Balaur wrote:I'm surprised that there has not been a single topic only on Burmese until now.
I'm learning Burmese at my university (but it's not a real course, and it's only for one hour a week, unfortunately), and have become very interested in it. I don't know very much yet, but would like to practice it once I know it better. Do we have any other learners? Native speakers (though I highly doubt it)?
I also have a question that I'm really hoping someone can answer: Is there any way to type Burmese? Seriously. Until now, I've only found character pickers, or special fonts, but no Unicode-based keyboards. Whoever can show me one will be my new best friend (if desired).
''' wrote:Well there are codes for it, alas most systems (mine included) don't have it as default. I'm still hunting. So far I've found lao for mac and khmer for linux. Still looking for burmese.
on another note, I too will be secretly sneaking in to Burmese classes this sem hopefully since my uni offers a one semester 4hr/wk course
księżycowy wrote: Speaking of which I understand that Tibetan and Burmese are very similar linguistically, though I don't know in what ways (or how true it is to begin with) but I'd be interested to find out.
Formiko wrote:księżycowy wrote: Speaking of which I understand that Tibetan and Burmese are very similar linguistically, though I don't know in what ways (or how true it is to begin with) but I'd be interested to find out.
Tibetan is about as similar to Burmese as Russian is to Italian. (There are linguistic similarities, but in reality they are night and day)
Burmese is clipped like most SE Asian languages while Tibetan has more of an Indian feel (bad example however because there are VERY few retroflex consonants in Tibetan) I was in both Burma and Tibet, and knowing one didn't help me in the slightest when learning the other.
księżycowy wrote:
I'm not sure, but I think the tones maybe different too (more variation in Burmese?).
Formiko wrote:Yes, Burmese has more tones, but barely. Don't quote me, but I think they are low, high and "creaky", but they're not nearly as distinct as Mandarin. When I was learning Tibetan, I never even noticed tones. It wasn't like meaning was really differentiated by using tones. While I'm an "advanced beginner" in Tibetan, Tibetan was nothing like Mandarin. When I think of a tonal language, I think of Mandarin, Cantonese and Yoruba, not Tibetan.
zhiguli wrote:John Okell has also written an introductory course with audio, which is available for free (courtesy of the author) here:
http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/
Formiko wrote:but you'll have to know how it looks, because the Burmese writing system is pretty hellish
I never learned to read or write Myanmar, but my Hindu Gujarati tutor (I still think that's hilarious)
taught me just the spoken language.
''' wrote:Well there are codes for it, alas most systems (mine included) don't have it as default. I'm still hunting. So far I've found lao for mac and khmer for linux. Still looking for burmese.
księżycowy wrote:Speaking of Burmese keyboards, there's one I downloaded not too long ago for Windows. I suppose you're not looking for windows, but for anyone else interested I'll try to hunt down that link . . .
Formiko wrote:There's Keyman for Windows. I remember it's Burmese keyboard worked very well.
http://www.tavultesoft.com/70/download.php
Formiko wrote:Great find....i'll try it in my virtual machine
The second one wasn't so good. Having to memorize a new layout is no fun.
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