Mini Burmese Dictionary. Aung Kyaw Phyo

      INTRODUCTION

      The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar, used by the majority Burmese people and as the lingua franca by the other ethnic minority groups in the country. It is officially called “Myanmar language” for easy reference and political reasons within the country.

      Sitting like a bridge between China and India, Myanmar has many sociocultural connections to those two Asian giants and language is an example. The Burmese language is in the Tibeto-Burman family, and is a tonal language like Thai and Chinese. Burmese borrowed and adapted Brahmic alphabets which originated in India. Over time, the letters evolved into the rounded version used today.

      The following sections provide some basic information about Burmese grammar, and how to put a sentence together.

       Grammar

      English is a SVO language (i.e., subjects come before verbs, and verbs come before objects), but Burmese is more of a SOV language. It is also possible to start a sentence with an object but verbs almost always come at the end of the sentences. The subject of a sentence is followed by the particle ka or ga. The object of a sentence is followed by the particle ko or go. The verb, in spoken sentences, is followed by the particle tae or dae (or thi in written sentences). For example:

      Kya naw ga ngarr ko kyite dae.

      I (kya naw) like (kyite) fish (ngarr).

       Pronunciation

      Burmese has three major tones: (1) short and creaky, (2) level and long, and (3) high, long and falling tone.

      လ လာ လား

      la lar larr

      The first tone sounds like it or eat in English, with the final t sound swallowed in the back of the throat. The second tone has a rising tone similar to huh? in English. The last tone sounds like long vowels with no stop at the end in English as in the words see, saw, or zoo.

      There are two other tones: the shortened tone and the stopped tone. The shortened tone is similar to the sound of a in the English word ago. Stopped tones are also very short. They are similar to English vowels with the stops such as p, t, or k at the end.

      In this dictionary, the tone of a word is reflected by its romanized spelling.

       Aspiration

      Aspiration means adding a breath of air to a sound. For example, the letter p in the words spin and spot is not aspirated, but it is aspirated in the words pin and pot. In this dictionary, the letter ‘h’ is used to mark consonants that are aspirated.

       Romanization of the Burmese sounds

      Unlike Chinese, Japanese, and some other languages, Burmese does not have a standardized romanized version of its sounds. The romanization format used in this dictionary is mainly based on the model that young people in Myanmar are using on social media and the Internet.

      When speaking Burmese, remember not to pronounce the final consonants of words. Final consonants given in the romanized words in this dictionary are a guide to the length, tone and rhythm of a word.