Burmese alphabet


The Burmese alphabet is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately a Brahmic script adapted from either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India and more immediately an adaptation of Old Mon or Pyu script. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit.
In recent decades, other, related alphabets, such as Shan and modern Mon, have been restructured according to the standard of the now-dominant Burmese alphabet.
Burmese is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability.
The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Burmese calligraphy originally followed a square format but the cursive format took hold from the 17th century when popular writing led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as parabaiks. A stylus would rip these leaves when making straight lines. The alphabet has undergone considerable modification to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language.
There are several systems of transliteration into the Latin alphabet; for this article, the MLC Transcription System is used.

Alphabet

History

The Burmese alphabet is an adaptation of the Old Mon script or the Pyu script, and it is ultimately of South Indian origin, from either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet. The scholar Aung-Thwin has argued that the Burmese script most likely descended from the Pyu script and not from the Old Mon script, as there is no historical record of Mon migration from Dvaravati to Lower Burma, no inscription found in the Dvaravati script in Lower Burma, no proven relationship between the writing systems of Dvaravati and Pagan, and there are no dated Old Mon inscriptions except for those written in the Burmese script, in the entire country of Myanmar. There is however a paleographic link between the Burmese script and Pyu script, and there were close cultural, linguistic, historic and political ties between Pyu and Burmese speakers for atleast two to three centuries before the first contact between Burmese speakers and Mon speakers. Aung-Thwin therefore argues that Mon script descended from Burmese script and not vice versa.

Arrangement

As with other Brahmic scripts, the Burmese alphabet is arranged into groups of five letters for stop consonants called wek based on articulation. Within each group, the first letter is tenuis, the second is the aspirated homologue, the third and fourth are the voiced homologues and the fifth is the nasal homologue. This is true of the first twenty-five letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as wek byi. The remaining eight letters are grouped together as a wek, as they are not arranged in any particular pattern.

Letters

A letter is a consonant or consonant cluster that occurs before the vowel of a syllable. The Burmese script has 33 letters to indicate the initial consonant of a syllable and four diacritics to indicate additional consonants in the onset. Like other abugidas, including the other members of the Brahmic family, vowels are indicated in Burmese script by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character. A consonant character with no vowel diacritic has the inherent vowel .
The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and the way the letter is referred to in Burmese, which may be either a descriptive name or just the sound of the letter, arranged in the traditional order:
Consonant letters may be modified by one or more medial diacritics, indicating an additional consonant before the vowel. These diacritics are:
A few Burmese dialects use an extra diacritic to indicate the /l/ medial, which has merged to /j/ in standard Burmese:
Palatalizes velar consonants: ကျ, ချ, ဂျ are pronounced.ျ
ya pinမျှhmyသျှ and လျှ are pronounced.ျ
ya pinမျွmywျ
ya pinမျွှhmywြ
ya yitမြmrGenerally only used on bilabial and velar consonants.
Palatalizes velar consonants: ကြ, ခြ, ဂြ, ငြ are pronounced.ြ
ya yitမြှhmrြ
ya yitမြွmrwြ
ya yitမြွှhmrwွ
wa hsweမွmwွ
wa hsweမွှhmwှ
ha htoမှhmUsed only in ငှ , ညှ/ဉှ , နှ , မှ , လှ , ဝှ . ယှ and ရှ are pronounced.

Stroke order

Letters in the Burmese alphabet are written with a specific stroke order. The Burmese script is based on circles. Typically, one circle should be done with one stroke, and all circles are written clockwise. Exceptions are mostly letters with an opening on top. The circle of these letters is written with two strokes coming from opposite directions.
The 10 letters below are exceptions to the clockwise rule: ပ, ဖ, ဗ, မ, ယ, လ, ဟ, ဃ, ဎ, ဏ. Some versions of stroke order may be slightly different.
The Burmese stroke order can be learned from ပထမတန်း မြန်မာဖတ်စာ ၂၀၁၇-၂၀၁၈, a textbook published by the Burmese Ministry of Education. The book is available under the LearnBig project of UNESCO. Other resources include the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University and an online learning resource published by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.

Syllable rhymes

s are indicated in Burmese by a combination of diacritic marks and consonant letters marked with the virama character ် which suppresses the inherent vowel of the consonant letter. This mark is called asat in Burmese, which means "nonexistence".
GraphemeIPAMLCTSRemarks
ကka. is the inherent vowel, and is not indicated by any diacritic. In theory, virtually any written syllable that is not the final syllable of a word can be pronounced with the vowel as its rhyme. In practice, the bare consonant letter alone is the most common way of spelling syllables whose rhyme is.
ကာkaTakes the alternative form ါ with certain consonants, e.g. ဂါ ga.
ကားka:Takes the alternative form ါး with certain consonants, e.g. ဂါး ga:.
ကက်kak
ကင်kang
ကင့်kang.
ကင်းkang:
ကစ်kac
ကည်kany
ကဉ်kany
ကည့်kany.
ကဉ့်kany.
ကည်းkany:
ကဉ်းkany:
ကတ်kat
ကန်kan
ကန့်kan.
ကန်းkan:
ကပ်kap
ကမ်kam
ကမ့်kam.
ကမ်းkam:
ကယ်kai
ကံkam
ကံ့kam.
ကံးkam:
ကိki.As an open vowel, is represented by ဣ.
ကိတ်kit
ကိန်kin
ကိန့်kin.
ကိန်းkin:
ကိပ်kip
ကိမ်kim
ကိမ့်kim.
ကိမ်းkim:
ကိံkim
ကိံ့kim.
ကိံးkim:
ကီkiAs an open vowel, is represented by ဤ.
ကီးki:
ကုku.As an open vowel, is represented by ဥ.
ကုတ်kut
ကုန်kun
ကုန့်kun.
ကုန်းkun:
ကုပ်kup
ကုမ်kum
ကုမ့်kum.
ကုမ်းkum:
ကုံkum
ကုံ့kum.
ကုံးkum:
ကူkuAs an open vowel, is represented by ဦ.
ကူးku:As an open vowel, is represented by ဦး.
ကေkeAs an open vowel, is represented by ဧ.
ကေ့ke.
ကေးke:As an open vowel, is represented by ဧး.
ကဲkai:
ကဲ့kai.
ကောkau:Takes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါ gau:. As an open vowel, is represented by ဩ.
ကောက်kaukTakes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါက် gauk.
ကောင်kaungTakes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါင် gaung.
ကောင့်kaung.Takes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါင့် gaung..
ကောင်းkaung:Takes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါင်း gaung:.
ကော့kau.Takes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါ့ gau..
ကော်kauTakes an alternative long form with certain consonants, e.g. ဂေါ် gau. As an open vowel, is represented by ဪ.
ကိုkui
ကိုက်kuik
ကိုင်kuing
ကိုင့်kuing.
ကိုင်းkuing:
ကို့kui.
ကိုးkui:
ကွတ်kwat
ကွန်kwan
ကွန့်kwan.
ကွန်းkwan:
ကွပ်kwap
ကွမ်kwam
ကွမ့်kwam.
ကွမ်းkwam:

Diacritics and symbols

One or more of these accents can be added to a consonant to change its sound. In addition, other modifying symbols are used to differentiate tone and sound, but are not considered diacritics.

History

La hswe used in old Burmese from the Bagan to Innwa periods, and could be combined with other diacritics to form ္လျ ္လွ ္လှ. Similarly, until the Innwa period, ya pin was also combined with ya yit. From the early Bagan period to the 19th century, ဝ် was used instead of ော် for the rhyme Early Burmese writing also used ဟ်, not the high tone marker း, which came into being in the 16th century. Moreover, အ်, which disappeared by the 16th century, was subscripted to represent creaky tone. During the early Bagan period, the rhyme . The diacritic combination ိုဝ် disappeared in the mid-1750s, having been replaced with the ို combination, introduced in 1638. The standard tone markings found in modern Burmese can be traced to the 19th century.

Stacked consonants

Certain sequences of consonants are written one atop the other, or stacked. A pair of stacked consonants indicates that no vowel is pronounced between them, as for example the m-bh in ကမ္ဘာ kambha "world". This is equivalent to using a virama ် on the first consonant ; if the m and bh were not stacked, the inherent vowel a would be assumed. Stacked consonants are always homorganic, which is indicated by the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet into five-letter rows of letters called ဝဂ်. Consonants not found in a row beginning with k, c, t, or p can only be doubled – that is, stacked with themselves.
When stacked, the first consonant is written as usual, while the second consonant is subscripted beneath it.
GroupPossible combinationsTranscriptionsExample
Kက္က, က္ခ, ဂ္ဂ, ဂ္ဃkk, kkh, gg, ggh dukkha, meaning "suffering"
Cစ္စ, စ္ဆ, ဇ္ဇ, ဇ္ဈ, ဉ္စ, ဉ္ဆ, ဉ္ဇ, ဉ္ဈcc, cch, jj, jjh, nyc, nych, nyj, nyjhwijja, meaning "knowledge"
Tဋ္ဋ, ဋ္ဌ, ဍ္ဍ, ဍ္ဎ, ဏ္ဋ, ဏ္ဍtt, tth, dd, ddh, nt, ndkanda, meaning "section"
Tတ္တ, တ္ထ, ဒ္ဒ, ဒ္ဓ, န္တ, န္ထ, န္ဒ, န္ဓ, န္နtt, tth, dd, ddh, nt, nth, nd, ndh, nnmanta. le:, Mandalay, a city in Burma
Pပ္ပ, ပ္ဖ, ဗ္ဗ, ဗ္ဘ, မ္ပ, မ္ဗ, မ္ဘ, မ္မ,pp, pph, bb, bbh, mp, mb, mbh, mmkambha, meaning "world"
ဿ, လ္လ, ဠ္ဠss, ll, llpissa, meaning viss, a traditional Burmese unit of weight measurement

Stacked consonants are mostly confined to loan words from languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for "paper" is spelt စက္ကူ, not *စက်ကူ, although both would be read the same. They are not found in native Burmese words except for the purpose of abbreviation. For example, the Burmese word သမီး "daughter" is sometimes abbreviated to သ္မီး, even though the stacked consonants do not belong to the same row and a vowel is pronounced between. Similarly, လက်ဖက် "tea" is commonly abbreviated to လ္ဘက်. Also, ss is written ဿ, not သ္သ.

Digits

A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as Hindu-Arabic numerals.
The digits from zero to nine are: ၀၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉. The number 1945 would be written as ၁၉၄၅. Separators, such as commas, are not used to group numbers.

Punctuation

There are two primary break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes: ၊ and ။, which respectively act as a comma and a full stop. There is a Shan exclamation mark ႟. Other abbreviations used in literary Burmese are:
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