2000 or a few years later, and instead of the original links, you can still get to them from: http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- UKT: 070823)
Contents of this page
Vowels Pitch-registers, Registers, and Tones
A simple experiment you can try
Cardinal vowels
- Vowel quadrilateral of Daniel Jones
Central vowel Schwa
Buddha and the vowels
UKT notes largely from Wikipedia for updating my knowledge
• checked and free vowels (short note in intro-voc.htm)
• consonant • Danu speaker
• Labialization
• lip postures
• rhotic
• tense and lax vowels
There are two terms consonants and vowels that had confused me before. I have also said that they are not necessarily grammatical terms. They are, first and foremost, terms applied to sound -- the human speech.
The distinction between consonants and vowels
is made in the following manner:
• if the air, once out of the glottis, is allowed to
pass freely through the resonators, the sound is a vowel
(not necessarily "a e i o u").;
• if the air, once out of the glottis, is obstructed,
partially or totally, in one or more places, the sound
is a consonant (not necessarily "b c d f g ...)
However, the line between vowels and consonants cannot be clearly drawn; a continuum exists between the two extremes. This implies that there are in the middle what should be called "semi-vowels" or "semi-consonants". But first, let's not get bogged down by the area in between, and concentrate on the vowel end of the spectrum.
We now begin answering: What makes vowels sound differently from each other in the same language, and across different languages?
For the present we will leave the diphthongs aside, because, I hold the view that diphthongs are special cases of English, and are not found in Burmese. To back up my view, I must point out to the difficulty that all Burmese-Myanmar students including myself, have faced in the United States where we found that our pronunciations of common English words such as <boy>, <cow>, <oil> are not understood because of our inability to pronounce the diphthongs. Since my view is bound to be disputed, there is nothing else to do but to leave them aside for a while: they will be treated in other chapters.
I am holding another radical view in connection with Burmese-Myanmar language: Burmese is not a tonal language. It is also described as a register language. But, since the word <register> is used in another sense in vocal music, the preferred term is <pitch register>. Burmese is now described as a pitch-register language. (UKT-fn01) The current view is that it has 3 to 4 registers or tones. It is usual for linguists to cite the following as the examples, which I have identified and have given in Romabama:
register #1: • Creaky /kʰa̰/ 'fee' --
{hka.} IPA [kʰă]
register #2: • Low /kʰà/ 'shake' --{hka} IPA [kʰa]
register #3: • High /kʰá/ 'be bitter' --{hka:} IPA [kʰaː]
register #4: • Checked /kʰaʔ/ 'draw off' --{hkap} IPA [kʰʌp] / [kʰʌʔ]
UKT: Please note I am not following the transcription of Ladefoged and others. Instead I am using IPA suprasegmentals.
(I have rearranged the order of the examples given in Wikipedia article to
reflect the way, we as children, were taught to pronounce our vowels.).
See Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_language 070918. See also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(phonology) 080401.
The following are my identifications of examples given in James A. Matisoff
(considered to be an authority on Southeast Asian Linguistics.
http://stedt.berkeley.edu/Matisoff/ 080401):
#1. Creaky - {la.} IPA [lă]; #2. Modal - {la}
[la]; #3. Breathy - {la:} [laː], and
Checked - {lûp} [lʌp] / [lʌʔ]
The vowel rectangle on the right is redrawn
from Kevin Russell's rectangle, adding a red rectangle
to differentiate the "checked vowels
[ɪ], [ɛ], [ʊ], [ɔ]
(always followed by a consonant -- in syllable ending in a consonant), from
the free vowels [i], [e], [u], [o] (in syllables which do not end in
consonants).
See Describing English vowels,
http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/russell/phonetics/articulation/describing-vowels.html
(download 070821).
Please note that, what Kevin Russell has given as "
tense and lax vowels" are "
free and checked vowels (b2)" respectively.
My vowel rectangle is to be taken as approximate,
because /æ/, a checked vowel, is outside the red rectangle.
I sometimes wonder if
{hkûp} really ends in a "glottal stop".
Is the "glottal stop" just a way of pronunciation
by the present-day common people of central Myanmar? Why is there another word,
{hkût} that must also be transcribed as
[kʰʌʔ] 'to beat or strike' (MEDict063), as opposed to
{hkûp} [kʰʌʔ] 'to draw off' (MEDict065) ?
The other possibility is that these two words
do not end in simple glottal stops,
and should be transcribed as
[kʰʌʔ(t)] and
[kʰʌʔ(p)], with parentheses around <t> and <p> to show
that they are not to be pronounced. I sometimes wonder whether the way of not
pronouncing the end consonant has been brought about by our lax way of
pronunciation. I have come to this idea after listening to my Danu friend
U Soe Myint's way of speaking. He always pointed out that the way the Danu group
speak is "old Burmese" and he cited as evidence the continual usage of words
that have become archaic in mainland Myanmar.
The fact that Burmese phonotactics
does not allow {hka.} to form a {ha.hto:} suggests that
there is already an aspiration (an element of "h") involved in the pronunciation of {hka.}.
That would not allow "more" aspiration
which a {ha.hto:} would bring about. {ha.hto:} is not even allowed for {ka.},
meaning that {ka.} also has an element of "h". Similarly, {ta.} is not allowed
to have a {ha.hto:}. This is the main reason why I have stopped using {tha.}
and have opted for {þa.} for
in my
works on Phonetics and Phonology.
When I say "Burmese is not a tonal language", I have at the back of my mind my understanding of what a tonal language is. Now, go online and listen to the tones of Cantonese, an undisputed tonal language. (from Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/vowels/chapter2/cantonese/recording2.2.html download 071024). Play.
The vowels {a} and {a:} are free vowels. {a} does not need much force to be produced, whereas {a:} needs more force. That is the reason why I have identified {a} as the modal tone (or normal tone). We can say that {a.} is {a} which has been pushed back into the interior of the throat: either pharyngalised or glottalized.
What is sometimes referred to as a tone, #4,
does not belong to {a. a a:} group. It is a
checked vowel. One requirement of a checked vowel
is that it must be followed by a consonant.
Therefore, it belongs the class of rimes where a vowel
is followed by a "killed" consonant,
i.e. {a.þût}. You might be tempted to comment,
"Since there are three classes of consonants,
{wag}, nasals, and {a.wag}, unless you specify the class
of consonant that is following the checked vowel,
it will be confusing." If you did comment,
you are perfectly right. In the example for checked vowel
given above, the consonant is {pa.} belonging to
{wag} consonants. If it is a nasal, it can
have 3 registers in exactly the same way as free vowels.
Case of killed consonant being a {wag}-consonant
{hkak} [kʰæk]
-- MEDict059: /[khe']/
{hkic} [kʰɪc]
-- from {ta.hkic-hkic-rèý} MEDict161: /[hki']/
{hkût} [kʰʌk] -- MEDict063: /[kha']/
{hkap} [kʰʌk] -- MEDict065: /[kha']
UKT: The above MEDict transcriptions are from the respective pages. Notice that the endings given by MLC are all glottal stops, whilst the vowels are shown changing from e --> i --> a . This shows that the killed consonant shown as a glottal stop is having an effect on the rime. That is why we should always consider the rime and not the individual vowel and coda consonant. It is also the reason why I am showing the coda consonant in Romabama.
Case of killed consonant being a nasal:
register #1: •
{hkan.} [kʰăn]
register #2: •
{hkan} [kʰan]
register #3: •
{hkan:} [kʰaːn]
Case of killed consonant being an {a.wag}-consonant:
{ya.} • 
{hkèý} [kʰe] (rhyming with <bell> [bel] ) -- only register #2 is realised.
The tongue, especially the tip, is the most active articulator in the production of speech. It is more important in the production of consonants than in the production of vowels. Let us leave the tongue tip aside for the time being and concentrate only on the tongue body, the dorsum and back (root), first. We will let the tongue tip stay in its neutral position without touching the teeth, or the roof of the oral cavity. And we will proceed with the following experiment where you will observe the tongue body moving up and down (vertical movement), and, front and back (horizontal movement).
Try saying the following pairs of sounds repeatedly,
paying attention to the change in the position of your tongue body.
If you are a native born Myanmar, say the Burmese-vowels, and if you are a native-English speaker or a non-Burmese say the IPA vowels.
• { i } - {au} | / i / - /ɑ/
• { i } - {u} | / i / - /u/
• { i } - {a} | / i / - /æ/
• {a} - {au} | /æ/ - /ɑ/
• {u} - {au} | /u/ - /ɑ/
You should be able to feel your tongue body move
forward, backward, up and down.
If you are not sure of your tongue's movements,
place your finger over your tongue and say the pairs again,
and you will notice how much your tongue is moving.
You can also look into a mirror to see what and how your lips
and tongue are doing when you are doing this experiment.
You will see that even your nostrils are taking part.
Or, you can record yourself with a camcorder for permanent record
to see the way you say your vowels. If you have a permanent record,
you will come to see that the way you say your vowels do change
over time as you become more and more exposed to seeing
(of course, hearing, as well) how people around you speak.
The tongue seems to be moving along the "red ellipse"
shown in the figures given. I have come across the "ellipse"
in more than one source on the internet: one of them
is Martin J. Ball's, Univ. of Ulster,
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/johnm/ball.htm download 071110
Note: Approximate lip postures and tongue positions are from: Robert Mannell, www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonetics/vowelartic/vowel_artic.html download 071111
In the figures for lip postures,
/ɔ/ is given instead of /ɑ/. There are many websites
on the internet in which you can listen to the sounds of the vowels, e.g.
•
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/vowels.html
071116
•
http://www.kisa.ca/ipa-vowels.html 071116
Listen to the series, what are described as "free back vowels": /u/, /o/,
/ɔ/ and /ɒ/. To our Burmese ears, my wife and I,
have "identified" them as sound-alikes of /u/ = {u} ; {o} = /o/ ; {au} =
/ɒ/. And /ɔ/ seems to be
somewhere in between {o} and {au}.
You can read more on lip positions in Resonant articulations, in
Principles of Phonetics by John Laver, Cambridge Univ. Press, p278-280.
We now know that a vowel can be described in terms of height (how far the tongue body can move up in the mouth cavity), and back-ness (how far the tongue body can move into the interior of the mouth cavity). In other words, we can represent a vowel graphically by plotting the back-ness as the X-axis and height as the Y-axis. The graph can be plotted in two ways. First, by plotting the axes as shown by the blue lines, or second, as shown by the green lines. The origin of the blue axes is chosen arbitrarily, however, that of the green lines is chosen as the most "natural" position of the individual person's tongue. Since individuals (even siblings in the same human family such as the Tun family) pronounce their vowels slightly differently, the most logical way is to plot the vowels with the origin of the plot at most natural position of the tongue.
I suggest you listen to what the sounds /a i u ɑ/ are like by going online to UCLA http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/vowels.html . To me, who is partially deaf in the right ear, these sounds are like the Burmese-Myanmar {a i u au}. Now, click on schwa /ə/, and try to emulate it. You can compare what you heard with how you pronounce it. Ask a different person for his or judgment.
I will do the experiment again. But this time, since I am more sure of my Burmese-Myanmar vowels, I will start saying:
{a} --> { i } --> {u} --> {au}
-- Burmese-Myanmar vowel register (or tone) #2. What my wife and I heard by clicking on UCLA vowels are: {a} = /a/ ; { i } = /i/ ; {u} = /u/ ; {au} = /ɑ/.If you were to go online and search for "vowel register", you will come across:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(phonology) download 070916 on Burmese language, and
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_language download 070916 on Mon language.
Caveat: Wikipedia is updated or modified all the time, and you may not get what I got. See the Wikipedia article in which Burmese is described as a register language in my notes.Don't forget that /æ/ is a checked vowel, and a consonant must immediately follow it. This is not the case with /a/, which is a free vowel. Schwa /ə/, is neither checked nor free, and cannot occur in stressed syllables.
Now, say these four again in front of a mirror and see your lips moving. Your lips are in a normal position and a bit open ("spread position") when you say {a}, but becomes very "round" when you say {au}.
It is very instructive to see how a North American (Canadian and U.S.) newscaster or an anchor speaks. You will see all kinds of lip positions, and my description of the shapes as "spread" and "round" should be taken only in a figurative sense.
Now, instead of saying only the four vowels,
let's say the following in two parts:
{a} --> {èý} --> {é} --> {i} and
Now listen to what the sounds /a ɛ e i/ and /u o ɑ/ are
like by going online to UCLA
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/vowels.html . To my wife Daw
Than Than Tun and I, we found that :
{a} = /a/ ; {èý} = /ɛ/ ; {é} = /e/ ; {i} = /i/ ; and,
{u} = /u/ ; {o} = /o/ ; {au} = /ɑ/.
This was what we had found out after listening again and again. We agreed between us, the sounds were not exactly alike, but that was the best we could come up. Even now, three years after my wife had passed away, I listening to the above list again (071118), I still stand by the conclusion that we had came up with many years ago.
You will observe that when you say
{a} --> --> {èý} --> {é} --> {i}, your tongue stays in the front
of your mouth, and your lips are not-rounded, but spread out differently for
each sound.
For that reason, they are described as front vowels. However, when you say
1. Front vowels: front-spread
2. Back vowels: back-round{u} --> {o} --> {au} .
Another observation which you would make is the tongue not only moves front and
back, but up and down as well. And so there's another way to classify the
vowels: high vowels and low vowels. Or, by describing by how close the tongue
gets to the roof of the mouth. The high vowels are therefore described as
close vowels, and low vowels as open vowels. However, the term
close-open can mean slightly differently to other linguists. See diagram on the
left.
There are 3 sounds which I would like you to listen
to in UCLA vowels: /ɛ ɜ ɔ/. To my ears, /ɛ/ is similar
to Burmese-Myanmar
{èý}.
In saying the front vowels
{a} --> {èý} --> {é} --> {i}, the tongue body seems to move almost
"vertically" up. But in saying the back vowels, the body seems to be moving not
only farther back but also getting lower and lower. In other words, the movement
is not a straight vertically down movement, but noticeably along an arc.
It is said that, you can have front-rounded and back-spread, also. But, I am unable to articulate these sounds.
The red ellipse can easily fit into a quadrilateral shown above as 'cardinal vowels'. This is essentially what is given in DJPD16 p.83 as Cardinal vowels of Daniel Jones who worked it out early in the 20th century. I have added a few more, and some Burmese-Myanmar vowels.
Vowels are also classified by the highest point reached by the tongue body in the vertical and horizontal directions. We typically divide these into three slices:
• height (openness / closeness)
-- high, mid, low (or)
-- close, mid, open (the two ways of description is used interchangeably)
• front-ness / back-ness
-- front, central, back.
(Be careful: mid and central are not the same! Schwa /ə/, occupying the center of the quadrilateral, is the only one that can be called central vowel. Vowel immediately above or below it are mid vowels.)
However, the height reached by the tongue is not clearly visible in all vowels, you can also get confused with the registers or tones. So, I prefer to classify the vowels not only by the tongue position but by lip-rounding as well.
POA for pulmonic consonants are well described in IPA system and Eastern Phonemic systems. My problem was to come up with the POA for vowels until I came across the Polar chart of vowels in J. Laver's Principles of Phonetics. The following is a unified table of consonants and vowels, I have drawn:
I have already said that the vowel at the "centre" is known as schwa with IPA symbol /ə/. It is the "neutral un-rounded" vowel, and it does not require either a horizontal or a vertical tongue movement. Although its exact position can vary from utterance to utterance (the main point is English speakers don't care what its position is), it will tend to be pronounced with the tongue body at its most neutral position, that is, mid and central.
UKT: If you are like me, always sketching diagrams and figures, you would like to known where the "centre" is on a vowel diagram. Undoubtedly the "centre" must lie on the straight line extending from /i/ to /ɑ/, and another straight line from /u/ to /a/ -- i.e. where the two lines bisect.
UKT: When I, together with my wife Daw Than Than, started learning Phonetics by ourselves just before 2000 (in our old age -- after teaching Chemistry for well over 30 years in the various universities in Myanmar), we could only do so while we were in Canada. Once back in Myanmar we had no Internet access. Now that Internet is fully accessible in Myanmar, you can hear vowels online. A very good site is Peter Ladefoged, A Course in Phonetics, http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/vowels.html . You will find the vowel quadrilateral, and you can click on the symbols to hear the vowel sounds. -- UKT 070818.
The Burmese vowel {a} being said "lightly" is schwa / ə / (U0259). In the Burmese-Myanmar system of vowels there is no sign or glyph assigned to this vowel.
According to Dr. U KoLay schwa /ə/ is to be found in Burmese compound words such as:
{kam:pa:}/[kam: pa:]/ where /kam:/ is lightly pronounced as /kə/.
{a.lwam:}/[a. lwam:]/ where the first syllable is pronounced as /ə/
{pu.hkak}/[pu. hkak]/ where the first part is pronounces as /pə/
It is sometimes known as an atonic vowel. -- personal communication with Dr. U KoLay, Lecturer in Linguistics, Univ. of Yangon. (UKT: However "atonic vowel" is not listed in dictionaries.)
When I am asked to describe schwa /ə/, I usually give the example{a.ni} meaning "red" colour. We do not emphasize {a.}, but say it very lightly. If Romabama were to be used to give the pronunciation, I would give either /{â.ni}/ or /{â|ni}/ (Alt0226), where {â} = /ə/.
In the akshara systems, the consonant characters (graphemes) have
an inherent vowel sound imbedded in it, and so all
consonant aksharas are pronounceable. This is not the
case in the alphabetic system, where the letters have
to be supplied with vowels to pronounce them. Thus,
{ka.} has a sound of its own /ka/, and even a meaning:
<to dance>. This is not the case with the English-Latin
<k> /k/. To be able to pronounce it, you have
to supply it with a vowel such as <a> /a/.
/k/ -- not pronounceable
/k/ + /a/ --> /ka/ -- pronounceable (a syllable).
Now, what is this inherent vowel that is so important to the akshara systems, but not for the alphabetic?
My question all these years, after I came across the inherent vowel in the section on Devanagari script, in The Unicode Standard, version 4.0, Chapter 9, Unicode Consortium, http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/ch09.pdf , is to pin down what the inherent vowel is, in terms of English-Latin. Is it the English short <a> /a/? Or, /æ/ (the checked vowel)? Or, /ə/? And how should it be represented in Romabama? Since, only ASCII letters are allowed in Romabama, "ə" (a non-ASCII character) is excluded, leaving only <a> and <æ>. I have used them both, but {a} is preferred because it is easier to write.
There has always been a language problem between
the otherwise peaceful Sanskrit speakers, in particular
the Brahmins or {poaN~Na:}, and the Tibeto-Burmese
speakers from the time of Gautama Buddha until today
as can still be seen in the language problem in Manipur of Assam
in eastern modern India. One of the Sanskrit-derived
Bishnupriya Manipuri language-speaker (BPM) writes:
" ... it is a fact that Magadhi Prakrit was the language of demons and the low-caste fellows whose tongues were not so sharp but very slow to utter any thing; whereas the tongues of the BPM speakers are very sharp to utter any of the Indo-European languages having a close affinity with the original I.E.. sounds. " -- Ashim Kumar Singha , http://manipuri.freeservers.com/ (020815) . The author has since taken out this sentence from his webpage for which he is to be commended.
As a personal note, I should add: after coming across Ashim Kumar Singha on the internet, I corresponded with him. And in one of my visits to Myanmar, I went see one of the Manipuri-Myanmars, a noted astrologer (actually a student of ancient astronomy now commonly called "astrology") by the name of Saya Kalasan in Yangon. The Manipuri-Myanmars as an ethnic group have been living in Myanmar for centuries and we call them {poaN~Na:}. My knowledge of Hindu Predictive-Astronomy is always an ice-breaker with the Brahmins, and I learned from him the sad story of the disappearance of the Manipuri language in his community. According to him, one of the then government ministers, a high ranking colonel in the Myanmar Army, was a descendant of BPM who did not even know it. Saya Kalasan sadly related what is well known: that the disappearance of the language is the beginning of the disappearance of an ethnic group. The story of Saya Kalasan is actually my own story who as an ethnic Burmese-Myanmar, is seeing the disappearance of the Burmese-Myanmar language in the Myanmar communities living outside the country of Myanmar. And my present efforts are partly to impart the Burmese-Myanmar language and culture to my own grandsons Maung Kan Tun (born in Scotland) and Maung Thit Tun (born in Canada). And I am proud to say they both speak Burmese just like anyone born in Myanmar.
It is in the pronunciation of
{au:} that my good friend U Tun Tint and I do not agree. According to him,
should be written as {o} as in Pali-Latin, claiming that
it is {pa-Li. thän} or the "sound of Pali". I reminded him
that the sound-recording machines were non-existent when
Pali was a live-language, and what he is supposing
to be the "sound of Pali" is just a variation spoken
by the present-day Buddhist monks in India and Sri Lanka.
That variety has become
rhotic
due to the influence of Sanskrit of the Brahmins.
When Magadhi (the eastern dialect of Pali) was being spoken by the Buddha and Asoka, it must have been a Tibeto-Burmese language with almost no [r] sounds (contrast with [ɹ] sound) just like every other language of the group (Burmese included). (This supposition of mine is bound to be disputed especially by those who would like to group Tibeto-Burman with Tibeto-Chinese.) Pali, the western dialect was under the heavy influence of Sanskrit, the language of the Hindu Brahmins, who claimed themselves to be of Aryan descent. (Remember, the Theory of Aryan Invasion of India is now disputed. See Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory download 070925) Buddha went as far as to proscribe the use of Sanskrit (the language of Hindu Brahmins) in reciting Buddhist scriptures, probably because of its insistence of "correct pronunciation" of the vowels -- the short and the long vowels. See The Language Problem of Primitive Buddhism, by Chi Hisen-lin, Journal of the Burma Research Society, XLIII, i, June 1960. The paper is available online http://www.chibs.edu.tw/publication/LunCong/004/69_90.htm (download 070806). Buddha knew that the essence of a language is in the "meaning" it carries, not the fine details of pronunciation, and laid down a canonical rule.
The incident is mentioned in the Cullavagga, V. 33. 1, there is narrated the following story:
Now there were two Bhikkhus surnamed Yamelutekula, who were brothers born in a Brahman family. They had good voice and were expert in conversation. They came to the presence of the Blessed One, to whom they paid their homage and sat aside. After having taken their seat, the two Bhikkhus said to the Blessed One,
"Bhante, now the Bhikkhus with different family names and personal names, of different social ranks and families, have come to join the Order. With their own vernaculars they have marred the Buddha's words. Please permit us to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit."
The Buddha reproached them, saying,
"You fools, how dare you say, 'Please permit us to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit!' Fools, by doing so you could neither induce those who did not have faith in the Buddha to have faith in him, nor could you enhance the faith of those who already had it in the Buddha. You could only help those who did not believe in the Buddha and change the mind of those who already believed in him."
After having reprimanded them, he preached the Dhamma for them, and then said to the Bhikkhus (-- The Vinaya Pitakam, ed. by Hermann Olderberg, Vol. II, The Cullavagga, London, 1880, p. 139):
"Bhikkhus, you are not allowed to express the Buddha's words in Sanskrit. Those who act contrarily will be considered as having committed the offence of Dukkata
{doak~ka.Ta.}."
Anujānāmi bhikkhave sakāya niruttiyā buddhavacanaṃ pariyāpunituṃ
Please note that Hinduism and Buddhism are poles apart.
Hinduism is based on the belief in Atta, the indestructible
Soul and the existence of a Creator (or God), whereas
Buddhists believe in the changing nature of everything
(the Principle of Anatta). To the Buddhists, the idea of
a creator is just an idea and nothing else.
UKT: Pix from Social Classes and Castes in Ancient India -- http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/India/Class_Caste.html Pix on the shows a modern artist's impression of the four social classes of Ancient India: 1. Kshatriyas
{hkat~ti.ya.} or rulers and warriors, 2. Brahmins or scribes/scholars (standing next to the rulers), 3. Vaishyas or the working class of traders and farmers, 4. Shudras or common labourers. There were peoples outside these 4 classes, known as Chandalas
{saN~ða-la.} or the outcastes or "untouchables", who were not allowed to live in the villages and towns. Chandalas were allowed into the villages and towns to collect garbage and night-soil (human excrement).
Not many Myanmar-Buddhists know about Jainism,
even though it is mentioned in the Buddhist texts.
The Jains, similar to the Buddhists do not believe
that there is a supreme being, God or Brahma,
who was the creator. Because of very similar beliefs,
the Buddhist monks and the Jain monks were quite friendly
to each other. That was not the case with the
Hindu ascetics. There is one story, where the Buddha
and a Jain monk (mentioned as a {ni.gaN-hta. ra.han:} --
I will have to check the spelling and the Buddhist text:
right now I am writing out of my memory and from Childers p280 -- 1st
syllable: नि ),
were discussing "sins of the previous lives".
The episode took place at {gaiz~Za.ku-Ta.}-hill,
where the Jain monk was "meditating".
The Buddha asked the monk, how did the monk know
there were previous lives, let alone the "sins".
-- UKT 070821
Jainism n. 1. An ascetic religion of India, founded in the sixth century B.C. , that teaches the immortality and transmigration of the soul and denies the existence of a perfect or supreme being. -- AHTD
Some variations in spelling of the Vulture's Peak
{gaiz~Za.ku-Ta.}-hill = Vulture's Peak, UHS-Dict161
GIJJHAKUṬO - Childers p147
Gridhrakuta, or Vulture's Peak
Similar to the Buddhists, Jains also were at odds with the Hindu Brahmans as the following shows:
According to Jaina legend, Mahavira (UKT: the founder of Jainism) was to be borne by a Brahmin woman but his embryo was transferred to that of a Kshatriya (UKT:
UKT: Burmese-Myanmar system of writing is an abugida and the syllables are of the general form CVÇ where Ç is a killed consonant. Free vowels are those found in syllables of the form CV. Even in syllables of the form CVÇ that end in "killed" {a.that} consonants, (VÇ) is a "vowel". Here the "killed" aksharas are those of the {wag}-division excluding the nasals, and {a.wag}-consonants. Vowels of CV syllables are free vowels, and those of C(VÇ) are checked vowels. Free vowels can have 3 registers (usually described as tones) of the form {a. a a:} which can be differentiated from each other by their lengths. Burmese is one of the rare languages that have very short duration or register #1 [ă]. Most of the Indic languages, have only short and long vowels. Register #1 is commonly described as "creaky tone". Middle register, #2, is described as "modal". See The Analysis of Voice Quality in Speech Processing, by Eric Keller, Informatique et méthodes mathématiques (IMM), Faculté des Lettres, Unversité de Lausanne, Switzerland, eric.keller@unil.ch www.unil.ch/webdav/site/imm/users/ekeller/public/keller/Keller_04_VoiceQuality.pdf downloaded 071101. You will see my HTML version, vq-keller-analysis.htm, in my library. Register #3 {a:} may be viewed as made up of two segments [a] and [ː] or [aː]. (Note in [ă] [ː] [aː], I have used the suprasegmentals).
The following is from:
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checked_and_free_vowels download 071006
In phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that usually must be followed by a consonant in a stressed syllable, while free vowels are those that may stand in a stressed open syllable with no following consonant.
stressed syllable. In multi-syllable words one syllable is stressed with clear pronunciation while the other syllables tend to be glided over. -- http://esl.about.com/b/a/256791.htm
Usage of the terms:
The terms checked vowel and free vowel originated in English phonetics and phonology. They are seldom used for the description of other languages, even though a distinction between vowels that usually have to be followed by a consonant and those that do not have to is common in most Germanic languages.
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel respectively, but many linguists prefer to use the terms checked and free as there is no clear cut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness, and since by most attempted definitions of tenseness /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ are considered lax, even though they behave in American English as free vowels.
Checked vowels is also used to refer to a kind of very short glottalized vowels found in some Zapotecan languages that contrast with laryngealized vowels. the term checked vowel is also used to refer to a short vowel followed by a glottal stop in Mixe, where there is a distinction between two kinds of glottalized syllable nuclei: checked ones, with the glottal stop after a short vowel, and nuclei with rearticulated vowels (a long vowel with a glottal stop in the middle).
Checked and free vowels in General American English:
The checked vowels are:
• /ɪ/ as in bit
• /ɛ/ as in bet
• /æ/ as in bat
• /ʊ/ as in put
• /ʌ/ as in putt
The free vowels (comparable to those of Burmese-Myanmar) are:
• /i/ as in bee
• /e/ (also transcribed /eɪ/) as in bay
• /u/> as in boo
• /o/ (also transcribed /oʊ/) as in toe, no
• /ɔ/ as in paw (doesn't occur in varieties with the
low back merger).
• /ɑ/ as in bra
The free vowels (not found in Burmese-Myanmar):
• /ɝ/ as in burr
• /aɪ/ as in buy
• /aʊ/ as in cow, now
• /ɔɪ/ as in boy
The schwa /ə/ and rhotacized schwa /ɚ/ are usually considered neither free nor checked, since they cannot stand in stressed syllables at all.
Go back check-free-vow-wiki-b2
From:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant download 071112
• [Shin] Narada Thera, An Elementary Pali Course, http://www.vipassana.info/pali_contents.htm download 071111
• R. C. Childers, et al., A Dictionary of Pali Language, 1909, 5th impr: 1974From Wikipedia
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by complete or partial closure of the upper vocal tract, the upper vocal tract being defined as that part of the vocal tract that lies above the larynx.
The word consonant comes from Latin and means "sounding with" or "sounding together," the idea being that consonants don't sound on their own, but occur only with a nearby vowel, which is the case in Latin. However, this conception is not adequate, since in languages such as Nuxálk, consonants may occur without any vowels.
Since the number of consonants in the world's languages is much greater than the number of consonant letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the (IPA) to assign a unique symbol [UKT: grapheme] to each possible consonant. In fact, the Latin alphabet, which is used to write English, has fewer consonant letters [UKT: grapheme] than English has consonant sounds [UKT: phoneme] , so some letters represent more than one consonant, and digraphs like "sh" and "th" are used to represent some sounds. Many speakers aren't even aware that the "th" sound in "this" is a different consonant from the "th" sound in "thing". (In the IPA they're [ð] and [θ], respectively.)
From: Shin Narada (note the transcriptions given are not IPA)
The Pāḷi
[
{pa-Li.}] Alphabet consists of forty-one letters, - eight vowels and
thirty-three consonants [Vyañjana] .
8 Vowels (Sara
{þa.ra.})
a , ā , i , ī , u , ū , e , o
33 Consonants (Vyañjana)
From: Childers, et al., p592
vyañjanaṁ or byañjanaṁ . A consonant, a letter, word; the words or letters as opposed to sense; sign, mark, characteristic; sauce, condiment, curry.
UKT: Childers gives 2 variations of spellings. I will take the two one after the other:
• vyañjanaṁ . Concentrating on the first conjunct:
व + ् + य --> व्य , and equating to the corresponding Burmese-Myanmar, I get
{wa.} + {a.that} + {ya.} --> {wya.}
• byañjanaṁ . Concentrating on the first conjunct:
ब + ् + य --> ब्य
{ba.} + {a.that} + {ya.} --> {bya.} . This corresponds to the onsets in Burmese-Myanmar{byæÑ:}, and in Pali-Myanmar
{byiñ-za.na.} / {byiñ~za.na.}
Go back consonant-note-b
UKT: During my work as the Head of Chemistry Department in Taunggyi, I became very friendly with U Soe Myint, the superintendent of the Principle's office. He belonged to the {Da.nu.} ethnic group -- one of the ancient Burmese groups which had only scant relationships with the majority of the population. We were of the same age. He was a onetime Buddhist monk and had considerable knowledge of the Shan States of Burma under the British rule. His pronunciations were quite different from ours: he tended to pronounce his end consonants slightly. I was given to understand that it was how most of the {Da.nu}-people pronounce the "killed" consonants. He always emphasized that the Danu dialect is actually ancient Burmese -- still using archaic Burmese words. If that is so, it would be wrong to say that the process of "killing" an akshara results in a glottal stop. Whether {a.that} should be called a pharyngeal stop or something else needs to be looked at by bona fide linguists. For the time being, I propose to change the transcription of the above 3 examples as:
{hkak} - /kʰæʔ/ --> /kʰækˀ/
{hkat} - /kʰaʔ/ --> /kʰatˀ/
{hkap} - /kʰaʔ/ --> /kʰʌpˀ/
Go back Danu-USoeMyint
UKT: I have come to realised that formation of medial {wa.hswè:} amounts to labialisation. Most of the Burmese-Myanmar consonants, except those in r3, and those exclusively used for writing Pali, can form {wa.hswè:}.
From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labialization download 070812
Labialisation is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally used to refer to consonants. When vowels involve the lips, they are usually called rounded.
The most common form of labialisation is rounding of dorsal consonants such as <k>, <g>, and <q>. With non-dorsal consonants, labialisation prototypically involves velarization as well, so it might more accurately be called labiovelarisation. However, this is not always the case, and labialisation is not restricted to lip-rounding.
UKT: I had never realised that <w> is a semi-vowel, until I was pointed out in Australia that my pronunciation of <cow> was not correct. However, the person could never explain to me why it was not. She should have pointed out that the <w> in it was a semi-vowel but neither she nor I were linguists. I should have pronounced <cow> /kaʊ/ (DJPD16 p126) not as a pure /{kaung}/ but with a trace of /{kau:}/.
The labialisation of <k , g> in Burmese-Myanmar is the formation of medials as shown below:
{ka.} + {wa.} --> {kwa.}/kʷ/ .
{ga.} + {wa.} --> {gwa.}
In the IPA, labio-velarization of consonants is indicated with a raised w modifier / ʷ / (U02B7), as in /kʷ/. There are also diacritics, respectively [ɔ̹], [ɔ̜], to indicate greater or lesser degrees of rounding. These are normally used with vowels, but may occur with consonants. For example, in the Athabaskan language Hupa, voiceless velar fricatives distinguish three degrees of labialization, transcribed either /x/, /x̹/, /xʷ/ or /x/, /x̜ʷ/, /xʷ/.
The Extended IPA has two additional symbols for degrees of rounding: Spread /ɹ͍/ and open-rounded /ʒœ/. It also has a symbol for labialdentalized sounds, /tʋ/.
If precision is desired, the Abkhaz and Ubykh articulations may be transcribed with the appropriate fricative or trill raised as a diacritic: [tv], [tβ], [tʙ], [tp].
For simple labialization, Ladefoged and Maddieson resurrected an old IPA symbol, [ ̫]. In Shona, /s̫/ and /z̫/ contrast with /s/ and /z/, and in some dialects with /sw/, /zw/, /s̫w/, /z̫w/] as well. The open rounding of English /ʒœ/ is also simple (unvelarized).
Labial assimilation:
Labialisation also refers to a specific type
of assimilatory process where a given sound become
labialised due to the influence of neighboring labial sounds.
For example, /k/ may become /kʷ/ in the environment
of /o/, or /a/ may become /o/ in the environment of
/p/ or /kʷ/.
In the Northwest Caucasian languages as well as some Australian languages rounding has shifted from the vowels to the consonants, producing a wide range of labialized consonants and leaving in some cases only two phonemic vowels. This appears to have been the case in Ubykh and Eastern Arrernte, for example. The labial vowel sounds usually still remain, but only as allophones next to the now-labial consonant sounds.
Go back labialisation-wiki-b
Note to myself: this note may have to be taken out.
The rounding and spreading (un-rounding) of the lips is especially common across languages. But it is logically possible for any tongue body position to co-occur with either rounding or spreading. For example, the vowel transcribed as [y] -- the u of French lune [lyn] 'moon' or the ü of German grün [gryn] 'green' -- is nothing more than an [ i ] pronounced with the lips rounded instead of spread.
From:
• Robert Mannell, www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/phonetics/vowelartic/lip_posture.html download 071111
• John Laver, Resonant articulations, in Principles of Phonetics, 1994, p.278-279
UKT: Lip postures is mostly described in terms of lip rounding. However, we must remember that lip rounding is always accompanied by lip protrusion or pouting.Robert Mannell:
This diagram displays the two extreme lip postures and two intermediate lip postures. The high front cardinal vowel [ i ] has a very spread lip posture. The high back cardinal vowel [u] has a very tightly rounded lip posture. The low front cardinal vowel [a] has a spread lip posture but this is a more neutral posture than for [ i ] because the lower jaw position for this vowel causes the lips to be more open. The half-open back cardinal vowel [ɔ] has a rounded lip posture but the lips are more open then for [u] because of the lower jaw position.
UKT: Assuming the overall shape of the lips to be an oval, I actually measured the "approximate" drawings given, and found the ratio of minor/major axes to be:
[a] = 0.6, [i] = 0.4, [u] = 1.0 and [ɔ] = 1.1 . Because the drawings are approximate, I can only point out the contrast between the contrastive pairs of [ i ] : [ɔ] = (0.4):(1.1), and [a] : [u] = (0.6):(1.0). The roundness of the back vowels is very prominent. The front vowels are only half as round as the back vowels. I have estimated the "roundness" on the photographs of the lips given by http://www.let.uu.nl/~audiufon/images/lips2.jpg , and have come to the same conclusion. The contrast between the low front-vowel /a/ {a} and low back-vowel /ɑ/ {au} (measured on the photographs is still quite striking -- [a] : [ɑ] = (0.55):(0.75). This should be pointed out by the ESL teachers to their students.
The actual lip posture for vowels in any particular language may be similar to that of the closest cardinal vowel with the same lip posture feature, but often speakers of many languages adopt a more neutral posture than would be indicated by these cardinal vowels. Languages that have lip posture contrasts are more likely to adopt the more extreme lip posture to emphasise those contrasts. For example, a language with the vowel phonemes / i / and /y/ (such as French) tend to have a strongly spread / i / and a strongly rounded /y/ to maximise their difference perceptually. Languages without rounding contrasts, such as English, may relax the degree of rounding of rounded vowels and the degree of spreading of spread vowels. In English the extent to which this is true varies from dialect to dialect. For example, Australian English is often described as having rounded vowels which are spoken by many speakers with less rounding than similar vowels in some other dialects of English. This impression may be due, however, to the observation that /ʉː/ in Australian English is less rounded than /uː/ in American English. This difference in degree of rounding may simply be due to the fact that the American phoneme is a high back vowel and the Australian phoneme is a high central vowel. There is a tendency for front vowels to be less rounded than back vowels in the absence of a rounding contrast (although there are exceptions to this tendency).
John Laver:
In traditional description of vocoid articulations the configuration of the lips
is described with 3 main labels: spread, neutral and rounded.
In the terms introduced in this section the non-rounded vocoids shown in Fig. 10
are divided into those with spread and those with neutral lip positions.
The voicoids with close tongue positions (front [i], central [ɨ],
and back [ɯ]) and close-mid tongue positions (front [e] and back [ɤ]) have a
spread lip position; those with open-mid tongue positions (front [ɛ] and back
[ʌ]) and open tongue positions (front [a] and back [ɑ]) all have neutral lip
positions.
See lip positions of the 8 primary cardinal vowels, pronounced by Daniel Jones. Note the relative spreading in the upper 4 panels (front, unrounded vowels) and the relative rounding in the latter 4 (back, rounded vowels). http://www.let.uu.nl/~audiufon/images/lips2.jpg . I have split up the eight and have given them below for my discussion of the Burmese-Myanmar vowels.
This insert is from : http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/transcription/ipa/ipa_vowel.html
"... the "vowel quadrilateral" roughly represents tongue position, with positions to the left of the diagram representing vowels produced with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth and with positions to the right of the diagram representing vowels produced with the tongue moved towards the back of the mouth. Similarly, high positions on the table represent vowels produced with a high tongue position and low positions on the table represent vowels produced with a low tongue position. The third dimension on this table (represented implicitly by the paired vowels) represents lip posture (spread versus round lips) (See lip-posture in my notes."
Before we go further, let us re-do our experiment before a mirror, and pronounce /a/, /ɛ/, /e/, /i/
If you are a native-born Burmese-Myanmar as I am, pronounce
{a} --> {èý} --> {é} --> {i}
And you can conclude that:
UKT: /e/ is more appropriately described by {é}. From this conclusion, I would have to say, with all due respect to my friends (including my former teachers) at MLC, that the transcription given for
{É / é} as /[ei]/ (MEDict613) is inappropriate, especially because
Now, pronounce /u/, /o/, /ɔ/, /ɑ/.
As before, I have to pronounce my Burmese-Myanmar back vowels,
because I am more sure of them:
{u} --> {o} --> {au}
From the sequence of the above photographs of Daniel Jones,
I have to conclude that /o/ is appropriate for Burmese-Myanmar
{o}.
Go back lip-pos-note-b
UKT: this note is based on Information Panel on Rhotic (DJPD16 p458), and Treatment of /r/ in the Introduction (DJPD16 p.xiv). These two sections are important for Burmese-Myanmar speakers since Burmese, unlike American English and Pali-Latin, is a non-rhotic language. Myanmars found it extremely difficult to pronounce English words with /r/ in the word-final position. Even the /r/ as the onset in the syllable is pronounced as /j/ (equivalent of English [y]) by most people. The /r/ is properly pronounced in Rakhine State. It is also properly pronounced by Burmese-Buddhist monks especially when reciting the religious text {kam~ma.wa sa}. See the meaning of {kam~ma.wa} in MEDict024.
In rhotic varieties of English pronunciation the /r/ PHONEME is found in all phonological contexts.
In BBC pronunciation, /r/ is found before vowels, and never before consonants or before a pause (see also LIAISON), e.g.:
<red> /red/
<around> /əˈraʊnd/
<there is> /ðər ɪz/
In US English and other rhotic accents, on the other hand, /r/ may occur before consonants and before a pause, e.g.:
<cart> /kɑːt/ (US) /kɑːrt/
<car> /kɑːʳ/ (US) /kɑːr/
While the BBC accent is non-rhotic, many accents of the British Isles are rhotic, including most of the south and West of England, much of Wales and all of Scotland and Ireland. Most speakers of American English speak with a rhotic accent, but there are non-rhotic areas including the Boston area, lower-class New York and the Deep South.
Treatment of /r/
The accent used for British English is classed as non-rhotic -- the phoneme /r/ is not usually pronounced except when a vowel follows it. The American pronunciations, on the other hand, do show a rhotic accent, and in general in the accent described, /r/ is pronounced where the letter [r] is found in the spelling.
It is necessary to show, in British English entries,
cases of potential pronunciation of /r/, mainly
in word-final position; in other words, it is
necessary to indicate, in a word such as <car>,
that though the word when said in isolation does not
have /r/ in the pronunciation
Go back rhotic-note-b
Excerpt from: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenseness download 071009
In general, tense vowels are more close (and correspondingly have lower first formants) than their lax counterparts. Tense vowels are sometimes claimed to be articulated with a more advanced tongue root than lax vowels, but this varies, and in some languages it is the lax vowels that are more advanced, or a single language may be inconsistent between front and back or high and mid vowels (Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996, 302–4). The traditional definition, that tense vowels are produced with more "muscular tension" than lax vowels, has not been confirmed by phonetic experiments. Another hypothesis is that lax vowels are more centralized than tense vowels. There are also linguists who believe that there is no phonetic correlation to the tense-lax opposition.
In many Germanic languages, such as RP English, standard German, and Dutch, tense vowels are longer in duration than lax vowels; but in other languages, such as Scots, Scottish English, and Icelandic, there is no such correlation.
Since in Germanic languages, lax vowels generally only occur in closed syllables, they are also called checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels as they can occur at the end of a syllable.
Go back tense-lax-vow-wiki-b2
UKT-fn01
Robert Jones, 1986. Pitch register languages, pp 135-136, in John McCoy &
Timothy Light eds., Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studiesviews the
differences as: "resulting from the intersection of both pitch registers and
voice registers […] Clearly Burmese is not tonal in the same sense as such other
languages and therefore requires a different concept, namely that of pitch
register." -- cited in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(phonology) 080401
Go back UKT-fn01b
End of TIL file.
