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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.
Burmese is a tonal, pitch-register, and syllable-timed language, [6] largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with a subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets.
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.
In 2007, Burmese was spoken by 33 million people as a first language. [5] Burmese is spoken as a second language by another 10 million people, particularly ethnic minorities in Burma and those in neighbouring countries. [6] Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language belonging to the Southern Burmish branch of the Tibeto-Burman languages.
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.
In 1535, King Tabinshwehti reunified Burma and founded the second Burmese Empire (Taungû dynasty, 1535–1752). This empire is almost constantly at war with the kingdom of Ayutthaya, in present-day Thailand. Faced with revolts and Portuguese incursions, the Taungû dynasty retreated to central Burma.
Brahmic scripts spread in a peaceful manner, Indianization, or the spread of Indian learning. The scripts spread naturally to Southeast Asia, at ports on trading routes. [2] At these trading posts, ancient inscriptions have been found in Sanskrit, using scripts that originated in India.
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.