Wards of Myanmar

A ward (Burmese: ရပ်ကွက်) is a fourth-level administrative subdivision of Myanmar's urban cities and towns, below the third-level subdivision of township. Currently, as of August 2015, there are 3,183 wards in Myanmar. The equivalent for rural townships is a village tract.

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Ward

Ward may refer to:

In businesses

In designated areas or social units

Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward was the name of two historically distinct American retail enterprises. It can refer either to the defunct mail order and department store retailer, which operated between 1872 and 2000, or to the current catalog and online retailer also known as Wards.

Original Montgomery Ward (1872–2000)

Company origins

Montgomery Ward was founded by Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872. Ward had conceived of the idea of a dry goods mail-order business in Chicago, Illinois, after several years of working as a traveling salesman among rural customers. He observed that rural customers often wanted "city" goods but their only access to them was through rural retailers who had little competition and offered no guarantee of quality. Ward also believed that by eliminating intermediaries, he could cut costs and make a wide variety of goods available to rural customers, who could purchase goods by mail and pick them up at the nearest train station.

After several false starts, including the destruction of his first inventory by the Great Chicago Fire, Ward started his business at his first office, either in a single room at 825 North Clark Street, or in a loft above a livery stable on Kinzie Street between Rush and State Streets. He and two partners used $1,600 they had raised in capital and issued their first catalog in August 1872 which consisted of an 8 in × 12 in (20 cm × 30 cm) single-sheet price list, listing 163 items for sale with ordering instructions for which Ward had written the copy. His two partners left the following year, but he continued the struggling business and was joined by his future brother-in-law George Robinson Thorne.

Wards and electoral divisions of the United Kingdom

The wards and electoral divisions in the United Kingdom are electoral districts at sub-national level represented by one or more councillors. The ward is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil parishes and borough and district councils, electoral ward is the unit used by Welsh principal councils, while the electoral division is the unit used by English county councils and some unitary authorities. Each ward/division has an average electorate of about 5,500 but ward-population counts can vary substantially. As at the end of 2014 there were 9,456 electoral wards/divisions in the UK.

England

The London boroughs, the metropolitan boroughs and the non-metropolitan districts (including most unitary authorities) are divided into wards for local elections. However, county council elections (as well as those for several unitary councils which were formerly county councils, such as the Isle of Wight Council and Shropshire Council) instead use the term electoral division. In shire county areas with both wards (used for district council elections) and electoral divisions (used for county council elections), the boundaries of the two types of divisions may sometimes not coincide, but more often the county electoral divisions will be made up of one or more complete wards.

Myanmar

Myanmar (myan-MARⁱ/miɑːnˈmɑːr/ mee-ahn-MAR,/miˈɛnmɑːr/ mee-EN-mar or /maɪˈænmɑːr/ my-AN-mar (also with the stress on first syllable); Burmese pronunciation: [mjəmà]), officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma, is a sovereign state in Southeast Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. One-third of Myanmar's total perimeter of 1,930 km (1,200 miles) forms an uninterrupted coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The country's 2014 census revealed a much lower population than expected, with 51 million people recorded. Myanmar is 676,578 square kilometres (261,227 sq mi) in size. Its capital city is Naypyidaw and its largest city is Yangon (Rangoon).

Early civilisations in Myanmar included the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu city-states in Upper Burma and the Mon kingdoms in Lower Burma. In the 9th century, the Bamar people entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Kingdom in the 1050s, the Burmese language, culture and Theravada Buddhism slowly became dominant in the country. The Pagan Kingdom fell due to the Mongol invasions and several warring states emerged. In the 16th century, reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty, the country was for a brief period the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Myanmar and briefly controlled Manipur and Assam as well. The British conquered Myanmar after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the country became a British colony. Myanmar became an independent nation in 1948, initially as a democratic nation and then, following a coup d'état in 1962, a military dictatorship. While the military dictatorship formally ended in 2011, most of the party leaders are former military officers.

Myanmar (Unicode block)

Myanmar is a Unicode block containing characters for the Burmese, Mon, Karen, Kayah, Shan, and Palaung languages of Myanmar. It is also used to write Pali and Sanskrit in Myanmar.

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Burmese alphabet

The Burmese script (Burmese: ဗမာအက္ခရာ; MLCTS: mranma akkha.ra; pronounced: [mjəmà ʔɛʔkʰəjà]) 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 the 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.