MLC Transcription System
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The Myanma Language Commission Transcription System, also known as the MLC Transcription System (MLCTS), is a transcription system for rendering Burmese in the Latin alphabet. It is loosely based on the Pāli romanisation system, has some similarities to the ALA-LC Romanization, and was devised by the Myanma Language Commission. This system is used in many linguistic publications regarding Burmese, and is used in all MLC publications as the primary form of transcription for Burmese.
The transcription system is based on the orthography of formal Burmese, and is not suited for colloquial Burmese, which has substantial differences in phonology from formal Burmese. Differences are mentioned throughout the article.
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[edit] Features
Features of the MLC Transcription System include:
- Usage of coalesced letters in transcribing stacked consonants
- Consonantal transcriptions (for initials) similar to those of Pali
- Transcription of finals as consonants rather than as glottal stops
- Usage of : and . to transcribe two tones, heavy and creaky respectively
- Special transcriptions for abbreviated syllables used in literary Burmese
[edit] Transcription system
[edit] Initials and finals
The following initials are listed in the traditional ordering of the Burmese alphabet, with the transcriptions of the initials listed before their IPA equivalents:
| က k ([k]) |
ခ hk ([kʰ]) |
ဂ g ([g]) |
ဃ gh ([g]) |
င ng ([ŋ]) |
| စ c ([s]) |
ဆ hc ([sʰ]) |
ဇ j ([z]) |
ဈ jh ([z]) |
ည ny ([ɲ]) |
| ဋ t ([t]) |
ဌ ht ([tʰ]) |
ဍ d ([d]) |
ဎ dh ([d]) |
ဏ n ([n]) |
| တ t ([t]) |
ထ ht ([tʰ]) |
ဒ d ([d]) |
ဓ dh ([d]) |
န n ([n]) |
| ပ p ([p]) |
ဖ hp ([pʰ]) |
ဗ b ([b]) |
ဘ bh ([b]) |
မ m ([m]) |
| ယ y ([j]) |
ရ r ([j] or [r]) |
လ l1 ([l]) |
ဝ w ([w]) |
သ s ([θ] or [ð]) |
| ဟ h ([h]) |
ဠ l ([l]) |
အ a [ə] or [a]) |
1Sometimes used as a final, but preceding diacritics determine its pronunciation.
The Burmese alphabet is arranged in groups of five, and within each group, consonants can stack one another. The consonant above the stacked consonant is the final of the previous vowel. Most words of Sino-Tibetan origin are spelt without stacking, but words of Indo-European origin (such as Pali, Sanskrit, and English) are often spelt with stacking. Possible combinations are as follows:
| Group | Burmese | Transcriptions | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ka. | က္က, က္ခ, ဂ္ဂ, ဂ္ဃ, င္◌ | kk, khk, gg, ggh, and -ang respectively | ang ga. lip (အင္ဂလိပ္)1, meaning "English" |
| ca. | စ္စ, စ္ဆ, ဇ္ဇ, ဇ္ဈ, ဉ္စ, ဉ္ဇ, | cc, chc, jj, jjh, nyc, nyj | wijja (ဝိဇ္ဇာ), meaning "knowledge" (used with sippam (သိပ္ပံ) to form "Arts and Sciences") |
| ta. | ဋ္ဋ, ဋ္ဌ, ဍ္ဍ, ဎ္ဍ | tt, htht, dd:, dhdh: | |
| ta. | တ္တ, ထ္ထ, ဒ္ဒ, န္တ, န္ထ, န္ဒ, န္ဓ, န္န | tt, htht, dd, nt, nht, nd, ndh, nn | manta. le: (မန္တလေး), a city in Myanmar |
| pa. | ပ္ပ, ဗ္ဗ, ဗ္ဘ, မ္ပ, မ္ဗ, မ္ဘ, မ္မ, | pp, bb, bbh, mp, mb, mm | kamba (ကမ္ဘာ), meaning "world" |
| ya. | သ္သ | ss | pissa (ပိသ္သာ), meaning viss, a traditional Burmese unit of weight measurement |
1The pa. in ang ga. lip is sometimes spelt with a ta., although this is uncommon.
All consonantal finals are pronounced as glottal stops ([ʔ]), except for nasal finals. All possible combinations are as follows, and correspond to the colors of the initials above:
| Consonant | Transcription (with IPA) |
|---|---|
| k | -ak (◌က္ [eʔ]), -wak (◌္ဝက္ [weʔ]), -auk (◌ောက္ [auʔ]), -uik (◌ုိက္ [aiʔ]) |
| c | -ac (◌စ္ [iʔ]) |
| t | -at (◌တ္ [aʔ]), -wat (◌္ဝတ္ [waʔ]), -ut (◌ုတ္ [ouʔ]), it (◌ိတ္ [eiʔ]) |
| p | -p (◌ပ္ [aʔ] or [ɛʔ]), -wap (◌္ဝပ္ [waʔ]), -up (◌ုပ္), ip (◌ိပ္ [eiʔ]) |
Nasalised finals, with most pronounced [N], are transcribed differently. Transcriptions of the following diacritical combinations in Burmese for nasalised finals are as follows:
| Consonant | Transcription (with IPA) |
|---|---|
| ng | -ang(◌င္ [iN]), -wang (◌္ဝင္ [wiN]), -aung (◌ောင္ [auN]) , -uing (◌ုိင္ [aiN]) |
| ny | -any (◌ည္ [e] or [ei]), -any (◌ဉ္ [iN]) |
| n | -an (◌န္ [aN]), -wan (◌္ဝန္ [waN]), -un (◌ုန္ [ouN]), -in (◌ိန္ eiN]) |
| m | -am (◌မ္ [aN]), -wam (◌္ဝမ္ [waN]), -um (◌ုမ္ [ouN]), -im (◌ိမ္ [eiN]) |
| -am (◌ံ [aN]), -um (◌ုံ [ouN]) (equivalent to -am, but spelt with an anunaasika) |
Monophthongs are transcribed as follows:
| Burmese | Transcription | IPA | Remarks | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | High | Creaky | Low | High | Creaky | Low | High | Creaky | |
| ◌ာ | ◌ား | ◌ | -a | -a: | -a. | [à] | [á] | [a̰] | Can be combined with medial -w-. |
| ◌ယ္ | ◌ဲ | ◌ဲ့ | -ai | -ai: | -ai. | [ɛ̀] | [ɛ́] | ɛ̰] | |
| ◌ော္ | ◌ော | ◌ော့ | -au | -au: | -au. | [ɔ̀] | [ɔ́] | [ɔ̰] | As a full vowel in the high tone, it is written ဩ and transcribed au:. As a full vowel in the creaky tone, it is written ဪ and is transcribed au. |
| ◌ူ | ◌ူး | ◌ု | -u | -u: | -u. | [ù] | [ú] | [ṵ] | As a full vowel in the creaky tone, it is written ဥ and is transcribed u.. As a vowel in low tone, it is written ဦ and transcribed u. |
| ◌ုိ | ◌ုိး | ◌ုိ့ | -ui | -ui: | -ui. | [ò] | [ó] | [o̰] | |
| ◌ီ | ◌ီး | ◌ိ | -i | -i: | i. | [ì] | [í] | [ḭ] | As a full vowel in the creaky tone, it is written ဣ and is transcribed i.. As a full vowel in the high tone, it is written ဤ and transcribed i:. |
| ◌ေ | ◌ေး | ◌ေ့ | -e | -e: | -e. | [è] | [é] | [ḛ] | As a full vowel in the high tone, it is written ဧ and is transcribed ei:. It can be combined with medial -w-. |
[edit] Tones
| Tone name | Burmese | Transcribed tone mark |
Remarks | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oral vowels1 | IPA | Nasal vowels2 | IPA | |||
| Low | ◌ာ | à | ◌န္ | àN | none | |
| High | ◌ား | á | ◌န္း | áN | Colon (:) | In both cases, the colon-like symbol (shay ga pauk) is used to denote the high tone. |
| Creaky | ◌ | a̰ | ◌န့္ | a̰N | Full stop (.) | Nasalised finals use the anusvara to denote the creaky tone in Burmese. |
1 Oral vowels are shown with ◌.
2 Nasal vowels are shown with ◌န္ (-an).
[edit] Medial consonants
A medial is a semivowel that comes before the vowel. Combinations of medials (such as h- and -r-) are possible. They follow the following order in transcription: h-, -y- or -r-, and -w-. In standard Burmese, there are three pronounced medials. The following are medials in the MLC Transcription System:
| Burmese | IPA | Transcription | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌္ယ | [j] | -y-† | Its possible combinations are with consonants ka., (က), hka., (ခ), ga. (ဂ), pa. (ပ), hpa. (ဖ), ba. (ဗ), and ma. (မ). The medial is possible with other finals and vowels. |
| ္ရ◌ | [j] | -r-† | The aforementioned remarks apply to this medial as well. |
| ◌္ဝ | [w] | -w- | Its possible combinations are with consonants ka. (က), hka. (ခ), ga. (ဂ), nga, (င), ca, (စ), hca, (ဆ), ja, (ဇ), nya, (ည), ta. (တ), hta, (ထ), da (ဒ), na, (န), pa, (ပ), hpa, (ဖ), ba, (ဗ), bha. (ဘ), ma, (မ), ya. (ယ), ra. (ရ), la. (လ), and sa. (သ). The medial is possible with other finals and vowels, using the already mentioned consonants. |
| ◌္ဟ1 | h- | Its possible combinations are with consonants nga. (င), nya. (ည), na. န), ma. (မ), ya. (ယ)‡, ra. (ရ)‡, and la. (လ). |
†The two medials are pronounced the same in standard Burmese. In dialects such as Rakhine (Arakanese), the latter is pronounced [r].
‡When this medial is spelt with ya. (ယ) and ra. (ရ), its sound becomes [ʃa̰], which was once represented by hsya. (သ္ယ္ဟ).
[edit] Abbreviated Syllables
Formal Burmese has four abbreviated symbols, which are typically used in literary works. They are listed below:
| Burmese | IPA | Transcription | Usage | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Modern abbrev. |
Histor. spelling |
|||
| ၍ | ရုယ္ | [jwé] | rwe | It is a connecting particle that connects two elements in a sentence and sometimes means "because" or "and". |
| ၌ | န္ဟုိက္ | [n̥aiʔ] | hnai. | It is a locative particle that acts as a postposition after nouns (at, in, on). It is equivalent to hma (မ္ဟာ) in colloquial Burmese. |
| ၎ | လေကောင္ | [la̰ gàuN] | la. kaung | It acts as a demonstrative noun (this or that) when it precedes a noun. It is also used as a connecting phrase (as well as) between two nouns within a clause. |
| ၏ | ဧအ္ | [ḭ] | e | It is a genitive that is written at the end of a sentence ending with a verb. It also marks possession of a preceding noun. |
