Update: 2005-03-16 05:37 AM -0500

Top

U Kyaw Tun

B.Sc. (Honours in Chemistry) (University of Rangoon), M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.)

U Kyaw Tun joined the Department of Chemistry, University of Rangoon, as an assistant lecturer in 1955. He was assigned as lecturer to the first year science students at the Yankin College. His duties were extended further the following year as lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry to the third year science students (those taking Chemistry) at the main campus in addition to his duties at the Yankin College. He was assigned to revise laboratory instructions on qualitative inorganic analysis, and his work was in use up to the time when the medium of instruction was gradually changed in the mid-1960s from English to Burmese. He served for 33 years in various universities and colleges throughout Myanmar: Rangoon University, Rangoon Institute of Technology, Mandalay University, Bassein College, Workers’ College and Taunggyi College. His last posting from which he retired was Associate Professor and Head of Department of Chemistry, Taunggyi Degree College.

He had undergone training for an academic year in 1975 in Advanced Research Techniques at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Though trained as a scientist and engineer, U Kyaw Tun has a keen interest in the culture, history, religion and mythology of various peoples of the world. His knowledge of several languages: Myanmar, English, French, Pali, Swedish and German has helped him in his cultural studies. He has an extensive knowledge of Hindu astrology, specializing the Ashtakavarga system.

U Kyaw Tun was a part-time columnist writing for the Working Peoples’ Daily (English) in Myanmar and was a member on the editorial board of the North Renfrew Times in Canada. He has given several public lectures in Canada on Buddhism particularly to scientists and engineers, and to non-Buddhists.

Note for HTML editing:

• Bama characters were formed on Paint with WinInnwa font size 16 and save as .gif. Height of the graphic is standardized at 22 pixels. For forming those that were not present or not well-formed in WinInnwa, the first step was formation from the nearest character(s) present and modifying size and shape. e.g. .

• Since how the characters appear in Paint depends on the the machine, for consistency all Myanmar characters were formed on Deep River computer #7 WinXP machine.

• IPA characters were formed with Arial Unicode MS size 12 (Though slightly larger than regular English characters in Times New Roman 12, it is preferred because the details are more easily seen.)

• Most of my file uses only one font -- Times New Roman or Arial Unicode MS. Myanmar characters, IPA characters, and all other characters are imbedded as gif-pictures. For ease of identification, Unicode numbers are given for most of them.

• File names. File names are not case sensitive. Thus, da.gif and Da.gif mean the same name. Differentiation will be made as da.gif and dha-.gif . Only 26 lower case letters of the alphabet are used for file names.

• File names. File names for Myanmar glyphs (consonants and conjuncts) are given by position in the 5x7 matrix. They are not in Romabama. The table below on the left side is in regular Romabama letters within { } brackets, and the corresponding table on the right is for naming computer files. Unless you are editing HTML files, the table on the right need not concern you. Non-keyboard characters such as ρ = Alt0241,   Π = Alt0208, π = Alt0240 must not be used for file names.

  c1 c2 c3 c4 c5
r1 {ka.} {hka.} {ga.} {Ga.} {nga.}
r2 {sa.} {hsa.} {za.} {Za.} {ρa.}
r3 {Ta.} {Hta.} {Πa.} {Πda.} {Na.}
r4 {ta.} {hta.} {da.} {Da} {na.}
r5 {pa.} {hpa.} {ba.} {Ba.} {ma.}
r6 {ya.} {ra.} {la.} {wa.} {tha.}
r7   {ha.} {La.} {a.}  
  c1 c2 c3 c4 c5
r1 k hk g gg ng
r2 s hs z zz ny
r3 tt htt d3 dd3 nn
r4 t ht d dd n
r5 p hp b bb m
r6 y r l w th
r7   h ll a  

 

• Gif-pix formed from pdf files:
e.g. U0E3A Thai character Nikhahit, a diacritical sign, is not suitable for presentation, because on inputting, the space of the main character is not shown. It is arrived at in two ways:
method 1 - Screen-captured from Thai Code table
- Pasted on Paint. The cell containing the character is 49x61 pix.
- Reduced to standard height  40 pix.
- Opened with Paint. Fitted the character into a picture of height 22 pix (the most suitable for presenting with Arial Unicode MS size 10). Clipped off left and right spaces. Saved as gif-glyph.
- For other characters such as mathematical characters, used another set of dimensions, but always standardised to a standard height.
method 2 - Screen-captured the image of the character from the pdf page itself which has been enlarged to 125% as in the case of capturing tables. (If 125% is not suitable, used any other enlargement.) Pasted to Paint. Fitted the character into a picture of standard height 22 pix. Clipped off left and right spaces. Saved as gif-glyph.

• Bullets etc.
• Black bullet: (Alt0149)
∘ White bullet: ∘ (U2218).
  With Times New Roman the "white bullet" appears as a small white upright rectangle.
≈ Almost equal to: (U2248)

• Pali letters
E-Pali (English Pali) characters are not IPA (International Phonetic Association) characters. Thus, the English letter a can have both the type form a (U0061) and the script form ɑ (U0251). Capital letters are allowed. For writing them the following diacritical marks are used.
• Dot-below (Combining dot-below) U0323. Combining vertical-line-below (U0329) and combining ring-below (U0325) are also used in some texts. However, in my works, I will only use the combining dot-below, because in Arial Unicode MS, both U0329 and U0325 place the diacritic to the left of the main character: e.g.: Latin small letter L (  l̩ ) (  l̥ ).̥
• Macron (Combining macron) U0304
Example: Pāḷi

References used by UKT

For my research on Bama language and Myanmar script, and Myanmar-Pali, have to download many pages from various web-sites, and have to edit and rewrite them in HTML. Some of the materials were from printed pages which were scanned with the help of my grandson Maung Kan Tun. The scanned materials were also edited and rewritten in HTML. All the materials have been carefully checked especially with regards to characters (many of which were in graphic-format and then set in Unicode font.). Many illustrations have been redrawn.

Some of the works I have referred to are:

• American Heritage Talking Dictionary (AHTD)

• An Elementary Pali Course, by Ven. Narada Thera
   Buddha Dhamma Association, Inc. (Sri Lanka)  www.buddhanet.net

• Daniel Jones English Pronouncing Dictionary, 16 ed, (DJPD16).
   Cambridge University Press 2003.

• D. Vujastyk, 25 June 1996 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/members/transliteration/translit.pdf.

• Folk Elements in Burmese Buddhism, by Maung Htin Aung,
   Religious Affairs Department Press, Yegu, Kaba Aye P.O., Rangoon, Burma, 1981.

• Green, A. D., University of Potsdam (Institut fόr Linguistik) -- personal communication

• Myanmar Saloanpaung Thutpoan Kyam (in Burmese),
    Myanmar Sa Commission, Ministry of Education, Myanmar, 1986

• Myanmar Thudda, volumes 1 to 5 (in Burmese),
    Text-book Committee, Basic Education, Ministry of Education, Myanmar, ca. 1986

• Online Phonetics Course, (UNIL)
   Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
  http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/phonetique/table-eng.html
  http://www.unil.ch/ling/english/index.html

• Pali-English Dictionary (PTS Dictionary)
    T.W. Rhys Davids, and W. Stede, Pali Text Society, Oxford, 1999

• U Kawwida
   Toronto Myanmar-Buddhist Monastery. -- personal communication

• Unicode Standard version 4.0, (Unicode4)
   Unicode Consortium, http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/

• University of Manitoba (UMB)
   http://www.umanitoba.ca/linguistics/index.shtml

• Word, Foot, and Syllable Structure in Burmese by A. D. Green,
   University of Potsdam, March 2003, http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~green/cv/Burmese.pdf

To Myanmars
who can read and write Myanmar script

This message will appear correctly with Unicode fonts, such as Arial Unicode MS font.

• When a Myanmar child goes to school to learn English, he goes to learn {in:ka.leit sa}. The emphasis is on the written language. Of course, he would learn the spoken language as well, but the emphasis is on how to read and write. The aim has NEVER been to teach the Myanmar child to speak like a native of America, Australia, Canada, or England. Please note that I have not used the word "Britain" -- I write "England". Therefore the question of various English dialects never arise.

• The English language uses an alphabet, whereas the Bama language uses an abugida or alpha-syllabary. The English letter [ k ] has no sound: it must be accompanied by a vowel such as [ a ] to give it a sound. Only then you can represent the phoneme as /ka/, whereas the Myanmar already has a sound because of its inherent vowel. Therefore it is legitimate to represent it as a phoneme //, but [ k ] cannot be represented as /k/. Of course, IPA would not recognize //; neither would it recognize /č/. To the IPA, the English word <church> is /ʧɜːʧ/  and not /čɜːč/.

• Alpha-syllabary - Syllabic alphabet, Semi-syllabary, Abugida
Izumi Suzuka, speaking at a student seminar in 2003 at The Laboratory of Professor Osato http://mlcr.nagaokaut.ac.jp/main1/signs_of_syllables.htm spoke on Writing Systems -- Signs of Syllables. The speaker classified Writing Systems into:
1. Alphabet: A writing systems, in which consonants and vowels are represented equally by separate letters. Greek and Roman alphabets, Cyrillic alphabet, and some artificial alphabets such as Armenian that was invented in 405 and still in use today belong to this category.
2. Consonantal alphabet: Alphabets that consist of consonantal letters only. Some vowels may be optionally indicated in writing, however vowel sounds had to be supplied by the speaker or reader. North Semitic* languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, and also the languages that use modified Arabic letters: Persian, Urdu (Pakistan), Uighur belong to this category. (*Semitic: A language family that includes Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia) and Tigrinya (Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea).)
3. Alpha-syllabary (or Syllabic alphabet, Semi-syllabary): Writing systems, in which characters sometimes represent a single consonant or vowel, as in an alphabet, and sometimes a syllable, as in a syllabary. More specifically, each basic consonant character is represented by the graphic syllable where the consonant is modified by the inherent vowel, the most frequently used vowel, usually /a/. When a consonant is modified by any other vowel, a signature (or diacritic form) of the vowel is added around the graphic syllable.
   Alpha-syllabary is a characteristic for Amharic and languages in or derived from India such as Devanagari, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Gujarati, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Sinhalese, Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, and Tibetan.
4. Syllabary: Writing system in which each character represents a syllable, typically consisting either CV or V-type syllable: e.g. Japanese Katakana and Hiragana.
5. Logogram (or Ideogram): A character in writing which represents complete word is called logogram. Examples are Chinese character, and early Egyptian hieroglyph and Sumerian cuneiform.

 

 

Top
End of TIL file