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The Mon–Burmese script (Burmese: မွန်မြန်မာအက္ခရာ listen ⓘ; Mon: အက္ခရ်မန်ဗၟာ, listen ⓘ, Thai: อักษรมอญพม่า listen ⓘ; also called the Mon script, Old Mon script and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Grantha script of southern India and later of Southeast Asia.
The Burmese alphabet (Burmese: မြန်မာအက္ခရာ myanma akkha.ya, pronounced [mjəmà ʔɛʔkʰəjà]) is an abugida used for writing Burmese. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit.
The modern Mon alphabet has several letters and diacritics that do not exist in Burmese, such as the stacking diacritic for medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter. [8] There is a great deal of discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several spellings. [9]
Mon is an important language in Burmese history. Until the 12th century, it was the lingua franca of the Irrawaddy valley —not only in the Mon kingdoms of the lower Irrawaddy but also of the upriver Pagan Kingdom of the Bamar people. Mon, especially written Mon, continued to be a prestige language even after the fall of the Mon kingdom of ...
Ceremonial helmet of Queen regnant Shin Sawbu, now at the V&A Museum, London. The symbol of the Mon people is the hongsa (Mon: ဟံသာ, [hɔŋsa]), a mythological water bird that is often illustrated as a swan. It is commonly known by its Burmese name, hintha (Burmese: ဟင်္သာ, IPA: [hɪ́ɰ̃θà]) or its Thai name: hong ...
Transcription of Burmese is not standardized, as seen in the varying English transcriptions of Burmese names. For instance, a Burmese personal name like ဝင်း ([wɪ́ɴ]) may be variously romanized as Win, Winn, Wyn, or Wynn, while ခိုင် ([kʰàɪɴ]) may be romanized as Khaing, Khine, or Khain.
Burmese is a tonal language, which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch, but also phonation, intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese a pitch-register language like Shanghainese.
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents the Burmese language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.