Burmese

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-02-28, 12:39

Ok so I've just had a week of Burmese and my lecturer likes me enough to ask me to enroll formally and even offered a letter of recommendation, so I was wondering, if people are interested, I could post some things from what I learn in class each week, see if that helps, because it really is a fascinating language. Highly recommend it.
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-28, 13:34

''' wrote: so I was wondering, if people are interested, I could post some things from what I learn in class each week, see if that helps, because it really is a fascinating language. Highly recommend it.

I'd be interested to see what you learn/post, it may make me start learning sooner!

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-02-28, 14:25

well we havn't done much, but we did learn a few things:

MY ROMANISATION:

my romanisation so far is based on p being /p/ and ph being /pʰ/ while b and bh are both /b/ but bh represents the letter which represents bh in pali. This gives us:

m ph p p b bh for bilabials
n th t d dh for dentals
ń/ñ* sh s z zh** for palatals
ň/ŋ* kh k g gh for velars
ņ ţh ţ đ đh for dentals which represent retroflexes in pali

other codae are:
f for /θ/ (more like /θt̪/ )
h for /h/
y for /j/ and
r for /j/ (represents r in pali) also the palatals seems to have a strong hint of /ʑ/ in them
l for /l/ and
ł/ļ for /l/ (represents /ɭ/ in pali)
w for /w/

+h represents a devoiced sonorant (but not /j/ I think)
+y/j represents a palatalised coda (velar plosives become palatal affricates I think) letter depends on which letter for /j/ was used
+w represents labialisation

a final nasal represents the homorganic nasal. I think it may always have been homorganic but perhaps not. If it is a true homorganic nasal then it is the same as the Japanese ん and a final p t s/c or k represents a glottal stop but may once have been a homorganic obstruent making it much like the japanese っ.


*or ny and ng but I'm not sure if that works
**these are today pronounced as s and z but were I believe historically ʧʰ ʧ ʤ leadign to the alternate spellings of ch c j jh

VOWELS

There are 7 base vowels in Burmese a e i o u represent their IPA equivalents while ê ô represent /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. The four diphthongs are ai au eu ou, and diphthongs MUST be followed by a final.

TONE:
Burmese vowels have 3 tones, high (á é ế í ó ố ú aí eí oú aú), low (à è ề ì ò ồ ù aì eì où aù), creaky (ã ẽ ễ ĩ õ ỗ ũ aĩ eĩ oũ aũ). Creaky sounds rather neutral and short to us.

A vowel followed by a glottal stop has only the "checked tone" I'm not sure whether orthography (which doesn't have such a tone) reflects the historic tone of such words, in the meantime I'm marking them as either empy or with a hook (ả ẻ ể ỉ ỏ ổ ủ aỉ eỉ oủ aủ)

All these diactrics are standard viet.

In addition a word can contain a "minor syllable" (but not word finally). Such a syllable contains only the reduced vowel schwa (ë) with no tone and no final.

NOTE:
we're learnign by romanisation so I may not be able to distinguish homophonic letters as yet. Sorry
Last edited by ''' on 2010-03-04, 11:32, edited 2 times in total.
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(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-02-28, 14:44

As for the grammar:

VERBS:

Verbs always go to the end of the sentence

A verb will take paricles to show various things:

For instance the verb sà means to eat


present tense - tế
sà tế - I eat

Politeness marker - pá
sà pá té - I eat (polite)

interrogative (yes/no questions) - là
sà là - do I eat?

interrogative (open ended questions) - lề
[what] sà lề - what do I eat?

future marker - mế
sà mế - I will eat

mế becomes mã before question particles
sà mã là - will I eat?

past marker - kễ
sà kễ - I ate

continuous aspect - né
sà né té - I am eating
sà né kẽ - I was eating
sà né mé - I will be eating

negative statements - mã ... bù
mã sà bù - I do not eat.

negative commands - mã ... nễ
mã sà nễ - do not eat!

the particle nố. it functions liek the japanese ね roughly "is it not?" "no?" "n'est-ce pas?"
sà kễ nố - you ate, right?
Last edited by ''' on 2010-03-04, 12:08, edited 2 times in total.
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(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-28, 15:17

Interesting, I'll keep an eye out for more of your posts. Thanks.

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-03-04, 11:27

Boy did I make a whoopsi, ok turns out some words which I'd written as /e/ had /ε/ so I'm correcting the post above
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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-03-13, 11:37

As of 2 days ago the ANU canceled the burmese course for ever because we only had 2 official students and not the required 10. I'm working on it.
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(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-03-13, 15:19

Damn, that sucks that they canceled the course. But I suppose that's how it goes . . .
Good to hear it hasn't discouraged you though.

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-05-03, 17:37

I know I've not posted but after a fashion we convinced the uni to let us continue and as of last week we even went back to 4 hrs a week so yay us. Still gonna be canceled at the end of the semester but in the mean time we're going strong. Only 3 students left though. Mainly we've learn random vocab but I am currently trying to consolidate all of that vocab into a giant list and wehn it's done I'll pos it along with any grammatical things I can gather. alas we've not done enough to make a serious into to the language but we've learnt enough to pique interests.

In many ways this is like gods little gift to languages. In other ways it's gods cruel joke.
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(en)(hu) - native
(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2011-06-18, 19:14

Been a while since this thread has seen any action.
Bump!
A new link for buying the Burmese textbooks by Okell
(which I referenced in an earlier post on the 1st page):
http://www.niupress.niu.edu/niupress/Sc ... arch=Title (Scroll down a bit)
They also have the audio for free online.

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Re: Burmese

Postby Balaur » 2011-06-19, 6:09

Oh, cool. Thanks for the update! :)

Also, I recently bought some books that I think will be very useful once I start learning Burmese again (I have put it on hold for now). They are called "缅甸语教程" and there are 6 volumes. I ordered them from China, so you have to be able to read simplified Chinese in order to use them, but if you have that advantage, they could be very useful. Let me tell you why: the first book spends a lot of time on the script as well as pronunciation, giving pronunciations of new words in what is mostly IPA, instead of romanization, and showing segmental diagrams of the vocal tract, so if you've learned phonetics, it's good. The second and third books are pretty standard: there are reading passages, vocabulary lists, grammatical explanations with plenty of example sentences, and translation exercises. Now here's where it gets interesting: from the fourth book on, there is virtually no more Chinese (except in the Chinese-Burmese translation exercises), so they're basically just full of Burmese reading passages (I'm guessing these last three books mostly teach the literary language, which is very different from the spoken language), which get longer and longer, spanning several pages. I'm actually a little scared at how quickly my Burmese might improve if I were to use these books consistently and correctly. One major drawback: there's no audio that I'm aware of, so you would absolutely have to use these in conjunction with other material containing audio. Now I haven't used these at all yet (as tempting as it's been seeing them just sitting on my bookshelf), but I'm very excited for when I get back into Burmese, and I'll be sure to update everyone once I know their potential. In the meantime, if you want, you can probably order them online (I ordered them through a Mainland Chinese bookstore in Taiwan, so I don't know). They're cheap and small and convenient to carry around with you, so they could be well worth it.
Vă rog să mă corectați dacă fac o greșeală în orice limbă. // Вэ рог сэ мэ коректаць дакэ фак о грешялэ ын орьче лимбэ. // Please correct me if I make a mistake in any language. // Bitte korrigiert mich, wenn ich einen Fehler in irgendeiner Sprache mache. // 請改正我任何語言中的錯誤。 // 请改正我任何语言中的错误。 // Παρακαλώ να με διορθώνουν αν κάνω ένα λάθο σε οποιηδήποτε γλώσσα.

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Re: Burmese

Postby ILuvEire » 2011-06-21, 0:58

Don't remind me of Burmese. I love it so much, it's so beautiful, why am I so attracted to it? Argh.
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2011-06-21, 12:11

BECAUSE IT'S COOL!
:lol: :wink:

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Re: Burmese

Postby Unknown » 2011-06-25, 14:03

n/a
Last edited by Unknown on 2011-12-16, 22:36, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2011-06-25, 14:14

That's why knowing the script is a good thing.

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Re: Burmese

Postby Unknown » 2011-06-25, 14:23

n/a
Last edited by Unknown on 2011-12-16, 22:36, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Burmese

Postby Balaur » 2011-06-26, 7:27

Fuck romanization! There's really no point in learning it, I think, especially if you're not also learning the script at the same time, because pretty much no native speakers of the language will be able to read it properly (much less type it back to you), so it's pretty much a waste of time. And when you don't know the script, you can't do much to improve your ability in the language because you can't take advantage of reading material.

Also, the romanizations used in phrasebooks are almost always so shitty and unreliable that I always ignore them. They do a very poor job at even describing the sounds used in the language, so if you don't have any audio, it's useless. Seriously. Actually, you really probably shouldn't start learning a language until you can get a hold of some audio or are learning directly from a native speaker.

By the way, Cesare, how can you expect to help anyone with Burmese if you learned everything from a Lonely Planet Phrasebook and haven't even learned the script? :lol:
Vă rog să mă corectați dacă fac o greșeală în orice limbă. // Вэ рог сэ мэ коректаць дакэ фак о грешялэ ын орьче лимбэ. // Please correct me if I make a mistake in any language. // Bitte korrigiert mich, wenn ich einen Fehler in irgendeiner Sprache mache. // 請改正我任何語言中的錯誤。 // 请改正我任何语言中的错误。 // Παρακαλώ να με διορθώνουν αν κάνω ένα λάθο σε οποιηδήποτε γλώσσα.

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2011-06-26, 11:16

I agree with Balaur as far as romanization is concerned. Especially since there is no recognized, and agreed upon romanization. Everyone uses their own system. It isn't like Pinyin, Yale or POJ. And even those are iffy as far as natives knowing them.

And what do you mean it doesn't display on your computer? Most computers can display Burmese, with the right fonts. At least most computers I've worked with.

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Re: Burmese

Postby Unknown » 2011-06-26, 12:26

n/a
Last edited by Unknown on 2011-12-16, 22:40, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2011-06-26, 13:06

I could see the iPod not recognizing the script, but it seems odd that your computer can't. :?
I assume you've tried different fonts. Not all of them are Unicode though, and not every page in Burmese is in Unicode, so it is a bit of a mess.

And yes, sometimes it's easier to learn how to speak a language before attempting to learn how to read/write. That's what I'm doing with Taiwanese after all.
Though the Burmese script isn't nearly as insane as Chinese characters.


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