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72-659: The Japanese Twenty-Eighth Army was raised on 6 January 1944 in Rangoon in Japanese-occupied Burma as a garrison force and in anticipation of Allied attempts to invade and retake southern Burma. It was under the overall command of the Burma Area Army , and its headquarters were initially situated in Moulmein . It was assigned to defend the coastal region of Arakan and the lower Irrawaddy valley and consisted at first of

144-538: Is UTC/GMT +6:30 hours. 23 meters above sea level. Due to its location on the Irrawaddy Delta, intertidal flat ecosystems occur adjacent to the city. Yangon has a tropical monsoon climate (Am) under the Köppen climate classification system. The city features a lengthy wet season from May through October where a substantial amount of rainfall is received; and a dry season from November through April, where little rainfall

216-828: Is a member of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21 . Yangon is Burma's main domestic and international hub for air, rail, and ground transportation. Yangon International Airport , located 12 miles (19 km) from the center, is the country's main gateway for domestic and international air travel. The airport has three terminals, known as T1, T2 and T3 which is also known as Domestic. It has direct flights to major cities in Asia, such as Tokyo , Shanghai , Seoul , Singapore , Hong Kong , Kuala Lumpur , Kolkata , and Dubai . Although domestic airlines offer service to about forty domestic locations, most flights are to tourist destinations such as Bagan , Mandalay , Heho and Ngapali , and to

288-479: Is a perfectly mutually intelligible language, essentially meaning that any kind of text-based open source collaboration is impossible among devanagari and nastaʿlīq readers. Initiated in 2011, the Hamari Boli Initiative is a full-scale open-source language planning initiative aimed at Hindustani script, style, status & lexical reform and modernization. One of primary stated objectives of Hamari Boli

360-558: Is a proposed rapid transit system, due to begin construction in 2022 and be complete by 2027. Yangon has a 4,456-kilometre (2,769 mi) road network of all types (tar, concrete and dirt) in March 2011. Many of the roads are in poor condition and not wide enough to accommodate an increasing number of cars. The vast majority of Yangon residents cannot afford a car and rely on an extensive network of buses to get around. Over 300 public and private bus lines operate about 6,300 crowded buses around

432-697: Is administered by the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC). YCDC also coordinates urban planning . The city is made up of 33 townships and is part of Yangon Region . Yangon Region is divided into four districts, which overlap with the city's jurisdiction. The current mayor of Yangon is Maung Maung Soe . Each township is administered by a Township Development Committee, alongside local leaders who make decisions regarding city beautification and infrastructure. Myo-thit (lit. "New Towns", or satellite towns ) are not within such jurisdictions. List of Yangon City Townships by District: Yangon

504-520: Is called " rōmaji " in Japanese . The most common systems are: While romanization has taken various and at times seemingly unstructured forms, some sets of rules do exist: Several problems with MR led to the development of the newer systems: Thai , spoken in Thailand and some areas of Laos, Burma and China, is written with its own script , probably descended from mixture of Tai–Laotian and Old Khmer , in

576-730: Is due to rule that no building should be more than 75% the height above sea level of Shwedagon Pagoda , which rises about 160 metres (520 ft). For instance, in 2015, a luxury housing project was cancelled due to its proximity to Shwedagon Pagoda. Critics of the project claimed that the project could cause structural damage to the pagoda. Aside from a few high-rise hotels and office towers, most high-rise buildings (usually 10 stories and up) are "condos" scattered across prosperous neighborhoods north of downtown such as Bahan , Dagon , Kamayut and Mayangon . Older satellite towns such as Thaketa , North Okkalapa , and South Okkalapa are lined mostly with one to two-story detached houses with access to

648-563: Is heavily used by the local populace, selling about 150,000 tickets daily. The popularity of the commuter line has jumped since the government reduced petrol subsidies in August 2007. In 2017 the government of Japan provided more than US$ 200 million in finance to assist with a range of works including developing and maintaining the Yangon circular railway line, purchasing new carriages and upgrading signalling. The Yangon Urban Mass Rapid Transit

720-512: Is highly expensive for most of its citizens. As the government allows only a few thousand cars to be imported each year in a country with over 50 million people, car prices in Yangon (and in Burma) are among the highest in the world. In July 2008, the two most popular cars in Yangon, 1986/87 Nissan Sunny Super Saloon and 1988 Toyota Corolla SE Limited, cost the equivalent of about US$ 20,000 and US$ 29,000 respectively. A sports utility vehicle, imported for

792-414: Is illegal to drive trishaws , bicycles, and motorcycles. Since February 2010, pick-up truck bus lines have been forbidden to run in six townships of central Yangon, namely Latha , Lanmadaw , Pabedan , Kyauktada , Botahtaung and Pazundaung Townships . In May 2003, a ban on using car horns was implemented in six townships of Downtown Yangon to reduce noise pollution . In April 2004, the car horn ban

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864-617: Is known for its leafy avenues and fin-de-siècle architecture. The former British colonial capital has the highest number of colonial period buildings in south-east Asia. Downtown Yangon is still mainly made up of decaying colonial buildings. The former High Court , the former Secretariat buildings , the former St. Paul's English High School and the Strand Hotel are excellent examples of the bygone era. Most downtown buildings from this era are four-story mix-use (residential and commercial) buildings with 14-foot (4.3 m) ceilings, allowing for

936-493: Is no single universally accepted system of writing Russian using the Latin script—in fact there are a huge number of such systems: some are adjusted for a particular target language (e.g. German or French), some are designed as a librarian's transliteration, some are prescribed for Russian travellers' passports; the transcription of some names is purely traditional.   All this has resulted in great reduplication of names.   E.g.

1008-653: Is remarkably intact. The colonial-era commercial core is centered around the Sule Pagoda , which is reputed to be over 2,000 years old. The city is also home to the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda – Myanmar's most sacred and famous Buddhist pagoda. Yangon suffers from deeply inadequate infrastructure , especially compared to other major cities in Southeast Asia , such as Jakarta , Bangkok or Hanoi . Though many historic residential and commercial buildings have been renovated throughout central Yangon, most satellite towns that ring

1080-425: Is seen. It is primarily due to the heavy rainfall received during the rainy season that makes Yangon fall under the tropical monsoon climate category. During the course of year 1961 to 1990s, average temperatures show little variance, with average highs ranging from 29 to 36 °C (84 to 97 °F) and average lows ranging from 18 to 25 °C (64 to 77 °F). Yangon is prone to tropical cyclones every time of

1152-493: Is the eight-story apartment building . (In Yangon parlance, a building with no elevators (lifts) is called an apartment building and one with elevators is called a condominium . Condos which have to invest in a local power generator to ensure 24-hour electricity for the elevators are beyond the reach of most Yangonites.) Found throughout the city, eight-story apartment buildings provide inexpensive housing for many Yangonites. The apartments are usually eight stories high (including

1224-506: Is the most common system of phonetic transcription. For most language pairs, building a usable romanization involves trade between the two extremes. Pure transcriptions are generally not possible, as the source language usually contains sounds and distinctions not found in the target language, but which must be shown for the romanized form to be comprehensible. Furthermore, due to diachronic and synchronic variance no written language represents any spoken language with perfect accuracy and

1296-538: Is to relieve Hindustani of the crippling devanagari–nastaʿlīq digraphia by way of romanization. Romanization of the Sinitic languages , particularly Mandarin , has proved a very difficult problem, although the issue is further complicated by political considerations. Because of this, many romanization tables contain Chinese characters plus one or more romanizations or Zhuyin . Romanization (or, more generally, Roman letters )

1368-523: Is used for languages of the Indian subcontinent and south-east Asia. There is a long tradition in the west to study Sanskrit and other Indic texts in Latin transliteration. Various transliteration conventions have been used for Indic scripts since the time of Sir William Jones. Hindustani is an Indo-Aryan language with extreme digraphia and diglossia resulting from the Hindi–Urdu controversy starting in

1440-605: The 55th Division in Arakan, the 54th Division in reserve in Southern Burma, and various garrison units including the 24th Independent Mixed Brigade in Moulmein. The Allies had started a cautious offensive in the Arakan. The Japanese had scored a decisive success here in early 1943, striking at the flanks and rear of badly trained and exhausted Allied units. The main body of 55th Division attempted to repeat this success by infiltrating

1512-805: The Brahmic family . The Nuosu language , spoken in southern China, is written with its own script, the Yi script . The only existing romanisation system is YYPY (Yi Yu Pin Yin), which represents tone with letters attached to the end of syllables, as Nuosu forbids codas. It does not use diacritics, and as such due to the large phonemic inventory of Nuosu, it requires frequent use of digraphs, including for monophthong vowels. The Tibetan script has two official romanization systems: Tibetan Pinyin (for Lhasa Tibetan ) and Roman Dzongkha (for Dzongkha ). In English language library catalogues, bibliographies, and most academic publications,

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1584-604: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 , the British sent Bahadur Shah II , the last Mughal emperor, to Yangon to live in exile. Colonial Yangon, with its spacious parks and lakes and mix of modern buildings and traditional wooden architecture, was known as "the garden city of the East." By the early 20th century, Yangon had public services and infrastructure on par with London. Before World War II , about 55% of Yangon's population of 500,000

1656-499: The Library of Congress transliteration method is used worldwide. In linguistics, scientific transliteration is used for both Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets . This applies to Old Church Slavonic , as well as modern Slavic languages that use these alphabets. A system based on scientific transliteration and ISO/R 9:1968 was considered official in Bulgaria since the 1970s. Since

1728-558: The Pegu Yomas , a range of low, forested hills between the Irrawaddy and the Sittang River , reduced to approximately 20,000 men. Joined by the former garrison of Rangoon they tried to break out to join the main body of Burma Area Army in Southern Burma (2 July – 7 August 1945). The breakout was a disaster . The Allies had captured the plans for the operation and ambushed almost every track

1800-682: The Soviet Union , with some material published. The 2010 Ukrainian National system has been adopted by the UNGEGN in 2012 and by the BGN/PCGN in 2020. It is also very close to the modified (simplified) ALA-LC system, which has remained unchanged since 1941. The chart below shows the most common phonemic transcription romanization used for several different alphabets. While it is sufficient for many casual users, there are multiple alternatives used for each alphabet, and many exceptions. For details, consult each of

1872-480: The capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government relocated the administrative functions to the purpose-built capital city of Naypyidaw in north central Myanmar. With over five million people, Yangon is Myanmar's most populous city and its most important commercial centre. Yangon boasts the largest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia, and has a unique colonial-era urban core that

1944-492: The phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription , which records speech sounds with precision. There are many consistent or standardized romanization systems. They can be classified by their characteristics. A particular system's characteristics may make it better-suited for various, sometimes contradictory applications, including document retrieval, linguistic analysis, easy readability, faithful representation of pronunciation. If

2016-655: The 100-foot (30 m) Lanmadaw Road is followed by 30-foot (9.1 m)-wide 17th and 18th streets then the medium 50-foot (15 m) Sint-Oh-Dan Road, the 30-foot 19th and 20th streets, followed by another 100-foot (30 m) wide Latha Road, followed again by the two numbered small roads 21st and 22nd streets, and so on. The roads running parallel west to east were the Strand Road, Merchant Road, Maha Bandula (née Dalhousie) Road, Anawrahta (Fraser) Road, and Bogyoke Aung San (Montgomerie) Road. The largest and best maintained parks in Yangon are located around Shwedagon Pagoda . To

2088-458: The 1800s. Technically, Hindustani itself is recognized by neither the language community nor any governments. Two standardized registers , Standard Hindi and Standard Urdu , are recognized as official languages in India and Pakistan. However, in practice the situation is, The digraphia renders any work in either script largely inaccessible to users of the other script, though otherwise Hindustani

2160-422: The 1980s. Today, Greater Yangon encompasses an area covering nearly 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi). During Ne Win 's isolationist rule (1962–88), Yangon's infrastructure deteriorated through poor maintenance and did not keep up with its increasing population. In the 1990s, the military government's more open market policies attracted domestic and foreign investment, bringing a modicum of modernity to

2232-564: The 28th Army subsequently held the An track and the pass linking the port of Taungup to Prome on the Irrawaddy, a regiment was destroyed on Ramree Island (14 January – 22 February 1945). The forces from 28th Army in the lower Irrawaddy Valley (72nd Independent Mixed Brigade) were defeated around Yenangyaung . With the Allies overrunning Central Burma, 28th Army tried to retreat across the Irrawaddy, fighting several battles. They were eventually trapped in

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2304-403: The 55th Division failed in its mission and was forced to withdraw, having suffered heavy losses. The Allies did not immediately exploit their success, as formations were withdrawn to face a major Japanese invasion of India at Imphal . They even withdrew from some of their gains, which were found to be malarial and unhealthy in the monsoon season. Twenty-Eighth army used the monsoon to construct

2376-636: The Allied lines to attack an Indian Division from the rear, overrunning the Divisional HQ. Unlike the previous occasion, the Allied troops were better-trained and did not panic. The Japanese had also not anticipated that the Allies would parachute supplies to the cut-off forward units, while the Japanese themselves were unable to obtain supplies and starved. Although battle casualties in the resulting Battle of Ngakyedauk (5 to 23 February 1944) were approximately equal,

2448-563: The Allies resumed their offensive. Intelligence of impending Allied amphibious operations forced the 28th Army to weaken the forces in Arakan and disperse many of its troops to Southern Burma. At the end of the year, they abandoned the Mayu Peninsula and the island of Akyab , with its vital airfield. The retreating troops were intercepted by Allied forces which had landed from the sea on the Myebon peninsula, and suffered heavy casualties. Although

2520-578: The An track across the hills between Central Burma and Arakan, making it easier to supply their troops there. Aided by locally recruited Arakanese irregulars (the Arakan Defence Force ) and small units of the Indian National Army , they launched an attack against a West African Division in the Kaladan River valley, forcing it to withdraw almost to the Indian frontier. When the rains ended,

2592-522: The Japanese martial art 柔術: the Nihon-shiki romanization zyûzyutu may allow someone who knows Japanese to reconstruct the kana syllables じゅうじゅつ , but most native English speakers, or rather readers, would find it easier to guess the pronunciation from the Hepburn version, jūjutsu . The Arabic script is used to write Arabic , Persian , Urdu , Pashto and Sindhi as well as numerous other languages in

2664-540: The Japanese used. Hundreds of men drowned trying to cross the swollen Sittang River, and east of the river, stragglers were attacked by guerrillas and bandits. The breakout cost the Army 10,000 men, half its strength. The Army was demobilized after the surrender of Japan . Rangoon Yangon , formerly romanized as Rangoon , is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar . Yangon served as

2736-450: The Muslim world, particularly African and Asian languages without alphabets of their own. Romanization standards include the following: or G as in genre اِ || e || e || i || e || e || e || e Notes : Notes : There are romanization systems for both Modern and Ancient Greek . The Hebrew alphabet is romanized using several standards: The Brahmic family of abugidas

2808-534: The capital Naypyidaw . Yangon Central Railway Station is the main terminus of Myanmar Railways ' 5,403-kilometre (3,357 mi) rail network whose reach covers Upper Myanmar ( Naypyidaw , Mandalay , Shwebo ), upcountry ( Myitkyina ), Shan hills ( Taunggyi , Lashio ) and the Taninthayi coast ( Mawlamyine , Dawei ). Yangon Circular Railway operates a 45.9-kilometre (28.5 mi) 39-station commuter rail network that connects Yangon's satellite towns. The system

2880-482: The capital of all British-ruled Burma after the British had captured Upper Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885. By the 1890s Yangon's increasing population and commerce gave birth to prosperous residential suburbs to the north of Royal Lake (Kandawgyi) and Inya Lake . The British also established hospitals including Rangoon General Hospital and colleges including Rangoon University . After

2952-519: The casual reader who is unfamiliar with the original script to pronounce the source language reasonably accurately. Such romanizations follow the principle of phonemic transcription and attempt to render the significant sounds ( phonemes ) of the original as faithfully as possible in the target language. The popular Hepburn Romanization of Japanese is an example of a transcriptive romanization designed for English speakers. A phonetic conversion goes one step further and attempts to depict all phones in

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3024-702: The city continue to be profoundly impoverished and lack basic infrastructure. The name Yangon ( ရန်ကုန် ) is derived from the combination of the Burmese words yan ( ရန် ) and koun ( ကုန် ), which mean 'enemies' and 'run out of', respectively. This word combination can be translated as 'End of Strife'. The name is pronounced / ˌ j æ ŋ ˈ ɡ ɒ n / yang- GON in British English and / ˌ j ɑː n ˈ ɡ oʊ n / yahn- GOHN in American English. The former romanization, Rangoon ,

3096-407: The city had few human casualties, three-quarters of Yangon's industrial infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, with losses estimated at US$ 800 million. In November 2005, the military government designated Naypyidaw , 320 kilometres (199 mi) north of Yangon, as the new administrative capital, and moved much of the government to the newly developed city. Yangon remains the largest city and

3168-558: The city to its industrial back country. Still, much of Yangon remains without basic municipal services such as 24-hour electricity and regular garbage collection. Yangon has become much more indigenous Burmese in its ethnic make-up since independence. After independence, many South Asians and Anglo-Burmese left. Many more South Asians were forced to leave during the 1960s by Ne Win's xenophobic government. Nevertheless, sizeable South Asian and Chinese communities still exist in Yangon. The Anglo-Burmese have effectively disappeared, having left

3240-484: The city's electricity grid. Newer satellite towns such as North Dagon and South Dagon are in a grid layout. The satellite towns—old or new—receive little or no municipal services. Downtown Yangon 's road layout follows a grid pattern, based on four types of roads: The east–west grid of central was laid out by British military engineers Fraser and Montgomerie after the Second Anglo-Burmese War . The city

3312-503: The city's infrastructure. Some inner city residents were forcibly relocated to new satellite towns. Many colonial-period buildings were demolished to make way for high-rise hotels, office buildings, and shopping malls, leading the city government to place about 200 notable colonial-period buildings under the Yangon City Heritage List in 1996. Major building programs have resulted in six new bridges and five new highways linking

3384-422: The city, carrying over 4.4 million passengers a day. All buses and 80% of the taxis in Yangon run on compressed natural gas (CNG), following the 2005 government decree to save money on imported petroleum. Highway buses to other cities depart from Dagon Ayeyar Highway Bus Terminal for Irrawaddy delta region and Aung Mingala Highway Bus Terminal for other parts of the country. Motor transportation in Yangon

3456-513: The commercial and political hub of British Burma . After the war, the British moved the capital of British Burma from Moulmein (present-day Mawlamyine ) to Yangon. Based on the design by army engineer Lt. Alexander Fraser, the British constructed a new city on a grid plan on delta land, bounded to the east by the Pazundaung Creek and to the south and west by the Yangon River . Yangon became

3528-721: The construction of mezzanines . Despite their less-than-perfect conditions, the buildings remain highly sought after and most expensive in the city's property market. In 1996, the Yangon City Development Committee created a Yangon City Heritage List of old buildings and structures in the city that cannot be modified or torn down without approval. In 2012, the city of Yangon imposed a 50-year moratorium on demolition of buildings older than 50 years. The Yangon Heritage Trust , an NGO started by Thant Myint-U , aims to create heritage areas in Downtown, and attract investors to renovate buildings for commercial use. A latter-day hallmark of Yangon

3600-465: The country or intermarried with other Burmese groups. Yangon was the centre of major anti-government protests in 1974 , 1988 and 2007 . In particular, the 8888 Uprising resulted in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of Burmese civilians, many of them in Yangoon where hundreds of thousands of people flooded into the streets of the former capital city. The Saffron Revolution saw mass shootings and

3672-594: The enlarged town "Yangon". In the 1790s, the East India Company opened a factory in Yangon. The estimated population of Yangon in 1823 was about 30,000. The British captured Yangon during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), but returned the city to Burmese rule after the war. The city was destroyed by a fire in 1841. The British captured Yangon and all of Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, and subsequently transformed Yangon into

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3744-468: The equivalent of around US$ 50,000, goes for US$ 250,000. Illegally imported unregistered cars are cheaper – typically about half the price of registered cars. Nonetheless, car usage in Yangon is on the rise, a sign of rising incomes for some, and already causes much traffic congestion in highway-less Yangon's streets. In 2011, Yangon had about 300,000 registered motor vehicles in addition to an unknown number of unregistered ones. Within Yangon city limits, it

3816-468: The former parading ground on important national days when Yangon was the capital. A few miles north of the pagoda lies the 37-acre (15-ha) Inya Lake Park – a favourite hangout place of Yangon University students, and a well-known place of romance in Burmese popular culture. Hlawga National Park and Allied War Memorial at the outskirts of the city are popular day-trip destinations with tourists. Yangon

3888-567: The ground floor) mainly because city regulations, until February 2008, required that all buildings higher than 75 feet (23 m) or eight stories to install lifts. The code calls for elevators in buildings higher than 62 feet (19 m) or six stories, likely ushering in the era of the six-story apartment building. Although most apartment buildings were built only within the last 20 years, they look much older and rundown due to shoddy construction and lack of proper maintenance. Unlike other major Asian cities, Yangon does not have any skyscrapers. This

3960-572: The junta unfit to make such changes, nor by many publications and news bureaus, including, most notably, the BBC and foreign nations including the United Kingdom and the United States.) Since independence, Yangon has expanded outwards. Successive governments have built satellite towns such as Thaketa , North Okkalapa and South Okkalapa in the 1950s to Hlaingthaya , Shwepyitha and South Dagon in

4032-593: The late 1980s, however, the city began a rapid spread north to where Yangon International Airport now stands. But the result is a stretching tail on the city, with the downtown area well removed from its geographic centre. The city's area has steadily increased from 72.52 square kilometres (28.00 sq mi) in 1901 to 86.2 square kilometres (33.3 sq mi) in 1940 to 208.51 square kilometres (80.51 sq mi) in 1974, to 346.13 square kilometres (133.64 sq mi) in 1985, and to 598.75 square kilometres (231.18 sq mi) in 2008. Downtown Yangon

4104-457: The late 1990s, Bulgarian authorities have switched to the so-called Streamlined System avoiding the use of diacritics and optimized for compatibility with English. This system became mandatory for public use with a law passed in 2009. Where the old system uses <č,š,ž,št,c,j,ă>, the new system uses <ch,sh,zh,sht,ts,y,a>. The new Bulgarian system was endorsed for official use also by UN in 2012, and by BGN and PCGN in 2013. There

4176-510: The most important commercial, economic and cultural center of Myanmar. On 7 May 2005, a series of coordinated bombings occurred in the city of Yangon, Myanmar. Eleven people were killed in the attack, and one of the 162 people that were injured was a member of the LCMS mission team to Myanmar. In the 2020s, life in Yangon was greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and 2021 coup d'état . The city

4248-470: The name of the Russian composer Tchaikovsky may also be written as Tchaykovsky , Tchajkovskij , Tchaikowski , Tschaikowski , Czajkowski , Čajkovskij , Čajkovski , Chajkovskij , Çaykovski , Chaykovsky , Chaykovskiy , Chaikovski , Tshaikovski , Tšaikovski , Tsjajkovskij etc. Systems include: The Latin script for Syriac was developed in the 1930s, following the state policy for minority languages of

4320-583: The romanization attempts to transliterate the original script, the guiding principle is a one-to-one mapping of characters in the source language into the target script, with less emphasis on how the result sounds when pronounced according to the reader's language. For example, the Nihon-shiki romanization of Japanese allows the informed reader to reconstruct the original Japanese kana syllables with 100% accuracy, but requires additional knowledge for correct pronunciation. Most romanizations are intended to enable

4392-398: The source language, sacrificing legibility if necessary by using characters or conventions not found in the target script. In practice such a representation almost never tries to represent every possible allophone—especially those that occur naturally due to coarticulation effects—and instead limits itself to the most significant allophonic distinctions. The International Phonetic Alphabet

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4464-430: The south-east of the gilded stupa is the most popular recreational area in the city – Kandawgyi Lake . The 150-acre (61-ha) lake is surrounded by the 110-acre (45-ha) Kandawgyi Nature Park , and the 69.25-acre (28-ha) Yangon Zoological Gardens , which consists of a zoo, an aquarium and an amusement park. West of the pagoda towards the former Hluttaw (Parliament) complex is the 130-acre (53-ha) People's Square and Park ,

4536-568: The town from 1364 to 1392, and her grandniece, Shin Saw Pu , who later became the only female queen regnant in Burmese history . Queen Saw Pu built a palace next to the Shwedagon Pagoda in the town in 1460 and spent her semi-retired life at that palace until her death in 1471. In 1755, King Alaungpaya , the founder of the Konbaung dynasty captured Dagon, added settlements around it, and called

4608-480: The use of crematoria in Yangoon by the Burmese government to erase evidence of their crimes against monks, unarmed protesters, journalists and students. The city's streets saw bloodshed each time as protesters were gunned down by the government, most notably during the 1988 , 2007 , and the 2021 mass protests, all of which were started in Yangon itself, signifying its importance as the cultural centre of Burma . In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Yangon. While

4680-509: The vocal interpretation of a script may vary by a great degree among languages. In modern times the chain of transcription is usually spoken foreign language, written foreign language, written native language, spoken (read) native language. Reducing the number of those processes, i.e. removing one or both steps of writing, usually leads to more accurate oral articulations. In general, outside a limited audience of scholars, romanizations tend to lean more towards transcription. As an example, consider

4752-530: The year. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis made landfall as a Category 4 cyclone, making it the worst cyclone on the country's record. Until the mid-1990s, Yangon remained largely constrained to its traditional peninsula setting between the Bago , Yangon, and Hlaing Rivers . People moved in, but little of the city moved out. Maps from 1944 show little development north of Inya Lake and areas that are now layered in cement and stacked with houses were then virtual backwaters. Since

4824-484: Was Indian or South Asian , and only about a third was Bamar (Burman). Karens , Chinese , Anglo-Burmese and others made up the rest. After World War I , Yangon became the center of the Burmese independence movement, with leftist Rangoon University students leading the way. Three nationwide strikes against British rule in 1920, 1936, and 1938 all began in Yangon. Yangon was under Japanese occupation (1942–45), and incurred heavy damage during World War II. The city

4896-649: Was based on the Rakhine dialect , and pronounced / r æ ŋ ˈ ɡ uː n / rang- GOON in English. Yangon was founded as Dagon in the early 11th century ( c.  1028–1043 ) by the Mon people , who inhabited Lower Burma at that time. Dagon became an important pilgrimage pagoda town, starting in the 14th century, during the Hanthawaddy Kingdom . Notable governors of Dagon included Princess Maha Dewi , who ruled

4968-507: Was expanded to cover the entire city. Romanized In linguistics , romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script , or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration , for representing written text, and transcription , for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription , which records

5040-495: Was later developed by the Public Works Department and Bengal Corps of Engineers. The pattern of south to north roads is as follows: one broad 100-foot (30 m) wide broad road, two narrow streets, one mid-size street, two more narrow streets, and then another 100-foot (30 m) wide broad road. This order is repeated from west to east. The narrow streets are numbered; the medium and broad roads are named. For example,

5112-658: Was retaken by the Allies in May 1945. Yangon became the capital of the Union of Burma on 4 January 1948 when the country gained independence from British rule. Soon after Burma's independence in 1948, many colonial-era names of streets and parks were changed to more nationalistic Burmese names. In 1989, the military junta changed the city's English name to "Yangon", along with many other changes in English transliteration of Burmese names. (The changes have not been accepted by many Burmese who consider

5184-572: Was the location of mass protests in response to the coup. The pandemic and protests prompted authorities to enforce numerous lockdowns and curfews . The city's economy subsequently slowed. Yangon is located in Lower Burma (Myanmar) at the convergence of the Yangon and Bago Rivers about 30 km (19 mi) away from the Gulf of Martaban at 16°48' North, 96°09' East (16.8, 96.15). Its standard time zone

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