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90-624: Pagan Min ( Burmese : ပုဂံမင်း , pronounced [bəɡàɰ̃ mɪ́ɰ̃] ; 21 June 1811 – 14 March 1880), was the ninth king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma . Born Maung Biddhu Khyit, he was granted the title of Prince of Pagan by his father Tharrawaddy in August 1842. Pagan Min became king when Tharrawaddy died on 17 November 1846, with the formal title of His Majesty "Sri Pawara Vijaya Nanda Jatha Maha Dharma Rajadhiraja Pagan Min Taya-gyi". Pagan Min won

180-479: A blockade . Within days, Lambert's warships were bombarding Rangoon . On 7 February, Pagan wrote to Dalhousie to protest against the bombardment. On 13 February, Dalhousie sent an ultimatum to the king, demanding an equivalent of £100,000 as compensation for "having had to prepare for war", to be paid by 1 April. The ultimatum expired with no reply from Pagan, and a few days later, British troops entered Burmese territory and quickly routed Pagan's forces. Britain annexed

270-560: 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

360-552: 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

450-631: A day after the Tatmadaw seized power in a coup d'état , mobile internet services were restored in those eight townships in Rakhine State and Chin State. Rakhine State (formerly known as Arakan Province), like many parts of Burma, has a diverse ethnic population. Official Burmese figures state Arakan State's population as 3,118,963. The ethnic Rakhine make up the majority, followed by a considerable population of Rohingya Muslims. The Rakhine reside mainly in

540-506: A free and fair election would not be possible in the townships due to ongoing violence. With the exception of Toungup Township , Rakhine ethnic parties are overwhelmingly dominant in these townships. The Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and Arakan National Party (ANP) won a majority of the seats in these townships the in 2010 and 2015 general elections. An estimated 1.2 million people in Rakhine State subsequently lost their voting rights. The government of Myanmar authorised

630-551: A large majority) that they would soon become a minority in their ancestral state. The riots finally came after weeks of sectarian disputes including the death of ten Burmese Muslims by Rakhines and murder of a Rakhine by Rohingyas. From both sides, whole villages were "decimated". According to the Burmese authorities, the violence, between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, left 78 people dead, 87 injured, and up to 140,000 people have been displaced. The government has responded by imposing curfews and by deploying troops in

720-543: 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

810-519: A maximum six-month prison sentence. Internet services were restored in Maungdaw Township on 1 May 2020. On 1 August 2020, 2G internet services were permitted in the remaining seven townships – Buthidaung, Kyauktaw, Minbya, Mrauk U, Myebon, Ponnagyun and Rathedaung Townships in Rakhine State and Paletwa Township in Chin State. However, 3G and 4G services remained restricted. On 2 February 2021,

900-659: 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,

990-531: 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 is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share

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1080-612: A rail line (although Myanmar Railways has announced a 480-km rail extension to Sittwe from Pathein via Ponnagyun-Kyauttaw-Mrauk U-Minbya-Ann). The airports in Rakhine State are With Chinese investment, a deep sea port has been constructed in Kyaukphyu to facilitate the transport of natural gas and crude oil from the Indian Ocean to China without passing through Strait of Malacca . Rivers useful for transportation in Rakhine are Rakhine

1170-466: 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

1260-626: 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: Rakhine State Rakhine State ( / r ə ˈ k aɪ n / ; Rakhine and Burmese : ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ် ; MLCTS : ra.hkuing pranynai , Rakhine pronunciation [ɹəkʰàiɰ̃ pɹènè] , Burmese pronunciation: [jəkʰàiɰ̃ pjìnɛ̀] ), formerly known as Arakan State ,

1350-658: Is a state in Myanmar (Burma). Situated on the western coast, it is bordered by Chin State to the north, Magway Region , Bago Region and Ayeyarwady Region to the east, the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Chittagong Division of Bangladesh to the northwest. It is located approximately between latitudes 17°30' north and 21°30' north and longitudes 92°10' east and 94°50' east. The Arakan Mountains or Rakhine Yoma separated Rakhine State from central Burma from North to South. Off

1440-492: Is nominally free, in reality, patients have to pay for medicine and treatment, even in public clinics and hospitals. Public hospitals lack many of the basic facilities and equipment. In general, the health care infrastructure outside of Yangon and Mandalay is extremely poor but is worse in remote areas like Rakhine State. The entire Rakhine State has fewer hospital beds than the Yangon General Hospital . The following

1530-463: Is one of the poorest states in Myanmar . Over 69% of the population live in poverty. Rice is the main crop in the region, occupying around 85% of the total agricultural land. Coconut and nipa palm plantations are also important. Fishing is a major industry, with most of the catch transported to Yangon , but some is also exported. Wood products such as timber, bamboo and fuel wood are extracted from

1620-442: 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

1710-522: Is seen by the Rakhine people as the golden age of their history, as Mrauk U served as a commercially important port and base of power in the Bay of Bengal region and involved in extensive maritime trade with Arabia and Europe. Part of it, along Bengal Subah 's Chittagong , was later conquered by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb . The country steadily declined from the 18th century onwards after its loss to

1800-565: Is still installed in a temple at village Nadrai near Kasganj town in present-day Kanshiram Nagar District of Uttar Pradesh India. In the Treaty of Yandabo (1826), which ended hostilities, Burma ceded Arakan alongside Tanintharyi (Tenasserim) to British India. The British made Akyab (now Sittwe) the capital of Arakan. Later, Arakan became part of the province of Burma of the British Indian Empire , and then part of British Burma when Burma

1890-618: Is still rudimentary. While most places in Myanmar have chronic power shortages, in rural states like Rakhine the problem is greater. In 2009, the electricity consumption of a state of 3 million people was 30 MW , or 1.8% of the country's total generation capacity. In December 2009, the military government added three more hydropower plants, Saidin, Thahtay Chaung and Laymromyit , at a cost of over US$ 800 million. The three plants together can produce 687 megawatts, with surplus electricity distributed to other states and divisions. Educational opportunities in Myanmar are extremely limited outside

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1980-580: 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

2070-635: 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/

2160-486: 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

2250-569: 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

2340-573: The Ann to Munbra ( Minbya in Burmese pronunciation) road in central Rakhine, the Toungup to Pamtaung road in south central Rakhine, and the Gwa to Ngathaingchaung road in far southern Rakhine. Air travel still is the usual mode of travel from Yangon and Mandalay to Sittwe and Ngapali , the popular beach resort. Only in 1996 was a highway from Sittwe to the mainland constructed. The state still does not have

2430-518: 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

2520-602: 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

2610-711: 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 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

2700-714: 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

2790-715: The Mughal Empire . Internal instability, rebellion and dethroning of kings were very common. The Portuguese, during the era of their greatness in Asia, gained a temporary establishment in Arakan. On 2 January 1785, the internally divided kingdom fell to invading forces of the Konbaung dynasty. The Mahamuni Image was taken away by the Burmese Forces as war loot. Thus, an expansionist Burma came into direct territorial contact with territories of

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2880-522: 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

2970-605: 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

3060-533: The Thudhamma Nikaya (88.9%), followed by Shwegyin Nikaya (3.9%), with the remainder of monks belonging to other small monastic orders . 534 thilashin were registered in Rakhine State, comprising 0.9% of Myanmar's total thilashin community. The Rakhine are traditionally Theravada Buddhists . As per the 1983 Census, 98.63% of the Rakhine in Rakhine State were Buddhist and another 1.19% were Muslim. The Chin were

3150-404: The governor-general of British India , sent Commodore George Lambert to the king requesting a compensation of £920 and the dismissal of Maung Ok. Pagan complied by replacing Maung Ok. But on 6 January 1852, when the new governor declined to meet with a British delegation because Lambert had seized a Burmese royal ship, all British subjects were evacuated and the coast of Rangoon was placed under

3240-413: 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

3330-457: 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

3420-410: 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

3510-463: The 3rd largest ethnic group, contributing 4% of the population in the 1983 Census. At that time, out of the 64,404 Chin in Rakhine, 55.76% were Buddhist and 33.79% were Animist. Muslims constituted more than 80–96% of the population near the border with Bangladesh and the coastal areas. As per the 1983 Census, 99.82% of the Rohingya, 99.24% of the "Other foreigners", 89.20% of the "Mixed races", 85.50% of

3600-735: The Arakan Defense Force. The Arakan Defense Force went over to the allies and turned against the Japanese in early 1945. Rakhine (Arakan) was the site of many battles during the Second World War, most notably the Arakan Campaign 1942–43 and the Battle of Ramree Island . In 1948, Rakhine became a division within the Union of Burma, and the three districts became Arakan Division. From the 1950s, there

3690-520: The Arakan National Party won a majority of votes in Rakhine State in the 2015 election. The Arakanese repeatedly complained that their proposals in parliament are frequently rejected or not addressed. On 16 January 2018, thousands of Mrauk U residents staged a protest after officials banned a memorial event to mark the 233rd anniversary of the end of the Mrauk U kingdom. Local police opened fire on

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3780-690: The British East India Company, which set the stage for future flaring of hostility. Various geopolitical issues gave rise to the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26). As the image of Mahamuni had been taken as war loot by the Burmese, this time the huge bell of the temple was taken by the Presidency armies and awarded to an Indian soldier, Bhim Singh, a Risaldar in the 2nd Battalion of the Bengal Army , for his bravery. This inscribed huge bell

3870-519: The British but refused to sign a treaty ceding Burmese territory. Burmese language Burmese is a tonal , pitch-register , and syllable-timed language , largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with 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

3960-471: 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

4050-552: 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

4140-656: 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

4230-462: 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

4320-527: The Indians and 67.51% of the "Pakistanis" in Rakhine state were Muslims. Rakhine State consists of five districts, as below, showing areas and officially estimated populations in 2002: Combined, these districts have a total of 17 townships and 1,164 village-tracts. Sittwe is the capital of the state. Few roads cross the Arakan Mountains from central Burma to Rakhine State. The three highways that do are

4410-490: 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

4500-476: 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

4590-603: The Union Peace Conference or 21st Century Panglong, to be held in Rakhine State. In February 2017, the Arakan Liberation Party —which is one of eight NCA signatories—proposed holding ethnic-based national-level political dialogue in Rakhine State, but Aung San Suu Kyi turned down the request, saying the ALP was not yet ready. The ALP made necessary preparations and submitted letters three times to request approval to hold

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4680-692: The Waithali period left behind more archaeological remains than its predecessor. A new dynasty emerged in four towns along the Lemyo River as Waithali waned in influence, and ushered in the Lemro period, where four principal towns served as successive capitals. After its partial dominance by the Islamic Delhi Sultanate and Bengal Sultanate , the final Kingdom of Mrauk U was founded in 1429 by Min Saw Mon . It

4770-491: 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

4860-525: 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

4950-560: The coast of Rakhine State there are some fairly large islands such as Ramree , Cheduba and Myingun . Rakhine State has an area of 36,762 square kilometres (14,194 sq mi) and its capital is Sittwe (formerly known as Akyab). The state was historically known as Arakan in English until the Burmese government adopted the English name Rakhine in 1990. The history of the region of Arakan (now renamed Rakhine) State can be roughly divided into seven parts. The first four divisions and

5040-593: 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

5130-457: The crowd, killing seven and wounding 12. Two speakers of the event-Aye Maung, a prominent Rakhine politician, was charged under section 17(1) of Unlawful Associations Act and Sections 121 and 505 of the Penal Code, which relate to high treason and incitement and Wai Hun Aung, a Sittwe-based activist, was filed with public mischief charges under the Penal Code. Eight rakhine youths who were wounded in

5220-1114: The dialogue, but the government did not reply, and at the Joint Implementation Coordination Meeting (JICM) Aung San Suu Kyi again declined the request, citing sensitive issues involving the Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State. The Union Election Committee (UEC) announced on 16 October 2020 that the 2020 Myanmar general election would not be held in the townships of Pauktaw , Ponnagyun , Rathedaung , Buthidaung , Maung Daw , Kyauktaw , Minbya , Myebon , Mrauk U ; two quarters and 52 village tracts within Kyaukphyu Township , three quarters and 29 village tracts within Ann Township , four quarters within Sittwe Township , and ten quarters and 52 village tracts within Toungup Township . The UEC argued that holding

5310-474: 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

5400-428: The famed Mahamuni Buddha image was cast in Dhanyawady in around 554 BCE when the Buddha visited the kingdom. After the fall of Dhanyawadi in the 4th century CE, the centre of power shifted to a new dynasty based in the town of Waithali. The Waithali kingdom ruled the regions of Rakhine from the middle of the 4th century to 818 CE. The period is seen as the classical period of Rakhine culture, architecture and Buddhism, as

5490-598: 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

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5580-459: 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

5670-515: 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

5760-548: The lowland valleys as well as Ramree and Manaung (Cheduba) islands. A number of other ethnic minorities like the Thet , Kamein , Chin , Mro , Chakma , Khami , Daingnet , Bengali Hindu and Maramagri inhabit mainly in the hill regions of the state. According to the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee 's 2016 statistics, 12,943 Buddhist monks were registered in Rakhine State, comprising 2.4% of Myanmar's total Sangha membership, which includes both novice samanera and fully-ordained bhikkhu. The majority of monks belong to

5850-424: The main cities of Yangon and Mandalay . The following is a summary of the public school system in the state in academic year 2013–2014. Sittwe University is the main university in the state. The general state of health care in Myanmar is poor. The military government spends anywhere from 0.5% to 3% of the country's GDP on health care, consistently ranking among the lowest in the world. Although health care

5940-432: The mountains. Small amounts of inferior-grade crude oil are produced from primitive, shallow, hand-dug wells, but there is yet unexplored potential for petroleum and natural gas production. Tourism is slowly being developed. The ruins of the ancient royal town Mrauk U and the beach resorts of Ngapali are the major attractions for foreign visitors, but facilities are still primitive, and the transportation infrastructure

6030-464: The periods are based on the location of the centre of power of the main polities in the northern Rakhine region, especially along the Kaladan River. Thus, the history is divided into the Dhanyawadi , Waithali , Laymro and Mrauk U . Mrauk U was conquered by the Konbaung dynasty of Burma in 1784–85, after which Rakhine became part of the Konbaung kingdom of Burma. In 1824, the first Anglo-Burmese war erupted and in 1826, Rakhine (alongside Tanintharyi )

6120-490: The persecution of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing . The UN human rights envoy to Myanmar reported "the long history of discrimination and persecution against the Rohingya community... could amount to crimes against humanity ", and there have been warnings of an unfolding genocide . Yanghee Lee , the UN special investigator on Myanmar, believes the country wants to expel its entire Rohingya population. The NLD government refused to share executive power at state level after

6210-525: 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

6300-560: The power struggle to succeed his father by having his rival brothers killed. His chief ministers Maung Baing Zat and Maung Bhein enriched themselves by executing rich subjects. The Second Anglo-Burmese War broke out during the reign of Pagan Min. In 1851 the governor of Pegu , Maung Ok, charged the captains of two British merchant ships with murder, embezzlement, and evasion of custom duties. He fined them 500 rupees, and required their debts be paid before being authorized to return to Kolkata . After receiving their complaints, Lord Dalhousie ,

6390-447: The protection provided by the military. A number of monks' organisations have taken measures to block aid from NGOs that help Rohingyas. In July 2012, the Burmese Government did not include the Rohingya minority group in the census—classified as stateless Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh since 1982. About 140,000 Rohingya in Burma remain confined in IDP camps. The official of the United Nations and Human Rights Watch have described

6480-564: The protest were detained and charged under Article 6 (1) for allegedly destroying government property and public asset. In 2017, State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and the Tatmadaw rejected national-level political dialogue, which was a mandatory step of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), where regional stakeholders discuss suggestions at large-scale public consultations, the results of which are shared by representatives at

6570-480: The province of Pegu in December. Pagan Min's half brother Mindon opposed the war; he fled with his brother Kanaung to Shwebo and raised the standard of rebellion. After a few weeks of fighting, Pagan's chief minister Magwe Mingyi went over to Mindon's side and Pagan Min abdicated on 18 February 1853, in favour of Mindon. Mindon allowed Pagan to live, and released all the European prisoners. Mindon sued for peace with

6660-594: The region, becoming a tributary state of the Pagan Empire until the 13th century. Over time, these Bamar migrants formed a distinct cultural identity, eventually becoming the Rakhine people (also known as the Arakanese). According to Rakhine legend, the first recorded kingdom, centred around the northern town of Dhanyawadi , arose in the 34th century BCE and lasted until 327 CE. Rakhine documents and inscriptions state that

6750-425: 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

6840-482: The region. On 10 June 2012, a state of emergency was declared in Rakhine, allowing the military to participate in the administration of the region. Rohingya NGOs overseas have accused the Burmese army and police of targeting Rohingya Muslims through arrests and participating in violence. However, an in-depth research conducted by the International Crisis Group shows that both communities are grateful for

6930-639: The restriction was re-imposed in those five townships in February 2020. Around 100 students gathered in Yangon on 22 February 2020 and demanded an end to the internet cut-off in Rakhine and Chin states, where civilian casualties are mounting as government troops battle ethnic rebels, the Arakan Army . A case has been filed, on nine students who organised the protest, under section 19 of the Peaceful Assembly Law, which outlaws unauthorised assemblies and carries

7020-506: 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,

7110-515: The shutdown of internet services in nine townships on 21 June 2019, including Ponnangyun, Kyauktaw, Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Mrauk U, Minbya, and Myebon in Rakhine State, as well as Paletwa in Chin State . The restriction was lifted in five of nine townships in September 2019: four in Rakhine State – Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung and Myebon – and one township in Chin State, Paletwa. However,

7200-764: 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

7290-448: 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

7380-425: 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,

7470-455: 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

7560-459: 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,

7650-410: 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

7740-459: Was a growing movement for secession and restoration of Arakan independence. In part to appease this sentiment, in 1974, the socialist government under General Ne Win constituted "Rakhine State" from Arakan Division giving at least nominal acknowledgment of the regional majority of the Rakhine people . Since 2010, Rakhine state has had two chief ministers: Hla Maung Tin and Major General Maung Maung Ohn. Hla Maung Tin ( January 2011 – 20 June 2014)

7830-439: Was an elected Rakhine State Hluttaw member representing USDP from Ann Township in 2010 general election. He resigned from the post after recurrent intense inter-communal conflicts between Muslims and Rakhine ethnic groups in 2012–14. In 2014, he was replaced by Major General Maung Maung Ohn (30 June 2014 – present). Ohn was Deputy Minister for Border Affairs and head of the Rakhine State's Emergency Coordination Center before he

7920-603: Was ceded to the British East India Company as war reparations by the Burmese. Rakhine thus became part of the province of Burma in British India . In 1948, Burma was given independence and Rakhine became part of the newly independent state. Beginning in the 900s, the Bamar began migrating westward, crossing the Arakan Mountains and settling in what is now Rakhine State. By the 1100s, they had consolidated control of

8010-479: Was made into a separate crown colony . Arakan was administratively divided into three districts along traditional divisions during the Mrauk U period. Rakhine was the centre of multiple insurgencies which fought against British rule, notably led by the monks U Ottama and U Seinda . During the Second World War, Rakhine was given autonomy under the Japanese occupation of Burma and was even granted its own army known as

8100-476: Was named to become a military-appointed Rakhine State Hluttaw member by Election Commission on 21 June 2014. His appointment as Chief Minister was formalised on 30 June 2014 although Arakan National Party opposed it. The 2012 Rakhine State riots were a series of conflicts between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists who are majority in the Rakhine State. Before the riots, there were widespread and strongly held fears circulating among Buddhist Rakhines (who were

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