Burmese script

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Burmese
Type Abugida
Languages Burmese language
Time period {{{time}}}
ISO 15924 Mymr
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
This article or section uses Burmese characters which may be rendered incorrectly. A Burmese Unicode font is needed, and a modern browser supporting Graphite may also be required to properly view this article or section as intended.

The Burmese abugida (Burmese: မ္ရန္‌မာစာ; IPA: [mjànmà sá]) is a script in the Brahmic family used in Burma for writing Burmese, Mon, Shan and several Kayin (Karen) dialects. The characters are rounded in appearance, because the traditional palm leaves used for writing would have been ripped by straight lines. Like English, it is written from left to right. There are no spaces between words, although informal writing often contains spaces after each clause.

The script, originally adapted from the Mon script, has undergone considerable modifications to suit the phonology of Burmese, and to fit its word order of Subject Object Verb. The script is altered from language to language (e.g. Shan, Mon, etc.)

Contents

There are 33 consonants က (ka. [ka̰]) to အ (a. [a̰]) and 23 unique sounds. Consonants are separated into groups of 5, with the exception of the last three letters. The first two letters of each group, except for the ya-group are the aspirated and unaspirated sounds. Six letters are designated specifically for Pāli. The last letter in the alphabet, အ (a. [a̰]), although recognized as a consonant, is actually a vowel. Since အ is the only lettered vowel, when used with diacritics, is used to create other vowels. Like other members of the Brahmic family, the sounds of these are modified by diacritics put above, below or beside the character.

The following names are transliterated in contemporary Burmese.

Letter Name IPA Pāli Remarks
က ကက္ရီး ([ka̰ dʒí]) /k/ k Also used as a final (-က္ [-ɛʔ, -aʊʔ, -aɪʔ])
ခ ခခ္ဝေ ([kʰa̰ gwɛ́]) /kʰ/ kh
ဂ ဂငယ္‌ ([ga̰ ŋɛ̀]) /g/ g
ဃ ဃက္ရီး ([ga̰ dʒí]) /g/ gh
င none /ŋ/ ṅ Also used as a final (-င္ [-in, -aʊn, -aɪn])
စ စလုံး ([sa̰ lóʊn]) /s/ c Also used as a final (-စ္ [iʔ])
ဆ ဆလိမ္‌ ([sʰa̰ lèɪn]) /sʰ/ ch
ဇ ဇခ္ဝဲ ([za̰ gwɛ́]) /z/ j
ဈ ဈမ္ရင္‌းဆ္ဝဲ ([za̰ mjín zwɛ́]) /z/ jh
ည none /ɲ/ ñ Also used as a final (-ည္), but representing an open vowel ([i, e, ɛ])
ဋ ဋသံလ္ယင္းခ္ယိတ္ ([ta̰ θə ljín dʒeɪʔ]) /t/ ṭ Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses တ as an alternative)
ဌ ဌဝမ္‌ပဲ ([tʰa̰ wàn bɛ́]) /tʰ/ ṭh Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses ထ as an alternative)
ဍ ဍရင္‌ေကာက္‌ ([da̰ jìn gaʊʔ]) /d/ ḍ Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses ဒ as an alternative)
ဎ ဎရေမ္ဟုပ္‌ ([da̰ jè m̥oʊʔ]) /d/ ḍh Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses ဓ as an alternative)
ဏ ဏက္ရီး ([na̰ dʒí]) /n/ ṇ Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses န as an alternative)
တ တဝမ္‌ပု ([ta̰ wàn bṵ]) /t/ t Also used as a final (-တ္‌ [-aʔ, -oʊʔ, eɪʔ])
ထ ထဆင္‌ထူး ([tʰa̰ sʰìn dú]) /tʰ/ th
ဒ ဒထ္ဝေး ([da̰ dwé]) /d/ d
ဓ ဓအောက္‌ခ္ရုိက္‌ ([da̰ oʊʔ tʃʰaɪʔ]) /d/ dh
န နငယ္‌ ([na̰ ŋɛ̀]) /n/ n Also used as a final (-န္ [-an, -oʊn, -eɪn])
ပ ပစောက္‌ ([pa̰ zaʊʔ]) /p/ p
ဖ ဖဦးထုပ္‌ ([pʰa̰ óʊ tʰoʊʔ]) /pʰ/ ph
ဗ ဗထက္‌‌ခ္ရုိက္‌ ([ba̰ là tʰaɪʔ]) /b/ b
ဘ ဘကုန္‌း ([ba̰ góʊn]) /b/ bh
မ none /m/ m မ္ [-an, -oʊn, -eɪn])
ယ ယပက္‌လက္‌ ([ja̰ pə lɛ̀ʔ]) /j/ y Also used as a final (-ယ္) but representing an open vowel ([-ɛ̀])
ရ ရကောက္‌ ([ja̰ gaʊʔ]) /j/ r Represents /r/ in Rakhine dialect and in certain contexts of modern Burmese.
လ none /l/ l Also used as a final (-လ္), but unpronounced
ဝ none /w/ v
သ none /θ/ s
ဟ none /h/ h
ဠ ဠက္ရီး ([la̰ dʒí]) /l/ ḷ Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses လ as an alternative)
အ none /a/ a Used with diacritics to form other vowels

There are several diactric marks that alter the vowel sound of a letter. Two diacritics are used exclusively for Pali and are rarely seen elsewhere.

Diacritic Name Remarks
◌ာ yay cha creates low tone
◌ိ (ဣ) lon gyi tin creates an i sound at creaky tone ( e.g. English seat)
◌ီ (ဤ) lon gy itin san ka creates an i sound at low tone
◌ု (ဥ) ta chaung ngin creates a u sound at creaky tone (e.g. English truce)
◌ူ (ဦ) hna chaung ngin creates a u sound at low tone
ေ◌ (ဧ) thwei-to creates an ei sound at high tone (e.g. English cane)
◌ဲ (ဩ) creates an è sound at high tone (e.g. English pet)
◌္ thak modifies the sound quality of a letter and varies with letters (usually creates a consonant final)
◌း shay ga pauk creates high tone, but cannot be used alone
◌ံ Anunaasika, creates nasalised -n final
◌့ auk ga myit Anusvara, creates short tone
◌ၙ used exclusively for Pali
◌ၘ used exclusively for Pali

One or more of these accents can be added to a consonant to change its sound. In addition, other modifiying symbols are used to differentiate tone and sound, but are not considered diacritics.

Specific consonants (a final and the following consonant), when placed next to one another, may be stacked, with the final placed underneath the consonant. They are considered ligatures, and are typically used to abbreviate, but are not necessary and are primarily used to denote Pali or Sanskrit origin.

The thirty-three consonants of the Burmese abugida, without diacritics.
The thirty-three consonants of the Burmese abugida, without diacritics.

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: (Unicode 1040 to 1049). The number 1945 would be written as . Delimiters (such as commas) to separate numbers are not used.

There are two primary break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes (၊ or ။), which respectively act as a comma and a full stop . ၏ is used as a full stop if the sentence immediately ends with a verb. ၍ is roughly the equivalent of a comma and is used to connect two trains of thought.

The Unicode range for Burmese (Myanmar) is U+1000 ... U+109F.

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
1000   က ခ ဂ ဃ င စ ဆ ဇ ဈ ဉ ည ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ
1010   တ ထ ဒ ဓ န ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ ယ ရ လ ဝ သ ဟ
1020   ဠ အ ဢ ဣ ဤ ဥ ဦ ဧ ဨ ဩ ဪ ါ ာ  ိ  ီ  ု
1030    ူ ေ  ဲ ဳ ဴ ဵ  ံ  ့  း  ္  ် ျ ြ ွ ှ ဿ
1040   ၀ ၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉ ၊ ။ ၌ ၍ ၎ ၏
1050   ၐ ၑ ၒ ၓ ၔ ၕ ၖ ၗ  ၘ  ၙ ၚ ၛ ၜ ၝ ၞ  ၟ
1060    ၠ  ၡ  ၢ  ၣ  ၤ  ၥ  ၦ  ၧ  ၨ  ၩ  ၪ  ၫ  ၬ  ၭ  ၮ  ၯ
1070    ၰ  ၱ  ၲ  ၳ  ၴ  ၵ  ၶ  ၷ ၸ ၹ  ၺ  ၻ  ၼ  ၽ  ၾ  ၿ
1080    ႀ  ႁ ႂ ႃ  ႄ  ႅ  ႆ  ႇ  ႈ ႉ ႊ ႋ ႌ ႍ ႎ ႏ
1090   ႐ ႑ ႒ ႓ ႔ ႕ ႖ ႗ ႘ ႙ ႚ ႛ ႜ ႝ ႞ ႟

Until 2005, most Burmese language websites used an image-based dynamically generated method of displaying characters (often in GIF or JPEG). At the end of 2005, the Burmese NLP Research Lab announced a Myanmar Open Type font named Myanmar1. This font contains not only Unicode code points and glyphs but also the OTLs logic and rules. Their research center is based in Myanmar ICT Park, Yangon. Padauk, which was produced by SIL International, is Unicode compliant, but requires a Graphite engine. As of yet, there is only one fully compliant Unicode font for Burmese in existence, i.e. the Padauk Graphite font. It will soon become obsolete as an extension for proposed changes has been in the pipeline for long and is awaiting approval by Unicode Consortium. Padauk OT and Myanmar2.ttf meet these changes, but Padauk OT has a Graphite table as well.

Many Burmese font makers have created Burmese fonts such as, Win Innwa, CE Font, Myazedi, Zawgyi, Ponnya, Mandalay etc. It is important to note that those Unicode Burmese fonts are not Unicode compliant, because they use unallocated codepoints 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. The Myanmar Bible Society launched a Burmese Unicode website, [1] using Mozilla Firefox & Padauk Open Type ver 2.1 font from ThanLwinSoft [2], and here Burmese characters are displayed correctly. The Australian Government website followed, using the Padauk OT font ([3]).

Browsers like Internet Explorer do not support the Burmese Unicode yet. Therefore, many big websites are still using a GIF/JPG display method.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_script"
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