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70-544: Mindon Min ( Burmese : မင်းတုန်းမင်း , pronounced [mɪ́ɰ̃dóʊɰ̃ mɪ́ɰ̃] ; 1808 – 1878), born Maung Lwin , was the penultimate king of Burma (Myanmar) from 1853 to 1878. He was one of the most popular and revered kings of Burma because of his role in Fifth Buddhist Council . Under his half brother King Pagan , the Second Anglo-Burmese War in 1852 ended with the annexation of Lower Burma by

140-560: A pitch-register language like Shanghainese . There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table, the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example. For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone: In syllables ending with /ɰ̃/ , the checked tone is excluded: In spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with

210-620: A subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family . The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script , either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets. Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages , of which Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non- Sinitic languages. Burmese

280-833: A trade war results. Barriers take the form of tariffs (which impose a financial burden on imports) and non-tariff barriers to trade (which uses other overt and covert means to restrict imports and occasionally exports). In theory, free trade involves the removal of all such barriers, except perhaps those considered necessary for health or national security. In practice, however, even those countries promoting free trade heavily subsidize certain industries, such as agriculture and steel . High-income countries tend to have fewer trade barriers than middle income countries which, in turn, tend to have fewer trade barriers than low income countries. Small states tend to have lower trade barriers than large states. The most common trade barriers are on agricultural goods. Textiles, apparel and footwear are

350-527: A great administrator and modernizer. During Mindon's reign, scholars were sent to France, Italy, the United States, and Great Britain, in order to learn about the tremendous progress achieved by the Industrial Revolution . During Mindon's reign, the following reforms were undertaken: centralization of the kingdom's internal administration, introduction of a salary system for the bureaucracy (to dampen

420-543: A lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words from Sanskrit (religion), Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), and Chinese (games and food). Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such as Portuguese . Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese: Since the end of British rule, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans (especially from English) by coining new words ( neologisms ). For instance, for

490-462: A missionary school. Mindon also fulfilled his responsibility as a pious Buddhist. He reasserted the king's role of being the protector of Buddha Sasana , convened the Fifth Buddhist council in 1871, and supported the work of scholar-monks and their returning to Lower Burma to teach. In 1866 two of Mindon's sons, Prince Myingun and Prince Myingundaing attempted a palace coup. Myingun claimed that

560-659: A monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of [sʰwáɰ̃] , which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma. The standard dialect is represented by the Yangon dialect because of the modern city's media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The most noticeable feature of the Mandalay dialect is its use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် , kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon,

630-559: A series of robberies by the Myowun of Amarapura, Mindon, Kanaung, and their immediate family and retainers fled to Shwebo , the seat of their ancestor, King Alaungpaya . The war with the British had thus become a two-front war, and the court of Pagan quickly collapsed, with the Myozas of Kyaukmaw and Yenangyaung allowing Mindon and Kanaung to walk into the capital, Ava , unopposed. Mindon thus ascended

700-466: A stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches. The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay." The syllable structure of Burmese

770-618: Is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share a common set of tones, consonant clusters, and written script. However, several Burmese dialects differ substantially from standard Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes. Spoken Burmese is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay - Yangon dialect continuum ) comes from

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840-435: Is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide , and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɰ̃/ . Some representative words are: Trade barriers Trade barriers are government-induced restrictions on international trade . According to

910-414: Is highly uneven. One particular study showed that small firms are most affected (over 50%). Another negative aspect of trade barriers is that they result in a limited choice of products and would therefore force customers to pay higher prices and accept inferior quality. Trade barriers obstruct free trade. Before exporting or importing to other countries, firstly, they must be aware of restrictions that

980-442: Is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ] . The vowels of Burmese are: The monophthongs /e/ , /o/ , /ə/ , /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda ); the diphthongs /ei/ , /ou/ , /ai/ and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda). /ə/ only occurs in a minor syllable , and is the only vowel that is permitted in a minor syllable (see below). The close vowels /i/ and /u/ and

1050-580: Is the value of the four native final nasals: ⟨မ်⟩ /m/ , ⟨န်⟩ /n/ , ⟨ဉ်⟩ /ɲ/ , ⟨င်⟩ /ŋ/ , as well as the retroflex ⟨ဏ⟩ /ɳ/ (used in Pali loans) and nasalisation mark anusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as in တံခါး tankhá 'door', and တံတား tantá 'bridge', or else replaces final -m ⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after

1120-635: Is the word "moon", which can be လ la̰ (native Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း [sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Pali canda 'moon'), or သော်တာ [t̪ɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit). The consonants of Burmese are as follows: According to Jenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016 :15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants of သ are dental stops ( /t̪, d̪/ ), rather than fricatives ( /θ, ð/ ) or affricates. These phonemes, alongside /sʰ/ , are prone to merger with /t, d, s/ . An alveolar /ɹ/ can occur as an alternate of /j/ in some loanwords. The final nasal /ɰ̃/

1190-486: The [ ɹ ] sound, which has become [ j ] in standard Burmese. Moreover, Arakanese features a variety of vowel differences, including the merger of the ဧ [e] and ဣ [i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood" သွေး is pronounced [θw é ] in standard Burmese and [θw í ] in Arakanese. The Burmese language's early forms include Old Burmese and Middle Burmese . Old Burmese dates from

1260-569: The /l/ medial, which is otherwise only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. They also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop . Beik has 250,000 speakers while Tavoyan has 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese. The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of

1330-591: The British Empire . Mindon and his younger brother Kanaung overthrew their half brother King Pagan. He spent most of his reign trying to defend the upper part of his country from British encroachments, and to modernize his kingdom. Mindon was born Maung Lwin in 1808, a son of Tharrawaddy Min and Chandra Mata Mahay, Queen of the south Royal Chamber. He studied at the Maha Zawtika monastic college in Amarapura until

1400-518: The Burmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used in palm-leaf manuscripts , as opposed to the traditional square block-form letters used in earlier periods. The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced back to Middle Burmese. Modern Burmese emerged in the mid-18th century. By this time, male literacy in Burma stood at nearly 50%, which enabled

1470-602: The English language in the colonial educational system, especially in higher education. In the 1930s, the Burmese language saw a linguistic revival, precipitated by the establishment of an independent University of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university by Pe Maung Tin , modeled on Anglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford. Student protests in December of that year, triggered by

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1540-471: The Kuthodaw Pagoda at the foot of Mandalay Hill . In 1871 Mindon also donated a new hti ('umbrella' or crown gilded and encrusted with precious diamonds and other gems) to the 105-metre-tall (344 ft) Shwedagon Pagoda , which is located in then British held Yangon , although he was not allowed to visit this most famous and venerated pagoda in the country. On 15 August 1873, Mindon also enacted

1610-714: The Mon people , who until recently formed the majority in Lower Burma . Most Mon loanwords are so well assimilated that they are not distinguished as loanwords, as Burmese and Mon were used interchangeably for several centuries in pre-colonial Burma. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music. As a natural consequence of British rule in Burma , English has been another major source of vocabulary, especially with regard to technology, measurements, and modern institutions. English loanwords tend to take one of three forms: To

1680-522: The Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan ( မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း ), was compiled in 1978 by the commission. Burmese is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers (or diglossic varieties ): The literary form of Burmese retains archaic and conservative grammatical structures and modifiers (including affixes and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form. Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since

1750-605: The Pyu language . These indirect borrowings can be traced back to orthographic idiosyncrasies in these loanwords, such as the Burmese word "to worship", which is spelt ပူဇော် ( pūjo ) instead of ပူဇာ ( pūjā ), as would be expected by the original Pali orthography. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in

1820-405: The theory of comparative advantage , trade barriers are detrimental to the world economy and decrease overall economic efficiency . Most trade barriers work on the same principle: the imposition of some sort of cost (money, time, bureaucracy, quota) on trade that raises the price or availability of the traded products . If two or more nations repeatedly use trade barriers against each other, then

1890-413: The 11th to the 16th century ( Pagan to Ava dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century ( Toungoo to early Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century to the present. Word order , grammatical structure, and vocabulary have remained markedly stable well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g., function words ). The earliest attested form of

1960-457: The 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools. In most cases, the corresponding affixes in the literary and spoken forms are totally unrelated to each other. Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms: Historically the literary register was preferred for written Burmese on the grounds that "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". In the mid-1960s, some Burmese writers spearheaded efforts to abandon

2030-410: The 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens from the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma. British rule in Burma eroded the strategic and economic importance of the Burmese language; Burmese was effectively subordinated to

2100-533: The British had ended, Mindon still faced considerable military difficulties, namely a revolt at Kanpyin and an attack from the neighboring Kingdom of Siam . In late 1853, Mindon won a pyrrhic victory against the Siamese, but when they returned again, he sent 3,000 cavalry supported by artillery, which finally stopped the Siamese encroachment upon Burmese land. King Mindon founded the last royal capital of Burma, Mandalay , in 1857. His younger brother Kanaung proved to be

2170-471: The British in the lead-up to the independence of Burma in 1948. The 1948 Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as the official language of the newly independent nation. The Burma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal of modernizing the Burmese language in order to replace English across all disciplines. Anti-colonial sentiment throughout

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2240-552: The Buddhist clergy (monks) from the laity ( householders ), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks). The following are examples of varying vocabulary used for Buddhist clergy and for laity: Burmese primarily has a monosyllabic received Sino-Tibetan vocabulary. Nonetheless, many words, especially loanwords from Indo-European languages like English, are polysyllabic, and others, from Mon, an Austroasiatic language, are sesquisyllabic . Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in

2310-651: The Burmese as an avid modernizer, who would go to the factories early on cold winter mornings with a blanket wrapped around him, just to talk to the mechanics about how the machines ran. He was in charge of the Royal Army, as was customarily required of Burmese crown princes, and he imported and manufactured guns, cannons and shells. Mindon was known for his Buddhist devotion and religious tolerance. He helped build monasteries and missionary schools for Buddhism. The first non- Sangha -run schools in Burma were run by Christians, and Mindon himself sent his son, Thibaw Min , to study in

2380-656: The Burmese language into Lower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s, Mon , an Austroasiatic language, was the principal language of Lower Burma, employed by the Mon people who inhabited the region. Lower Burma's shift from Mon to Burmese was accelerated by the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty 's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. By 1830, an estimated 90% of

2450-462: The Burmese language is called Old Burmese , dating to the 11th and 12th century stone inscriptions of Pagan . The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Owing to the linguistic prestige of Old Pyu in the Pagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via

2520-489: The Crown Prince Kanaung was oppressive, and Kanaung was murdered during the revolt. Mindon escaped alive and the coup was crushed when Myingun fled in a steamer to British Burma. Rumours of British involvement are unsubstantiated, and no evidence exists showing their support for the revolt. While Mindon was escaping the palace, he ran into a would-be assassin, Maung Paik Gyi, who lost his nerve and grovelled in front of

2590-490: The Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), called anya tha ( အညာသား ) and speakers from Lower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), called auk tha ( အောက်သား ), largely occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor lexical and pronunciation differences exist throughout the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း , "food offering [to

2660-476: The OB vowel *u e.g. ငံ ngam 'salty', သုံး thóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံး sóum 'end'. It does not, however, apply to ⟨ည်⟩ which is never realised as a nasal, but rather as an open front vowel [iː] [eː] or [ɛː] . The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. It may also allophonically appear as a homorganic nasal before stops. For example, in /mòʊɰ̃dáɪɰ̃/ ('storm'), which

2730-518: The Seventeen Articles, one of Southeast Asia's first indigenous press freedom laws. In 1875, during a royal consecration ceremony, Mindon took on the title Siripavaravijayanantayasa Paṇḍita Tribhavanadityadhipati Mahadhammarajadhiraja . With the opening of the Suez Canal , Mindon assembled a flotilla of steamers to facilitate trade with the British. His brother Kanaung is still remembered by

2800-491: The adoption of neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì] , from English university , now တက္ကသိုလ် [tɛʔkət̪ò] , a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila ( တက္ကသီလ Takkasīla ), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan. Some words in Burmese may have many synonyms, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example

2870-521: The age of 23, and he held deep respect for religion and religious scholarship throughout his entire life. Mindon grew up in the shadow of British control – by 1853, the year of his coronation, Burma had gone through radical changes. The British annexations of Arakan , the Himalayan kingdoms of the north of India, and the Irrawaddy Delta and their blockade of Burma caused a tightening of the food supply,

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2940-518: The authority and income of bureaucrats), fixed judicial fees, comprehensive penal laws, reorganization of the financial system, removal of trade barriers including custom duties, reform of the thathameda taxes (to increase direct taxation), and modernization of the kingdom's army and introduction of new police forces. A Burmese manuscript (Or 13681) held by the British Library depicts "seven scenes of King Mindon's donations at various places during

3010-525: The close portions of the diphthongs are somewhat mid-centralized ( [ɪ, ʊ] ) in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɰ̃/ and /ʔ/ . Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically [tɕàʊ̃] . Burmese is a tonal language , which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch , but also phonation , intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese

3080-593: The country. These varieties include the Yaw , Palaw, Myeik (Merguese), Tavoyan and Intha dialects . Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects. Below is a summary of lexical similarity between major Burmese dialects: Dialects in Tanintharyi Region , including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved

3150-448: The disadvantage of farmers in developing economies who typically do not benefit from such subsidies. The Commitment to Development Index measures the effect that rich country trade policies actually have on the developing world. Trade barriers are mostly a combination of conformity and per-shipment requirements requested abroad, and weak inspection or certification procedures at home. The impact of trade barriers on companies and countries

3220-521: The dying king wanted to bid them farewell. Thibaw, Mindon's son from a lesser queen, succeeded him after his death in 1878. King Thibaw was defeated by the British in the Third Anglo-Burmese War in November 1885 resulting in total annexation of Burma. Burmese language Burmese is a tonal , pitch-register , and syllable-timed language , largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with

3290-647: The early post-independence era led to a reactionary switch from English to Burmese as the national medium of education, a process that was accelerated by the Burmese Way to Socialism . In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission ) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named

3360-525: The first four years of his reign (1853–57)", including a monastery, rest houses, and gifts for monks. Mindon introduced the first machine-struck coins to Burma, and in 1871 also held the Fifth Buddhist council in Mandalay. He had already created the world's largest book in 1868, the Tipitaka , 729 pages of the Buddhist Pali Canon inscribed in marble and each stone slab housed in a small stupa at

3430-435: The following: Trade barriers are often criticized for the effect they have on the developing world. Because rich-countries are able to set trade policies, goods, such as crops that developing countries are best at producing, still face high barriers. Trade barriers such as tariffs on food imports or subsidies for farmers in developed economies lead to overproduction and dumping on world markets, thus lowering world prices to

3500-598: The form of nouns . Historically, Pali , the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism , had a profound influence on Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due to phonotactic similarities between the two languages, alongside the fact that the script used for Burmese can be used to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy. Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science. Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms: Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by

3570-409: The government imposes on the trade. Subsequently, they need to make sure that they are not violating the restrictions by checking related regulations on tax or duty, and finally they probably need a license in order to ensure a smooth export or import business and reduce the risk of penalty or violation. Sometimes the situation becomes even more complicated with the changing of policy and restrictions of

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3640-515: The introduction of English into matriculation examinations , fueled growing demand for Burmese to become the medium of education in British Burma; a short-lived but symbolic parallel system of "national schools" that taught in Burmese, was subsequently launched. The role and prominence of the Burmese language in public life and institutions was championed by Burmese nationalists, intertwined with their demands for greater autonomy and independence from

3710-541: The king. Mindon commanded him to carry him from the palace, which he promptly did. The rebellion caused Mindon great reluctance in naming a successor to Kanaung for fear of civil war. One of his queens, Hsinbyumashin , dominated the last days of King Mindon. It was an edict by Hsinbyumashin that ordered almost all possible heirs to the throne be killed, so that her daughter Supayalat and son-in-law Thibaw would become queen and king. Close royals of all ages and both genders were mercilessly executed, after being tricked that

3780-515: The literary form, asserting that the spoken vernacular form ought to be used. Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt , a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use

3850-408: The loss of trade through ports, an erosion of Burma as an imperial power, and the incorporation of Burma into the world market as a result. There was an atmosphere of reform due to translated works and better knowledge about the outside world. At the same time, migrations of people from the national core to Lower Burma , controlled by the British, were sapping Burma of its labor and taxes. Mindon took

3920-519: The manufactured goods which are most commonly protected by trade barriers. Tariffs have been declining in the last twenty years as the influence of the World Trade Organization has grown, but states have increased their use of non-tariff barriers . According to Chad Bown and Meredith Crowley, world trade is "probably" vastly more liberal in current times than was the case historically. According to Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O’Rourke, "for

3990-516: The myozas of Magwe, Thalun, Myedaung, and Pahkangyi, the latter being Mindon's former tutor who was given the position as Mindon ascended to the throne. This new government was given oaths of allegiance by the Shan princes, as well as gifts from the Chinese. Immediately following his taking of the throne, Mindon went into a ceasefire with the British, coming into effect on 30 June 1853. Although hostilities with

4060-984: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries trade barriers and transport costs were the most important barriers to trade". They also write, "during the mercantilist era price gaps were as likely to be due to trade monopolies, pirates, and wars as to transport costs and tariffs, which are more easily quantifiable." Georgetown University Professor Marc L. Busch and McGill University Professor Krzysztof J. Pelc note that modern trade deals are long and complex because they often tackle non-tariff barriers to trade , such as different standards and regulations, in addition to tariffs . Due to steadily decreasing tariff barriers since World War II , countries have become increasingly likely to enact trade barriers in forms other than tariffs. National firms often lobby their own governments to enact regulations that are designed to keep out foreign firms, and modern trade deals are one way to do away with such regulations. The barriers can take many forms, including

4130-579: The population in Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking territory, from the Irrawaddy Delta to upriver in the north, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay), and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking. The language shift has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in

4200-425: The region. Standardized tone marking in written Burmese was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged. British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers. Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout

4270-506: The said pronoun is used only by male speakers while ကျွန်မ , kya.ma. [tɕəma̰] is used by female speakers. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology , Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family, whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not. The Mon language has also influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties,

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4340-764: The spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms. The following sample sentence reveals that differences between literary and spoken Burmese mostly occur in affixes: Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience into account. The suffix ပါ pa is frequently used after a verb to express politeness. Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect. In many instances, polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third person pronouns or kinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns. Furthermore, with regard to vocabulary choice, spoken Burmese clearly distinguishes

4410-485: The throne following a bloody conflict of succession with his half-brother, Pagan Min . Under Pagan, Mindon was the president of the Council of State, and was presiding as the Second Anglo-Burmese War began. He was against the continuation of the war and favored an unpopular program of appeasement. Mindon's most loyal ally at this time was his brother Kanaung Mintha . In a November 1852 plot to implicate Mindon and Kanaung in

4480-408: The throne with the regnal name of Thiri Thudhamma Tilawka Pawara Maha Dhamma Razadiraza on 18 February 1853. The early reign of Mindon was characterized by joint rule with Kanaung, who was allowed a large court and was designated Mindon's heir, as well as given control over matters of technology, modernization, and the arts. Behind Mindon's throne too was his chief queen and his four chief advisors –

4550-448: The traditional homeland of Burmese speakers. The 1891 Census of India , conducted five years after the annexation of the entire Konbaung Kingdom , found that the former kingdom had an "unusually high male literacy" rate of 62.5% for Upper Burmans aged 25 and above. For all of British Burma , the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women (by contrast, British India more broadly had a male literacy rate of 8.44%). The expansion of

4620-425: The underlying orthography . From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace's literacy rate , which manifested itself in greater participation of laymen in scribing and composing legal and historical documents, domains that were traditionally the domain of Buddhist monks, and drove the ensuing proliferation of Burmese literature , both in terms of genres and works. During this period,

4690-455: The verb ပေး ('to give') is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct. More distinctive non-standard varieties emerge as one moves farther away from the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of

4760-459: The wide circulation of legal texts, royal chronicles , and religious texts. A major reason for the uniformity of the Burmese language was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (called kyaung ) in Burmese villages. These kyaung served as the foundation of the pre-colonial monastic education system, which fostered uniformity of the language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley,

4830-410: The word "television", Burmese publications are mandated to use the term ရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit. 'see picture, hear sound') in lieu of တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း , a direct English transliteration. Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English car ) in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of use with

4900-810: Was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Classical Chinese , Pyu , Old Tibetan and Tangut . The majority of Burmese speakers, who live throughout the Irrawaddy River Valley, use a number of largely similar dialects, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in the peripheral areas of the country. These dialects include: Arakanese in Rakhine State and Marma in Bangladesh are also sometimes considered dialects of Burmese and sometimes as separate languages. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there

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