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95-608: Pe Myint ( Burmese : ဖေမြင့် [pʰè mjɪ̰ɴ] ; born 15 December 1949) is a Burmese politician, writer and a former Minister for Information of Myanmar (Burma). Pe Myint was born on 15 December 1949 in Sandoway , Burma (now Thandwe, Myanmar) to Aung Nyein and Khin Thein. He is of Rakhine descent . Pe Myint graduated from Thandwe State High School in Rakhine State in 1966 and Institute of Medicine 1, Rangoon in 1975. He worked as

190-640: 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 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

285-560: 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

380-488: A classic example of a dialect continuum, encompassing Norway, Denmark, Sweden and coastal parts of Finland. The Continental North Germanic standard languages ( Norwegian , Danish and Swedish ) are close enough and intelligible enough for some to consider them to be dialects of the same language, but the Insular ones ( Faroese and Icelandic ) are not immediately intelligible to the other North Germanic speakers. Historically,

475-552: 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

570-465: A continuum until they have independent cultural status (autonomy), a process the German linguist Heinz Kloss called ausbau . Speakers of local varieties typically read and write a related standard variety, use it for official purposes, hear it on radio and television, and consider it the standard form of their speech, so that any standardizing changes in their speech are towards that variety. In such cases

665-453: A dialect continuum (excluding urban enclaves of Cantonese ). There are sharper boundaries resulting from more recent expansion between Hakka and Yue, and between Southwestern Mandarin and Yue, but even here there has been considerable convergence in contact areas. Cree is a group of closely related Algonquian languages that are distributed from Alberta to Labrador in Canada . They form

760-459: A dialect continuum, drawing lines called isoglosses between areas that differ with respect to some feature. A variety within a dialect continuum may be developed and codified as a standard language , and then serve as an authority for part of the continuum, e.g. within a particular political unit or geographical area. Since the early 20th century, the increasing dominance of nation-states and their standard languages has been steadily eliminating

855-447: A dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicates a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries. In other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found. Standard varieties may be developed and codified at one or more locations in

950-517: A distinct dialect, but the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian standard varieties of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language are all based on the same dialect, Shtokavian . Therefore, Croats , Serbs , Bosniaks and Montenegrins communicate fluently with each other in their respective standardized varieties . In Croatia , native speakers of Shtokavian may struggle to understand distinct Kajkavian or Chakavian dialects, as might

1045-525: A language defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible, such as the German dialects . The choice of standard is often determined by a political boundary, which may cut across a dialect continuum. As a result, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, and thus part of different "languages". The various local dialects then tend to be leveled towards their respective standard varieties, disrupting

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1140-457: A large extent, but those from distant regions are more difficult to be understood. The difference between the written standard and the vernaculars is apparent also in the written language, and children have to be taught Modern Standard Arabic in school to be able to read it. All modern Aramaic languages descend from a dialect continuum that historically existed before the Islamicization of

1235-724: A less arguable example of a dialect continuum. For many decades since Italy's unification, the attitude of the French government towards the ethnolinguistic minorities was copied by the Italian government. The eastern Romance continuum is dominated by Romanian . Outside Romania and Moldova, across the other south-east European countries, various Romanian language groups are to be found: pockets of various Romanian and Aromanian subgroups survive throughout Bulgaria , Serbia , North Macedonia , Greece , Albania and Croatia (in Istria ). Conventionally, on

1330-543: 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

1425-659: 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,

1520-690: A physician until 1988. He received training as a journalist at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok . He previously served as the vice chairperson of the Myanmar Press Council , editor-in-chief of The People's Age Journal , editor of Sarpaylawka Book House and Myanmar Book Publishing House . On 22 March 2016, he was nominated to be Minister for Information in President Htin Kyaw 's Cabinet . On 24 March,

1615-483: A rapid and ever-increasing decline since the 1850s. Standard Dutch was based on the dialects of the principal Brabantic and Hollandic cities. The written form of Standard German originated in the East Central German used at the chancery of the kingdom of Saxony , while the spoken form emerged later, based on North German pronunciations of the written standard. Being based on widely separated dialects,

1710-551: A result of centuries of interaction and multilingualism. The boundaries between the northern Mandarin area and the central groups, Wu , Gan and Xiang , are particularly weak, due to the steady flow of northern features into these areas. Transitional varieties between the Wu, Gan and Mandarin groups have been variously classified, with some scholars assigning them to a separate Hui group. The boundaries between Gan, Hakka and Min are similarly indistinct. Pinghua and Yue form

1805-466: 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

1900-527: 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: Dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible , but

1995-812: Is a group of closely related Algonquian languages in Canada , which is distributed from British Columbia to Quebec , and the United States , distributed from Montana to Michigan , with diaspora communities in Kansas and Oklahoma . With Cree, the Ojibwe dialect continuum forms its own continuum, but the Oji-Cree language of this continuum joins the Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi dialect continuum through Swampy Cree . The Ojibwe continuum has 70,606 speakers. Roughly from northwest to southeast, it has these dialects: Unlike

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2090-510: Is closely related to Italian; in Italy, Ligurian , Piedmontese , Lombard , Emilian , Romagnol , Italian Gallo-Picene, Venetian , Friulian , Ladin ; and in Switzerland, Lombard and Romansh . This continuum is sometimes presented as another example, but the major languages in the group (i.e. Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian) have had separate standards for longer than the languages in

2185-1025: Is identical or near-identical. The Germanic dialects spoken on the island of Great Britain comprise areal varieties of English in England and of Scots in Scotland. Those of large areas north and south of the border are often mutually intelligible. In contrast, the Orcadian dialect of Scots is very different from the dialects of English in southern England —but they are linked by a chain of intermediate varieties. The western continuum of Romance languages comprises, from West to East: in Portugal, Portuguese ; in Spain, Galician , Leonese or Asturian , Castilian or Spanish , Aragonese and Catalan or Valencian ; in France, Occitan , Franco-Provençal , standard French and Corsican which

2280-476: Is married to Khaing Nwe Oo, a book publisher, and has two children, Pe Zaw Oo and Cho Su Su Khaing. 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

2375-457: Is now more difficult to recognize because many of the intervening languages have declined or become extinct. The Goidelic languages consist of Irish , Scottish Gaelic and Manx . Prior to the 19th and 20th centuries, the continuum existed throughout Ireland, the Isle of Man and Scotland. Many intermediate dialects have become extinct or have died out leaving major gaps between languages such as in

2470-412: Is perhaps most evident today in Italy, where, especially in rural and small-town contexts, local Romance is still often employed at home and work, and geolinguistic distinctions are such that while native speakers from any two nearby towns can understand each other with ease, they can also spot from linguistic features that the other is from elsewhere. In recent centuries, the intermediate dialects between

2565-442: 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

2660-580: 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

2755-635: 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/

2850-486: 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

2945-569: 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

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3040-586: The Assembly of the Union confirmed his nomination. Following the military-led 2021 Myanmar coup d'état , the Myanmar Armed Forces appointed Chit Hlaing as Pe Myint's successor on 1 February 2021. Pe Myint is a well-known writer and won Myanmar National Literature Award in 1995. He has published over forty books of fiction, non-fiction, and translated works. Some of his original and translated works include He

3135-587: The Balkans in the west with Balkan Turkish , includes Turkish in Turkey and Azerbaijani language in Azerbaijan , extends into Iran with Azeri and Khalaj , into Iraq with Turkmen , across Central Asia to include Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , to southern Regions of Tajikistan and into Afghanistan . In the south, the continuum starts in northern Afghanistan, northward to Chuvashia . In

3230-518: 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

3325-559: The Dutch , Frisian , Low Saxon and High German dialects formed a canonical dialect continuum, which has been gradually falling apart since the Late Middle Ages due to the pressures of modern education, standard languages, migration and weakening knowledge of the dialects. The transition from German dialects to Dutch variants followed two basic routes: Though the internal dialect continua of both Dutch and German remain largely intact,

3420-550: The East Slavic and West Slavic languages . East Slavic includes Russian , Belarusian , Rusyn and Ukrainian ; West Slavic languages of Czech , Polish , Slovak , Silesian , Kashubian , and Upper and Lower Sorbian . All South Slavic languages form a dialect continuum. It comprises, from West to East, Slovenia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Montenegro , Serbia , North Macedonia , and Bulgaria . Standard Slovene , Macedonian , and Bulgarian are each based on

3515-602: 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

3610-574: 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 is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share

3705-714: 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

3800-522: 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

3895-605: 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

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3990-515: The Romance languages , which are similarly descended from a language spread by imperial expansion over substrate languages 2000 years ago. Unlike Europe, however, Chinese political unity was restored in the late 6th century and has persisted (with interludes of division) until the present day. There are no equivalents of the local standard literary languages that developed in the numerous independent states of Europe. Chinese dialectologists have divided

4085-533: The Uralic languages . The Sami languages , sometimes mistaken for a single language, are a dialect continuum, albeit with some disconnections like between North , Skolt and Inari Sami . The Baltic-Finnic languages spoken around the Gulf of Finland form a dialect continuum. Thus, although Finnish and Estonian are considered as separate languages, there is no definite linguistic border or isogloss that separates them. This

4180-568: The modern vernacular dialects (or languages) branched from ancient Arabic dialects, from North Western Africa through Egypt , Sudan , and the Fertile Crescent to the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq . The dialects use different analogues from the Arabic language inventory and have been influenced by different substrate and superstrate languages. Adjacent dialects are mutually understandable to

4275-565: The varieties of Chinese , and parts of the Romance , Germanic and Slavic families in Europe. Terms used in older literature include dialect area ( Leonard Bloomfield ) and L-complex ( Charles F. Hockett ). Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves . In this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of various language features across

4370-413: 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

4465-457: 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

4560-410: 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

4655-521: 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

4750-552: 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

4845-656: 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

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4940-462: 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

5035-644: The Continental West Germanic group, and so are not commonly classified as dialects of a common language. Focusing instead on the local Romance lects that pre-existed the establishment of national or regional standard languages, all evidence and principles point to Romania continua as having been, and to varying extents in some areas still being, what Charles Hockett called an L-complex, i.e. an unbroken chain of local differentiation such that, in principle and with appropriate caveats, intelligibility (due to sharing of features) attenuates with distance. This

5130-470: The Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi dialect continuum, with around 117,410 speakers. The languages can be roughly classified into nine groups, from west to east: Various Cree languages are used as languages of instruction and taught as subjects: Plains Cree, Eastern Cree, Montagnais, etc. Mutual intelligibility between some dialects can be low. There is no accepted standard dialect. Ojibwa (Chippewa)

5225-524: The Dutch and German standards do not show a high degree of mutual intelligibility when spoken and only partially so when written. One study concluded that, when concerning written language, Dutch speakers could translate 50.2% of the provided German words correctly, while the German subjects were able to translate 41.9% of the Dutch equivalents correctly. In terms of orthography, 22% of the vocabulary of Dutch and German

5320-490: 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

5415-452: The Levant and Mesopotamia. Northeastern Neo-Aramaic , including distinct varieties spoken by both Jews and Christians, is a dialect continuum although greatly disrupted by population displacement during the twentieth century. The Persian language in its various varieties ( Tajiki and Dari ), is representative of a dialect continuum. The divergence of Tajik was accelerated by the shift from

5510-476: 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

5605-623: The Perso-Arabic alphabet to a Cyrillic one under the Soviets. Western dialects of Persian show greater influence from Arabic and Oghuz Turkic languages, but Dari and Tajik tend to preserve many classical features in grammar and vocabulary. Also the Tat language , a dialect of Persian, is spoken in Azerbaijan. Turkic languages are best described as a dialect continuum. Geographically this continuum starts at

5700-730: The Turkic languages are very close to one another, and they share basic features such as SOV word order, vowel harmony and agglutination . Many of the Indo-Aryan languages of the Indian subcontinent form a dialect continuum. What is called " Hindi " in India is frequently Standard Hindi , the Sanskritized register of the colloquial Hindustani spoken in the Delhi area, the other register being Urdu . However,

5795-491: 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

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5890-451: The basis of extralinguistic features (such as writing systems or the former western frontier of the Soviet Union), the North Slavic continuum is split into East and West Slavic continua. From the perspective of linguistic features alone, only two Slavic (dialect) continua can be distinguished, namely North and South, separated from each other by a band of non-Slavic languages: Romanian, Hungarian and German. The North Slavic continuum covers

5985-525: 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

6080-486: The complete loss of its grammatical case systems and adoption of features more commonly found among analytic languages . The barrier between East South Slavic and West South Slavic is historical and natural, caused primarily by a one-time geographical distance between speakers. The two varieties started diverging early on ( c.  11th century CE ) and evolved separately ever since without major mutual influence, as evidenced by distinguishable Old Slavonic , while

6175-412: The continent's largest language branches. The Romance area spanned much of the territory of the Roman Empire but was split into western and eastern portions by the Slav Migrations into the Balkans in the 7th and 8th centuries. The Slavic area was in turn split by the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Norwegian , Danish and Swedish dialects comprise

6270-458: The continuum which historically connected the Dutch, Frisian and German languages has largely disintegrated. Fragmentary areas of the Dutch-German border in which language change is more gradual than in other sections or a higher degree of mutual intelligibility is present still exist, such as the Aachen - Kerkrade area, but the historical chain in which dialects were only divided by minor isoglosses and negligible differences in vocabulary has seen

6365-488: 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

6460-408: The differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India , varieties of Arabic across north Africa and southwest Asia, the Turkic languages ,

6555-474: 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

6650-467: The east it extends to the Republic of Tuva , the Xinjiang autonomous region in Western China with the Uyghur language and into Mongolia with Khoton . The entire territory is inhabited by Turkic speaking peoples. There are three varieties of Turkic geographically outside the continuum: Chuvash , Yakut and Dolgan . They have been geographically separated from the other Turkic languages for an extensive period of time, and Chuvash language stands out as

6745-598: 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

6840-515: 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

6935-553: The islands of Rathlin , Arran or Kintyre and also in the Irish counties of Antrim , Londonderry and Down . The current Goidelic speaking areas of Ireland are also separated by extinct dialects but remain mutually intelligible. Arabic is a standard case of diglossia . The standard written language, Modern Standard Arabic , is based on the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an , while

7030-515: 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

7125-472: The local varieties into a number of dialect groups, largely based on phonological developments in comparison with Middle Chinese . Most of these groups are found in the rugged terrain of the southeast, reflecting the greater variation in this area, particularly in Fujian . Each of these groups contains numerous mutually unintelligible varieties. Moreover, in many cases the transitions between groups are smooth, as

7220-465: The local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety. A standard variety together with its dependent varieties is commonly considered a "language", with the dependent varieties called "dialects" of the language, even if the standard is mutually intelligible with another standard from the same continuum. The Scandinavian languages , Danish , Norwegian and Swedish , are often cited as examples. Conversely,

7315-517: The major Romance languages have been moving toward extinction , as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. That has been most notable in France, owing to the French government's refusal to recognise minority languages , but it has occurred to some extent in all Western Romance speaking countries. Language change has also threatened the survival of stateless languages with existing literary standards, such as Occitan. The Romance languages of Italy are

7410-620: The most divergent from other Turkic languages. There are also Gagauz speakers in Moldavia and Urum speakers in Georgia . The Turkic continuum makes internal genetic classification of the languages problematic. Chuvash , Khalaj and Yakut are generally classified as significantly distinct, but the remaining Turkic languages are quite similar, with a high degree of mutual intelligibility between not only geographically adjacent varieties but also among some varieties some distance apart. Structurally,

7505-543: The national standard of Pakistan , while Hindus regard the same speech as Hindi , an official standard of India . Even so, the Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains a list of 22 scheduled languages and Urdu is among them. During the time of the former Socialist Republic of Macedonia , a standard was developed from local varieties of Eastern South Slavic , within a continuum with Torlakian to

7600-432: The nonstandard dialects that comprise dialect continua, making the boundaries ever more abrupt and well-defined. Dialectologists record variation across a dialect continuum using maps of various features collected in a linguistic atlas , beginning with an atlas of German dialects by Georg Wenker (from 1888), based on a postal survey of schoolmasters. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France (1902–10) pioneered

7695-532: The north and Bulgarian to the east. The standard was based on varieties that were most different from standard Bulgarian. Now known as Macedonian , it is the national standard of North Macedonia , but viewed by Bulgarians as a dialect of Bulgarian. Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic , Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family ,

7790-636: 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

7885-427: The previous dialect continuum. Examples include the boundaries between Dutch and German , between Czech , Slovak and Polish , and between Belarusian and Ukrainian . The choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial. Examples of controversies are regions such as the disputed territory of Kashmir , in which local Muslims usually regard their language as Urdu ,

7980-425: 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

8075-506: 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,

8170-657: The speakers of the two with each other. Likewise in Serbia , the Torlakian dialect differs significantly from Standard Serbian. Serbian is a Western South Slavic standard, but Torlakian is largely transitional with the Eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian). Collectively, the Torlakian dialects with Macedonian and Bulgarian share many grammatical features that set them apart from all other Slavic languages, such as

8265-764: 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

8360-511: The term Hindi is also used for the different dialects from Bihar to Rajasthan and, more widely, some of the Eastern and Northern dialects are sometimes grouped under Hindi. The Indo-Aryan Prakrits also gave rise to languages like Gujarati , Assamese , Maithili , Bengali , Odia , Nepali , Marathi , Konkani and Punjabi . Chinese consists of hundreds of mutually unintelligible local varieties . The differences are similar to those within

8455-448: 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

8550-425: 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,

8645-401: The use of a trained fieldworker. These atlases typically consist of display maps , each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations. Secondary studies may include interpretive maps , showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss , a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate. In

8740-455: 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

8835-442: The western dialect of common Old Slavic was still spoken across the modern Serbo-Croatian area in the 12th and early 13th centuries. An intermediate dialect linking western and eastern variations inevitably came into existence over time – Torlakian – spoken across a wide radius on which the tripoint of Bulgaria , North Macedonia and Serbia is relatively pivotal. The other major language family in Europe besides Indo-European are

8930-459: 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,

9025-410: 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

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