Burmese alphabet

A Pali manuscript of the Buddhist text Mahaniddesa showing three different styles of the Burmese script, (top) medium square, (centre) round and (bottom) outline round in red lacquer from the inside of one of the gilded covers

The Burmese alphabet is an adaptation of the Pyu script,[2] or Old Mon script[4] and it is ultimately of South Indian origin, from either the Kadamba[2] or Pallava alphabet. The scholar Aung-Thwin has argued that the Burmese script most likely descended from the Pyu script and not from the Old Mon script, as there is no historical record of Mon migration from Dvaravati to Lower Burma, no inscription found in the Dvaravati script in Lower Burma, no proven relationship between the writing systems of Dvaravati and Pagan, and there are no dated Old Mon inscriptions except for those written in the Burmese script, in the entire country of Myanmar. There is however a paleographic link between the Burmese script and Pyu script, and there were close cultural, linguistic, historic and political ties between Pyu and Burmese speakers for at least two to three centuries before the first contact between Burmese speakers and Mon speakers. Aung-Thwin therefore argues that Mon script descended from Burmese script and not vice versa.[5]

As with other Brahmic scripts, the Burmese alphabet is arranged into groups of five letters for stop consonants called wek (ဝဂ်, from Pali vagga) based on articulation. Within each group, the first letter is tenuis ("plain"), the second is the aspirated homologue, the third and fourth are the voiced homologues and the fifth is the nasal homologue. This is true of the first twenty-five letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as wek byi (ဝဂ်ဗျည်း, from Pali vagga byañjana). The remaining eight letters (⟨ယ⟩, ⟨ရ⟩, ⟨လ⟩, ⟨ဝ⟩, ⟨သ⟩, ⟨ဟ⟩, ⟨ဠ⟩, ⟨အ⟩) are grouped together as a wek (အဝဂ်, lit. 'without group'), as they are not arranged in any particular pattern.

A letter is a consonant or consonant cluster that occurs before the vowel of a syllable. The Burmese script has 33 letters to indicate the initial consonant of a syllable and four diacritics to indicate additional consonants in the onset. Like other abugidas, including the other members of the Brahmic family, vowels are indicated in Burmese script by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character. A consonant character with no vowel diacritic has the inherent vowel [a̰] (often reduced to [ə] when another syllable follows in the same word).

The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and the way the letter is referred to in Burmese, which may be either a descriptive name or just the sound of the letter, arranged in the traditional order:

• ဃ (gh), ဈ (jh), ဋ (ṭ), ဌ (ṭh), ဍ (ḍ), ဎ (ḍh), ဏ (ṇ), ဓ (dh), and ဠ (ḷ) are primarily used in words of Pali origin.
• ၐ (ś) and ၑ (ṣ) are exclusively used in Sanskrit words, as they have merged to သ in Pali.
• ည has an alternate form ဉ, used with the vowel diacritic ာ as a syllable onset and alone as a final.
• With regard to pronunciation, the corresponding letters of the dentals and alveolars are phonetically equivalent.
• ရ is often pronounced [ɹ] in words of Pali or foreign origin.
• အ is nominally treated as a consonant in the Burmese alphabet; it represents an initial glottal stop in syllables with no other consonant.
• The letter န (n) uses a different form when there is a diacritic under it like in နု (nu.)

Consonant letters may be modified by one or more medial diacritics (three at most), indicating an additional consonant before the vowel. These diacritics are:

• Ya pin (ယပင့်) - Written ျ (MLCTS -y-, indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant (/c/, /cʱ/, /ɟ/, /ɲ/))
• Ya yit (ရရစ်) - Written ြ (MLCTS -r-, indicating /j/ medial or palatalization of a velar consonant)
• Wa hswe (ဝဆွဲ) - Written ွ (MLCTS -w-, usually indicating /w/ medial)
• Ha hto (ဟထိုး) - ှ (MLCTS h-, indicating that a sonorant consonant is voiceless)

A few Burmese dialects use an extra diacritic to indicate the /l/ medial, which has merged to /j/ in standard Burmese:

• La hswe (လဆွဲ) - Written ္လ (MLCTS -l, indicating /l/ medial

All the possible diacritic combinations are listed below:

La hswe (လဆွဲ) used in old Burmese from the Bagan to Innwa periods (12th century - 16th century), and could be combined with other diacritics (ya pin, ha hto and wa hswe) to form ္လျ ္လွ ္လှ.[11][12] Similarly, until the Innwa period, ya pin was also combined with ya yit. From the early Bagan period to the 19th century, ဝ် was used instead of ော် for the rhyme /ɔ̀/ Early Burmese writing also used ဟ်, not the high tone marker း, which came into being in the 16th century. Moreover, အ်, which disappeared by the 16th century, was subscripted to represent creaky tone (now indicated with ့). During the early Bagan period, the rhyme /ɛ́/ (now represented with the diacritic ဲ) was represented with ါယ်). The diacritic combination ိုဝ် disappeared in the mid-1750s (typically designated as Middle Burmese), having been replaced with the ို combination, introduced in 1638. The standard tone markings found in modern Burmese can be traced to the 19th century.[12]

Certain sequences of consonants are written one atop the other, or stacked. A pair of stacked consonants indicates that no vowel is pronounced between them, as for example the m-bh in ကမ္ဘာ kambha "world". This is equivalent to using a virama ် on the first consonant (in this case, the m); if the m and bh were not stacked, the inherent vowel a would be assumed (*ကမဘာ kamabha). Stacked consonants are always homorganic (pronounced in the same place in the mouth), which is indicated by the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet into five-letter rows of letters called ဝဂ်. Consonants not found in a row beginning with k, c, t, or p can only be doubled – that is, stacked with themselves.

When stacked, the first consonant (the final of the preceding syllable, in this case m) is written as usual, while the second consonant (the onset of the following syllable, in this case bh) is subscripted beneath it.

Stacked consonants are largely confined to loan words from languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English. For instance, the Burmese word for "self" (via Pali atta) is spelt အတ္တ, not *အတ်တ, although both would be read the same. Stacked consonants are generally not found in native Burmese words, with a major exception being abbreviation. For example, the Burmese word သမီး "daughter" is sometimes abbreviated to သ္မီး, even though the stacked consonants do not belong to the same row and a vowel is pronounced between. Similarly, လက်ဖက် "tea" is commonly abbreviated to လ္ဘက်. Also, ss is written ဿ, not သ္သ.

• Burmese Wikipedia:Font page
• Burmese Unicode & NLP Research Centre
• Parabaik Myanmar Unicode Project GPLed and OFLed
• Ayar Myanmar online dictionary and download
• Download KaNaungConverter_Window_Build200508.zip from the Kanaung project page and Unzip Ka Naung Converter Engine
• http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/myanmar/
• Padauk - Free Burmese Unicode font distributed by SIL International
• U.N.O.B. USA has separate download links for Zawgyi font for Windows, MAC-Apple, and iPhone/iPad.

• A Guide to Using Myanmar Unicode: Convert from old Myanmar fonts to Unicode
• Zawgyi Unicode Converter | Myanmar Tools - Open Source Zawgyi-One & Standard Myanmar Unicode Converter