Burmese script

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Burmese
Type:	Abugida
Languages:	Burmese language
Time period:
ISO 15924 code:	Mymr
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

The Burmese abugida (Burmese: မ္ရန္‌မာစာ; IPA: [mjànmá sá]) is a script in the Brahmic family used in Myanmar 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.)

[edit] Alphabet

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 for 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.

[edit] Diacritics

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

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.

[edit] Ligatures

Specific consanants (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.

[edit] Digits

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.

[edit] Punctuation

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.

[edit] Burmese in Unicode

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

[edit] Websites Using Myanmar Unicode

Until 2005, most Burmese language websites used an image-based dynamically-generated method of displaying text (often in GIF or JPEG). At the end of 2005, the Myanmar NLP Research Lab [1] 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-complaint, but requires a Graphite engine. As of yet, there are only two Unicode-complaint fonts for Burmese in existence currently.

Many font makers have created Myanmar fonts such as Win Myanmar, Win Innwa, CE Font, and Myazedi [2]. It is important to note that those Unicode Myanmar fonts are not Unicode-compliant, because they use unallocated codepoints in the Myanmar block to manually deal with shaping that would normally be done by the Uniscribe engine and are not yet supported by Microsoft and major software vendors. The Myanmar Bible Society launched a Burmese Unicode website [3] with Mozilla Firefox & Padauk font from ThanLwinSoft.org's [4] Myanmar Unicode technology.

Overseas Myanmar websites such as Burma Information Technology Team (BIT)[5] also started incomplete Unicode websites. Beginning in 2006, more Unicode internet websites have appeared, but browsers like Internet Explorer do not support the Burmese Unicode yet. Therefore, many big websites are still using a GIF/JPG display method.

Yangon-based Myanmar Times website and Myanmar Web Directory display Burmese text using embedded fonts via their websites, which do not requires installation. However, they fail to work on Mozilla-based browsers. Many overseas Myanmar websites are still using GIF and JPEG format (e.g., Khitpyaing.org [6], Moemaka.net [7]).

[edit] Fonts supporting Burmese characters

• Myanmar Wikipedia:Font page
• Win Myanmar Systems
• Myanmar Unicode & NLP Research Centre
• MyMyanmar Unicode and Linguistics

[edit] See also

• Brahmic family
• Burmese language
• Burmese Wikipedia
• Myanmar Unicode Character Picker