Burmese
Type	Abugida
Languages	Burmese
Time period	c. 984 or 1035–present
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brāhmī Pallava Mon Burmese
ISO 15924	Mymr, 350
Direction	Left-to-right
Unicode alias	Myanmar
Unicode range	U+1000–U+109F
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.

The Burmese script (Burmese: မြန်မာအက္ခရာ; MLCTS: mranma akkha.ra; IPA: [mjəmà ʔɛʔkʰəjà]) is an abugida in the Brahmic family used for writing Burmese. Furthermore, various other scripts share some aspect and letters of the Burmese script, though they should not be considered strictly Burmese, including Mon, Shan, S'gaw Karen, Eastern and Western Pwo Karen and Geba Karen languages, Rumai Palaung, Kayah (all of which are included in the latest Unicode standard). The Burmese script is also used as a script for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit. The characters are rounded in appearance because the traditional palm leaves used for writing on with a stylus would have been ripped by straight lines.^[1] It 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 Burmese script was adapted from the Old Mon script^[2] or from the Pyu script. The earliest evidence of Burmese script is dated to 1035, while an 18th century recast stone inscription points to 984.^[3] Burmese orthography 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.^[1] The script has undergone considerable modifications to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language. The Burmese script has been altered from language to language, including Shan and Pwo Karen. One major difference is the existence of explicit tone markers in the Shan and Karen scripts, which do not exist in the Burmese script, since Burmese diacritics include implicit tones joined to the sound change.

The Burmese script may be transliterated into the Latin alphabet with the MLC Transcription System.

Alphabet[link]

Arrangement[link]

As with other Brahmi scripts, the Burmese alphabet is arranged into different groupings of 5 letters for stop consonants called wek (ဝဂ်, from Pali vagga) based on articulation. Within each group, the first letter is tenuis ('plain'), the second is the aspirated homologue, the third and fourth are the voiced homologue, and the fifth is the nasal homologue. This is true of the first 25 letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as wek byi (ဝဂ်ဗျည်း, from Pali vagga byañjana). The remaining eight letters (ယ ရ လ ဝ သ ဟ ဠ အ) are grouped together as a wek (အဝဂ်, lit. "without group"), as they are not arranged in any particular pattern.

Letters[link]

A syllable onset is the consonant or consonant cluster that appears 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 or beside the consonant character. A consonant letter with no vowel diacritic has the inherent vowel [a̰] (often reduced to [ə] when another syllable follows in the same word).

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 alphabet:

• ဃ (gh), ဈ (jh), ဋ (ṭ), ဌ (ṭh), ဍ (ḍ), ဎ (ḍh), ဏ (ṇ), ဓ (d), and ဠ (ḷ) are primarily used in words of Pāli origin.
• ၐ (ś) and ၑ (ṣ) are exclusively used in Sanskrit words, as they have merged to သ in Pali.
• ည has an alternate form ဉ, used with the vowel diacritic ာ as a syllable onset and alone as a final.
• With regard to pronunciation, the corresponding letters of the dentals and alveolars are phonetically equivalent.
• ရ is often pronounced Burmese pronunciation: [/ɹ/] in words of Pali or foreign origin.
• အ is nominally treated as a consonant in the Burmese alphabet; it represents an initial glottal stop in syllables with no other consonant.

Consonant letters may be modified by one or more medial diacritics (three at most), indicating an additional consonant before the vowel. These diacritics are:

• Ya pin (ယပင့်) - Written ျ (MLCTS -y-, indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant)
• Ya yit (ရရစ်) - Written ြ (MLCTS -r-, indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant)
• Wa hswe (ဝဆွဲ) - Written ွ (MLCTS -w-, usually indicating /w/ medial)
• Ha hto (ဟထိုး) - ှ (MLCTS h-, indicating that a sonorant consonant is voiceless)

A few Burmese dialects use an extra diacritic to indicate the /l/ medial, which has merged to /y/ in standard Burmese:

• La hswe (လဆွဲ) - Written ္လ (MLCTS -l, indicating /l/ medial

All the possible diacritic combinations are listed below:

Syllable rhymes[link]

Syllable rhymes (i.e. vowels and any consonants that may follow them within the same syllable) 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 (Burmese: အသတ်; MLCTS: a.sat, [ʔa̰θaʔ]), which means nonexistence (see Sat (Sanskrit)).

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} The consonant letters that take the long form ါ are ခ, ဂ, င, ဒ, ပ, and ဝ.

Diacritics and symbols[link]

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[link]

La hswe (လဆွဲ) used in old Burmese from the Bagan to Innwa periods (12th century - 16th century), and could be combined with other diacritics (ya pin, ha hto and wa hswe) to form ္လျ ္လွ ္လှ.^[5][6] 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 /ɔ̀/ 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 (now indicated with ့). During the early Bagan period, the rhyme /ɛ́/ (now represented with the diacritic ဲ) was represented with ါယ်). The diacritic combination ိုဝ် disappeared in the mid 1750s (typically designated as Middle Burmese), having been replaced with the ို combination, introduced in 1638. The standard tone markings found in modern Burmese can be traced to the 19th century.^[6]

Stacked consonants[link]

Specific consonants (a final and the following consonant), when placed next to one another, may be stacked, provided that they are of the same consonant group (a row of 5 letters in the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet, called ဝဂ် in Burmese), with the final placed underneath the consonant, instead of the use of a virama (). They are considered ligatures or stacked consonants, but are not found in native Burmese words, except for the purpose of abbreviation. For example, the Burmese word for "daughter" (သမီး) is sometimes abbreviated as သ္မီး, even though the stacked consonants don't belong to the same group. Similarly, "tea" (လက်ဖက်) is commonly abbreviated လ္ဘက်.

Instead, stacked consonants are primarily confined to polysyllabic borrowings from languages like Pali, Sanskrit and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for "paper" (a Pali loan word), is spelt စက္ကူ, not စက်ကူ, although both have equivalent pronunciations.

Digits[link]

A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as Hindu-Arabic numerals.

The numerals from zero to nine are: ၀၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉ (Unicode 1040 to 1049). The number 1945 would be written as ၁၉၄၅. Separators, such as commas, are not used to group numbers.

Another set of digits from zero to nine, ႐႑႒႓႔႕႖႗႘႙, is used in the Shan language. However, the most languages that use the modified Burmese script, including S'gaw Karen, Pwo Karen and Mon all use the same digits as the Burmese language.

Punctuation[link]

There are two primary break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes: ၊ (called ပုဒ်ဖြတ်​, ပုဒ်ကလေး, ပုဒ်ထီး, or တစ်ချောင်းပုဒ်) and ။ (called ပုဒ်ကြီး, ပုဒ်မ, or နှစ်ချောင်းပုဒ်), which respectively act as a comma and a full stop . Other abbreviations used in literary Burmese are:

• ၏ -- used as a full stop if the sentence immediately ends with a verb.
• ၍ -- used as a sentence connector to connect two trains of thought.
• ၌ -- locative ('at').
• ၎င်း -- ditto (used in columns and lists)

Unicode[link]

Burmese script was added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0. It was extended in October, 2009 with the release of version 5.2.

Blocks[link]

The Unicode blocks for Burmese, called Myanmar, are U+1000–U+109F and U+AA60–U+AA7B. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points:

Languages[link]

For writing the basic Burmese language, only U+1000–U+104F is needed:

• the basic abugida for Burmese and other languages of Myanmar:
  • U+1000–U+1020: the 33 base consonants.
  • U+1021–U+102A: the 10 independent vowels (including 1 variant needed for Shan and 1 variant needed for Mon).
  • U+102B–U+1035: the 11 dependent vowels (diacritics combining on the right, above, below, or left of the base consonant).
  • U+1036–U+103A: the 5 diacritic signs (anusvara, tone mark, visarga, virama, visible virama).
  • U+103B–U+103E: the 4 medial consonant signs (diacritics combining on the right, around, or below).
  • U+103F: the Myanmar letter "Great Sa" (ss).
  • U+1040–U+1049: the 10 digits.
  • U+104A–U+104B: the 2 punctuation signs (section signs).
  • U+104C–U+104F: the 4 symbols (locative, completed, aforementioned, genitive).

The rest of the chart contains extensions for other languages:

Websites using Unicode[link]

Until 2005, most Burmese language websites used an image-based dynamically generated method to display Burmese characters, often in GIF or JPEG. At the end of 2005, the Burmese NLP Research Lab announced a Myanmar OpenType font named Myanmar1. This font contains not only Unicode code points and glyphs but also the OpenType Layout (OTL) logic and rules. Their research center is based in Myanmar ICT Park, Yangon. Padauk, which was produced by SIL International, is Unicode compliant. Initially, it required a Graphite engine, though now OpenType tables for Windows are in the current version of this font. Since the release of the Unicode 5.1 Standard on 4 April 2008, three Unicode 5.1 compliant fonts have been available under public license, including Myanmar3, Padauk and Parabaik.^[7]

Many Burmese font makers have created Burmese fonts including Win Innwa, CE Font, Myazedi, Zawgyi, Ponnya, Mandalay. It is important to note that these Burmese fonts are not Unicode compliant, because they use unallocated code points (including those for the Latin script) in the Burmese block to manually deal with shaping that would normally be done by the Uniscribe engine and they are not yet supported by Microsoft and other major software vendors. However, there are few Burmese language websites that have switched to Unicode rendering, with many websites continuing to use a pseudo-Unicode font called Zawgyi (which uses codepoints allocated for minority languages and does not intelligently render diacritics, such as the size of ya-yit) or the GIF/JPG display method.

See also[link]

• Brahmic family
• Burmese language

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Aung-Thwin, Michael (2005). The mists of Rāmañña: The Legend that was Lower Burma (illustrated ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-2886-0, 9780824828868. 
• Harvey, G. E. (1925). History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824. London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. 
• Herbert, Patricia M.; Anthony Milner and Southeast Asia Library Group (1989). South-East Asia. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1267-6. 
• Lieberman, Victor B. (2003). Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830, volume 1, Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80496-7. 
• "A History of the Myanmar Alphabet". Myanmar Language Commission. 1993. http://www.myanmarnlp.net.mm/doc/1994_history_of_myanmar_alphabet.pdf. Retrieved 2010-08-30. 

External links[link]

• Burmese/Myanmar script and pronunciation at Omniglot
• Myanmar Unicode Character Picker
• Myanmar Unicode Implementation Public Awareness
• Myanmar3 keyboard layout
• myWin2.2
• ALA-LC romanization system for Burmese
• BGN/PCGN romanization system for Burmese
• Myanmar Language SIG
• Myanmar Word Segmentation using Syllable level Longest Matching

Fonts supporting Burmese characters[link]

• Burmese Wikipedia:Font page
• Burmese Unicode & NLP Research Centre
• Parabaik Myanmar Unicode Project GPLed and OFLed