Arakanese language

Arakanese (also known as Rakhine /rəˈkaɪn/; Burmese: ရခိုင်ဘာသာ, MLCTS: ra.hkuing bhasa [ɹəkʰàɪɴ bàθà]) is a language closely related to Burmese, of which it is often considered a dialect. "Arakan" is the former name for the Rakhine region. Arakanese can be divided into three dialects: Sittwe–Marma (about two thirds of speakers), Ramree, and Thandwe.[2] It is the native language of the Rakhine, Marma and Kamein peoples.

Arakanese
Rakhine
ရခိုင်ဘာသာ
PronunciationIPA: [ɹəkʰàɪɴbàθà]
Native toMyanmar, Bangladesh, India
Region
EthnicityRakhine, Kamein
Native speakers
1 million (2011–2013)[1]
1 million second language speakers in Myanmar (2013)
Dialects
Burmese script
Rakhawunna (historical)
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
rki – Rakhine ("Arakanese")
rmz – Marma ("Burmese")
Glottologarak1255
Rakhine State shown within Myanmar

Vocabulary

There are significant vocabulary differences from Standard Burmese. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like "sarong" (လုံခြည် in Standard Burmese, ဒယော in Arakanese). Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is "hospital," which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သေပ်လှိုင် (pronounced [θeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]/[ʃeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]) in Arakanese, from English "sick lines." Other words simply have different meanings (e.g., "afternoon", ညစ in Arakanese and ညနေ in Standard Burmese). Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese (not ကျွန်တော်, as in Standard Burmese).

Comparison

A gloss of vocabulary differences between Standard Burmese and Arakanese is below:[3]

English Standard Burmese Arakanese Notes
thirstyရေဆာရီမွတ်
goသွားလားArakanese for 'go' was historically used in Standard Burmese.
kick a ballဘောလုံးကန်ဘောလုံးကျောက်
stomach acheဗိုက်နာဝမ်းနာArakanese prefers ဝမ်း to Standard Burmese ဗိုက် for 'stomach'.
guavaမာလကာသီးဂိုယံသီးStandard Burmese for 'guava' is derived from the word Malacca, whereas Arakanese for 'guava' is from Spanish guayaba, from Taino: guayaba.
papayaသင်္ဘောသီးပဒကာသီးStandard Burmese for 'papaya' literally means 'boat'.
soapဆပ်ပြာသူပုန်
superficialအပေါ်ယံအထက်ပေါ်ရီ[4]
blanketစောင်ပုဆိုး[4]ပုဆိုး in Standard Burmese refers to the male longyi (sarong).
darkမှောင်မိုက်The compound word မှောင်မိုက် ('pitch dark') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.
pick a flowerပန်းခူးပန်းဆွတ်[4]The compound word ဆွတ်ခူး ('pick') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.
wash [clothes]လျှော်ဖွပ်[4]The compound word လျှော်ဖွပ် ('wash') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.

Phonology

Arakanese prominently uses the /r/ sound, which has merged to the /j/ sound in standard Burmese. This is particularly interesting because the use of the ‘r’ sound is something that is avoided with Burmese speakers. For example, Burmese pronounce the words, “tiger” or “to hear” (both words have similar pronunciation) as “kya,” where in Arakanese, it would be pronounced as, “kra.”[5] Also, Arakanese has merged various vowel sounds like ဧ ([e]) vowel to ဣ ([i]). Hence, a word like "blood" is သွေး ([θwé]) in standard Burmese while it pronounced [θwí] in Arakanese. According to speakers of standard Burmese, Arakanese only has an intelligibility of seventy-five percent with Burmese.[6] Moreover, there is less voicing in Arakanese than in Standard Burmese, occurring only when the consonant is unaspirated.[7] Unlike in Burmese, voicing never shifts from [θ] to [ð].[8]

Because Arakanese has preserved the /r/ sound, the /-r-/ medial (preserved only in writing in Standard Burmese with the diacritic ြ) is still distinguished in the following consonant clusters: /ɡr- kr- kʰr- ŋr- pr- pʰr- br- mr- m̥r- hr-/.

The Arakanese dialect has a higher frequency of open vowels weakening to /ə/. An example is the word for "salary," (လခ) which is [la̰ɡa̰] in standard Burmese, but [ləkha̰] in Arakanese.

The following are consonantal, vowel and rhyme changes found in the Arakanese dialect:[9][10]

Written BurmeseStandard BurmeseArakaneseNotes
-စ်/-ɪʔ//-aɪʔ/e.g. စစ် ("genuine") and စိုက် ("plant") are both pronounced [saɪʔ] in Arakanese
ိုက်/-aɪʔ/
-က်-ɛʔ-ɔʔ
-ဉ်/-ɪɴ//-aɪɴ/e.g. ဥယျာဉ် ("garden"), from Standard Burmese [ṵ jɪ̀ɴ] → [wəjàɪɴ].
Irregular rhyme, with various pronunciations.
In some words, it is /-ɛɴ/ (e.g. ဝိညာဉ် "soul", from Standard Burmese [wèɪɴ ɲɪ̀ɴ] → [wḭ ɲɛ̀ɴ]).
In a few words, it is /-i -e/ (e.g. ညှဉ်း "oppress", from Standard Burmese [ɲ̥ɪ́ɴ] → [ɲ̥í, ɲ̥é]).
ိုင်/-aɪɴ/
-င်/-ɪɴ//-ɔɴ/
-န် ွန်/-aɴ -ʊɴ/ွန် is /-wɔɴ/
-ည်/-i, -e, -ɛ//-e/A few exceptions are pronounced /-aɪɴ/, like ကြည် ("clear"), pronounced [kràɪɴ]
-ေ/-e//-i/e.g. ချီ ("carry") and ချေ ("cancel") are pronounced [tɕʰì] and [tɕʰè] respectively in Standard Burmese, but merged to [tɕʰì] in Arakanese
-တ် ွတ်/-aʔ -ʊʔ//-aʔ/
ိန်/-eɪɴ//-ɪɴ/
-ုန်/-oʊɴ//-ʊɴ/
Nasal initial + -ီ
Nasal initial + -ေ		/-i//-eɪɴ/e.g. နီ ("red") is [nì] in Standard Burmese, but [nèɪɴ] in Arakanese
In some words, the rhyme is unchanged from the standard rhyme (e.g. မြေ "land", usually pronounced [mrì], not [mrèɪɴ], or အမိ "mother", usually pronounced [əmḭ], not [əmḛɪɴ]
There are few exceptions where the nasal rhyme is /-eɪɴ-/ even without a nasal initial (e.g. သီ "thread", from Standard Burmese [θì] → [θèɪɴ]).
Nasal initial + -ု -ူ -ူး/-u//-oʊɴ/e.g. နု ("tender") is [nṵ] in Standard Burmese, but [no̰ʊɴ] in Arakanese
ွား/-wá//-ɔ́/e.g. ဝါး ("bamboo") is [wá] in Standard Burmese, but [wɔ́] in Arakanese
ြွ/-w-//-rw-/Occurs in some words (e.g. မြွေ ("snake") is [mwè] in Standard Burmese, but [mrwèɪɴ] in Arakanese)
ရှ-/ʃ-//hr-/
ချ-/tɕʰ-//ʃ-/Occasionally occurs (e.g. ချင် ("want") is [tɕʰɪ̀ɴ] in Standard Burmese, but [ʃɔ̀ɴ]~[tɕʰɔ̀ɴ] in Arakanese)
တ- → ရ-/t- d-//r-/e.g. The present tense particle တယ် ([dɛ̀]) corresponds with ရယ် ([rɛ̀]) in Arakanese

e.g. The plural particle တို့ ([do̰]) corresponds with ရို့ ([ro̰]) in Arakanese

ရှ- ယှ- ယျှ-/ʃ-//h-/Found in some words only
-ယ် ဲ-ɛ-e
Writtenအမေကသင်္ကြန်ပွဲတွင်ဝတ်ရန်ထဘီရှစ်ထည်ပေးလိုက်ပါဆိုသည်။
Standard Burmeseʔəmè ɡa̰ðədʒàɴ pwɛ́ dwɪ̀ɴwʊʔ jàɴtʰəmèɪɴʃɪʔ tʰɛ̀pé laɪʔ pàsʰò dɛ̀
Arakaneseʔəmì ɡa̰θɔ́ɴkràɴ pwé hmàwaʔ pʰo̰dəjɔ̀ʃaɪʔ tʰèpí laʔ pàsʰò rì
Arakanese (written)အမိကသင်္ကြန်ပွဲမှာဝတ်ဖို့ဒယောရှစ်ထည်ပီးလတ်ပါဆိုရယ်။
Gloss
EnglishMother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival."
Rhymes
Open syllablesweak = ə
full = i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Closednasal = eɪɴ, ɛɴ, aɪɴ, aʊɴ, ɔɴ, oʊɴ
stop = eɪʔ, ɛʔ, aɪʔ, aʊʔ, ɔʔ, oʊʔ

References
  1. Rakhine ("Arakanese") at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Marma ("Burmese") at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Okell 1995, p. 3.
  3. "ရခိုင်စကားနဲ့ ဗမာစကား". BBC Burmese. 1 April 2011. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  4. အသျှင်စက္ကိန္ဒ (1994). ရခိုင်ဘာသာစကားလမ်းညွှန် (in Burmese). Burma – via Scribd.
  5. "The Arakanese dialect". Fifty Viss. 2007-07-02. Retrieved 2017-02-08.
  6. Information on Arakanese
  7. Okell 1995, p. 4, 14.
  8. Okell 1995, p. 14.
  9. Okell 1995.
  10. Houghton 1897, pp. 453–61.

Bibliography
  • Houghton, Bernard (1897). "The Arakanese Dialect of the Burman Language". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 453–461. JSTOR 25207880.
  • Okell, John (1995). "Three Burmese Dialects" (PDF). Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics. 13.
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