Page 398 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

396 CONTEXTS Language
Language

Around a hundred different languages are spoken in Myanmar. Far and away
the most widely used is Burmese, or “Myanmar Language” (myanma bhasa)
as it’s officially called, the native language of the country’s Bamar majority as
well as many other ethnic groups including the Mon. Burmese is spoken by
around two-thirds of the population (37 million) as their first language and
a further ten million as their second language. As well as Burmese proper,
there are also several major regional dialects spoken in different parts of the
country such as Intha, Danu, Yaw and Taungyo, not to mention Arakanese,
spoken in Rakhine State, which is sometimes considered a dialect, and
sometimes as a separate language. English is taught in schools and quite
widely spoken in larger towns and cities, less so out in the countryside.
Part of the Tibeto-Burman group of tongues, Burmese is a tricky language for Westerners,
although locals will appreciate any effort you make to speak it. The major difficulty
derives from its tonal system (see p.397). Most words are monosyllabic, but word order
and many other basic linguistic features of the language are also quite different to English.
There aren’t many study resources available for learning Burmese. The best is Burmese
By Ear by John Okell of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African
Studies, comprising a series of audio recordings plus accompanying book in PDF
format, all of which can be downloaded for free at Wsoas.ac.uk/bbe. The audio files can
be loaded onto a tablet or MP3 player and make for educational listening during long
bus journeys and suchlike. Lonely Planet’s pocket-sized Burmese Phrasebook is also a
useful travelling companion.

Transliteration
There’s no universally agreed way to show Burmese in Roman script – the same
Burmese sound might be transliterated as me, may, mei, mey or mae, for example, while
place names are similarly subject to random variation (the national capital, for example,
is known variously as Naypyitaw, Naypyidaw, Nay Pyi Taw and Nay Pyi Daw). The
difficulty of representing Burmese sounds in Roman script can lead to a degree of
confusion, given how some Roman letters are commonly used to represent Burmese
sounds with a notably different pronunciation. The only real way to grasp the
language’s pronunciation is to listen to Burmese-speakers themselves.

THE BURMESE ALPHABET
The Burmese alphabet’s distinctively rounded appearance (“bubble writing”, as some people
describe it) derives from the fact that palm leaves inscribed with a stylus were historically used
as the main material for writing upon, rather than paper and ink, with circular characters
preferred given that numerous straight lines would have torn the leaves being used.
Like many other Southeast and South asian languages, Burmese is written in a consonant-
based script – vowels and tones are signified by adding additional accents and symbols to
the basic consonant, rather than written separately, as in Western languages. There are 33 basic
Burmese consonants, with distinctions made between unaspirated and aspirated consonants
(see p.397). The script is written from left to right with no spaces between words, although
modern written Burmese usually inserts spaces after each clause to enhance readability.

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