Talk:Burmese alphabet

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Script name[edit]

Hello

Hi. Tristanb

Does anyone know the name of the script in Burmese? I would like to include the full name on the map on the writing systems page. Please let me know on my Talk page; I'm equipped to display Burmese fonts.

Thanks! kwami 07:48, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

Problems viewing Burmese characters[edit]

Hello, I have downloaded about 6 Burmese fonts (including all the recommended ones) in order to see the Burmese characters, yet all the Burmese characters show up as empty boxes on my computer (it is a PC, with Windows XP). Any assistance anyone could provide would be great. Thank you, Badagnani 09:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem appears to be with how the characters themselves are stored, as they do not appear to be stored in Unicode format. This means that unless your computer happens to be using the specific encoding used by the author, you get to see lots of pretty blocks. Hopefully somebody will come along and fix it by either using a Unicode-compliant encoding or by manually entering the relevant Unicode character entities. pgdudda 22:51 CDT 8 Aug 2007
I'm pretty sure all the Burmese characters on this page use the Unicode-compliant encoding. —Angr 05:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just downloaded the Burmese fonts from the link in the article, and all I get are little boxes. DuncanHill 19:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I forced all the characters in this article to display correctly with the new {{lang-my-Mymr}} template I created. Now all characters display correctly in every browser, not just Firefox. Taric25 (talk) 18:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm running Vista -- Burmese characters won't display in the latest Firefox and Explorer 128.255.202.110 (talk) 02:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
They show up for me on Firefox in Windows XP, so I'd be astonished if they didn't work in Vista. Are you sure you have a Unicode 5.1-compliant Burmese font installed? +Angr 06:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

pictures with alphabet[edit]

could anyone make a picture or few with all Burmese letters? Just to show how script looks like to those who doesn't have special fonts... --Monkbel 11:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unicode change[edit]

I wonder if the new encoding model ought to be discussed here. -- Evertype·✆ 23:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Go for it! I'm sure you know more about it than anyone else here. Angr 06:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Glyph inverted due to typewriter error?[edit]

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000323.php

He spent much of his time assigned to the Army's Morale Services Division, at 165 Broadway, which dealt in information and propaganda. There he received his hardest job of the war—a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different languages of Asia and the South Pacific. Many of the languages he had never heard of before.... Morale Services found native speakers and scholars to help with the languages. Martin obtained the type and did the soldering and the keyboards. The implications of the work and its difficulty brought him to near collapse, but he completed it with only one mistake: on the Burmese typewriter he put a letter on upside down. Years later, after he had discovered his error, he told the language professor he had worked with that he would fix that letter on the professor's Burmese typewriter. The professor said not to bother; in the intervening years, as a result of typewriters copied from Martin's original, that upside-down letter had been accepted in Burma as proper typewriter style.
—Hobart 17:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that's false. Burmese typewriters date to WWI not WWII, so why would anyone copy that one typewriter? This Unicode document doesn't mention such a story, nor does any other source I find. It would be a Unicode issue. Even if no extra location was assigned for that glyph, it would have been discussed.  Randall Bart   Talk  23:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The story is currently being repeated in the "Did You Know" section of today's front page. The person in question is Martin Tytell. I've found a few other sources for the claim, though some of them merely say the inverted letter became a typewriter standard, without suggesting that handwriting and computers followed suit. Still, I would like to see better confirmation--I can't find a single source that says which character was set upside down. Several Burmese characters would become identical to others if set upside down, so I trust it wasn't any of those. —Angr 07:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Subject Object Verb[edit]

The text says Burmese script was adapted "to suit the phonology of Burmese, and to fit its word order of Subject Object Verb." Phonology I understand; that's what alphabets are all about. I understand how palm leaves affect orthography, too. But Subject Object Verb has me flummoxed. If the alphabet had some markers for part of speech or clause structure I could understand, but the article mentions no such thing. How does word order impact orthography?  Randall Bart   Talk  23:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Burmese alphabet table[edit]

The order of letters is off in second and third rows of the table. Someone please fix the order.Hybernator (talk) 23:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually an image, commons:Image:Burmese alphabet.svg. It will have to be corrected offline and re-uploaded. —Angr 23:49, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
 Done That was easier than I expected it to be. —Angr 23:59, 1 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks.Hybernator (talk) 00:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why does this matter?[edit]

Quoted from the article "The Burmese script, 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.", my question is why do the SOV word order matters when modifying the Mon script to fit Burmese? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.201.148.200 (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Syllable onsets[edit]

Hello Angr, I just restored the original pronunciation for ဋတံလင်းချိတ် ([ta̰ tə lín dʒeɪʔ]). I'm less sure about the actual name of ဋ; it could be ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်. But the pronunciation in standard Burmese is not ([ta̰ θəljín dʒeɪʔ]) for sure. I'm a native Burmese speaker, and I've pronounced it as "tə lín dʒeɪʔ" and recognized the name as ဋတံလင်းချိတ် all my life. Where did you get that it's ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်? (Some Burmese who grew up in ethnic enclaves tend to mix up 'ta' and 'tha' sounds.) Hybernator (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The spelling ဋသံလျင်းချိတ် is offered in Adoniram Judson's Grammar of the Burmese language. The correct spelling is actually with a tha: ဋသန်လျင်းချိတ်. I confirmed it with a dictionary at home. That makes sense though, because သန်လျင်းချိတ် is the iron hook on a sedan (the kinds carried by people). As for the IPA, [ta̰ θəljín dʒeɪʔ] or [ta̰ θəlín dʒeɪʔ] is technically correct but [ta̰ tə lín dʒeɪʔ] is commonly used. --Hintha (talk) 11:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Burmese letters[edit]

Why does the table use black letters against a black background? It makes the letters effectively invisible. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 10:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It may be that your browser is incorrectly rendering the table. The letter's background is #CCC [1] (a shade of gray), not black. --Hintha(t) 16:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, on that page, I get a gray background. But here in the article, it is pitch black. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean. I tried it with a handful of browsers. It's definitely a problem with Internet Explorer. I've fixed it so it works on IE too. --Hintha(t) 16:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Open vowel[edit]

How is the term "open vowel" being used on this page? It doesn't seem to mean what phoneticians mean by open vowel, i.e. synonymous with "low vowel". —Angr (talk) 12:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

funked up diacritic[edit]

the final diacritic in the table is =, or at least is replaced with = by AWB. I don't know what it's supposed to be. — kwami (talk) 05:47, 28 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to fix it. Hope it worked! —Angr (talk) 06:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Files at commons[edit]

Categorization inside commons:Category:Burmese script needs expert eyes, see commons:Commons:Categories for discussion/2011/02/Category:Burmese script. NVO (talk) 07:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Repeated comment deleted[edit]

I've deleted the following obscure comment, which appeared nine times in the table:

(called ဝိုက်ချ)

Those can't all be called the same thing. If someone can figure out what it was supposed to mean, can you word it appropriately? — kwami (talk) 00:52, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Braille[edit]

I might be beneficial for someone here to review Burmese Braille. (Unless the main source is in Karen, in which case we might just need more sources.) — kwami (talk) 02:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missing rhymes[edit]

I've noticed that there are some possible rhymes that are missing in the rhyme table. So far I've noticed the lack of ကာန် and ကာတ် and certainly similar ones and others. My guess on their pronunciation is [kàɴ] and [káʔ], respectively. Could someone with more knowledge on Burmese phonology complete the chart? — N-true (talk) 22:17, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your guess is correct. Spellings like ကာန် and ကာတ် occur only in Pali loanwords, though, as do even rarer spellings with final consonants like လ် and ဝ်, not to mention consonant clusters like ဒ္ဓ and so on. It's kind of hard to know where to stop short of listing hundreds of such syllables, so the table sticks to the most common spellings as found in native words. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:34, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Vowel[edit]

Please vowel??? consonant ok nah vowel??? Akuindo (talk) 10:27, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Burmese script article[edit]

Is the content on Burmese script really distinct enough to need it's own page, and not be included on Burmese alphabet? It seems like it could easily be divided between Burmese alphabet and Myanmar (Unicode block). Thoughts? Glennznl (talk) 14:45, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Burmese diacritics[edit]

Both of my edits to the "diacritics and symbols" section have been undone and for no good reason. That section is riddled with inaccuracies and incomplete information. I put a lot of work into fixing it, but no-one contacted me before deleting my work. How can we fix this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shachekar (talk • contribs) 04:19, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Shachekar: Please add sources when changing or adding information on Wikipedia. Without sources, the accuracy of your work can't be verified. --Glennznl (talk) 16:07, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Glennznl: I would if it were that easy. It's difficult to cite a language itself. This is presumably why the incorrect information I fixed did not have sources either. It's like finding a source for that fact that English speakers call the letter K "kay". It's something everyone knows and is taught, but is rarely written down in formal publications because it's seen as unnecessary.
Burmese is not like French which has a central academy publishing authorised language guides. The government prints readers for children in school to learn from and these are the go-to source for questions of orthography and terminology. These however don't have an ISBN, are not produced in any language but Burmese, and can't be found online. I use a number of English language references as well which are written by western academics, but as a general rule they either expect the reader to already know how to read and write Burmese (otherwise how would you use them?) or if they do attempt to teach the script they generally use only English names for the vowel symbols, and don't bother teaching the native names. What you're asking me to find is a source which is written in English, and is basic level enough that it attempts to teach the script, while also being advanced enough to introduce the native Burmese names of the various symbols to English learners. I'm still hunting for such a text. Shachekar (talk) 16:58, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Shachekar: Good that you have finally decided not to add anything here without a source. Not having the book at hand, I trust that every statement is supported by the source where it is mentioned. But for the future, please refrain from replacing unsourced statments with other unsourced statments as you did before. WP:Verifiability is a fundamental pillar of content-building in WP, and first-hand knowledge is by its very nature unverifiable for other editors. In such cases, it is better practice simply to tag or delete unsourced material, and replace/reinsert it only once an apt reliable source is available. Regarding your earlier efforts, Glennznl had the choice to revert per WP:BRD, or to tag/delete either version; he took the first choice which is a "lazy" default procedure but ok. Btw, I don't think that sources are that hard to come by; e.g. Okell's A Guide to the Romanization of Burmese at least has a promising title (even though I do not have it at hand either). –Austronesier (talk) 13:52, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why are they all circles?[edit]

I saw the reference in the language is intentional, but why is the language associated with circles? This question is not listed on the page, and it's why I looked at it in the first place. Orrinpants (talk) 15:26, 17 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Orrinpants They all are based on circles and our ancestors made them easy to write and communicate. Burmese alphabets are considered as the most beautiful alphabets in the world. HUGO HCWH (talk) 12:52, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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