Burmese

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Balaur
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Burmese

Postby Balaur » 2010-01-06, 9:08

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).
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 Formiko » 2010-01-06, 10:15

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).

Hey Balaur. I was in Amarapura,Burma for 3 months for missionary work and I learned a little Burmese but this was 7 years ago. The funny thing is, my guide was a Hindu who was a native Gujarati speaker..in Burma! Anyway, when I first joined this site, I though I spoke Burmese better than I did, but while I'm far from fluent, I can help you with some stuff.
To type Burmese go here:
http://burglish.my-mm.org/latest/trunk/web/testarea.htm
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.
I have a huge monolingual Burmese dictionary also so I can look up stuff.
Here are some words off the top of my head
to worship - paya shi'kode ( ' is a glottal stop)
to pray - sutaõ de (aõ is a nasal aõ like Portuguese)
our father - chanodou ape'
man - yau'cha
woman - meima
yes - hó'bpade
no - mahó'bapu
please - jeizu byupbi (Jesus bless)(I doubt this was common outside of our circle)
stop - ya'bpa!
look! - chiba!
How much? balau'lë
Come in - wĩlaba
Good morning: Ming ga-la-ba (good all day)
goodbye (leaving) thwaba õme
I dont understand - námale babu
ok - gkaõ babi

I've got a couple more..ya need some grammatical pointers?
Which book are you using?
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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-01-06, 19:27

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
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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-01-09, 9:29

''' 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


If you discover another good way to type Burmese, do post about it.
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-03, 22:37

I have the Burmese books (w/audio) by John Okell. There are four books total in the set.
Burmese: An Introduction to the Spoken Language (Books 1&2)
Burmese: An Introduction to the Script (Book 3)
Burmese: An Introduction to the Literary Language (Book 4)
[I only have the first three, but do plan on getting the last one soon]
They used to be available on Amazon, but I guess they're not any more (aside from the used and marketplace copies). Apparently you can still get it directly (and more cheaply) from CSEAS. Not that this is an endorsement or anything 8-) .
The books are really good, they have 'small' lessons that are easy to swallow, rather then big, long lessons.

And if I may say so myself, it's about time someone started a Burmese thread! Bravo Balaur!

I'm not currently studying Burmese right now, I think Tibetan is enough for now from that linguistic family! 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.

I might get to Burmese in a few months, so I might be back to the thread then . . . (though I might still stop by on occasion)

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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-02-04, 5:51

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. :(
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-04, 15:11

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. :(

Interesting. I did notice that from what I looked at in the Burmese books I have, it does seem to be quite different from Tibetan. As you said, Tibetan does seem to have a more 'Indian' feel to it, probably due to the influence of the Indian culture/religion (aka Buddhism and Sanskrit) on Tibet. I'm sure I'll notice more when I start learning Burmese.

I'm not sure, but I think the tones maybe different too (more variation in Burmese?).

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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-02-06, 5:32

księżycowy wrote:
I'm not sure, but I think the tones maybe different too (more variation in Burmese?).


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.
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-06, 11:34

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.

That is a good point. The 'tones' in Tibetan (and Dzongkha for that matter) do not seem to play that big of a role in either grammar or word differentiation (at least from what I can tell), where as tones in Burmese (just like Chinese dialects, or most South-East Asian languages) differentiate the words. Different tone, different word. (If I understand correctly)

Plus if you don't really pay that much attention (or even if you do in some cases) you don't really hear the tones in Tibetan. It sounds more like accenting rather then tones.

And yes, Chinese (whether Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, ect.) has much more tone complexity then Tibetan or Burmese, didn't mean to imply that or anything.

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Re: Burmese

Postby zhiguli » 2010-02-20, 0:44

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/

księżycowy

Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-20, 14:10

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/

Interesting, thanks.

It actually looks a lot like his other books. (Not surprising I suppose)

księżycowy

Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-20, 14:27

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.

(Can't believe I didn't see that before . . .)

Yes, Burmese script is very complex. Also not all words are pronounced as they are written (though I suppose most are). Burmese script follows Cambodian/Khmer script in complexity. Though both are (distantly) related to Indian scripts like Devanagari and the like and also a bit like Tibetan script. (I'm not suggesting that knowing Devanagari or Tibetan script will help decipher Burmese script of course.) Though I've found Burmese script to be quite interesting, as a lot of the letters are quite circular.

Though the vowels function quite a bit like Devanagari, Tamil and similar scripts. (In other words, the vowels 'surround' the consonant)

The course that zhilugi pointed out is written in both Burmese script and romanization (it doesn't seem to go over the script, but that's with good reason, as mentioned above. And any-one interested in reading Burmese should get Okell's other book I referenced above that deals specifically with the script.)

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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-02-20, 21:06

''' 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.

Are you using SCIM for Linux? It has a Burmese keyboard layout
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-21, 0:17

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 . . .

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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-02-21, 5:59

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 . . .


There's Keyman for Windows. I remember it's Burmese keyboard worked very well.
http://www.tavultesoft.com/70/download.php
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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-21, 12:15

Formiko wrote:There's Keyman for Windows. I remember it's Burmese keyboard worked very well.
http://www.tavultesoft.com/70/download.php

There was another unicode keyboard I found a while ago. It's not keyman (I'm not a huge fan of Keyman), I'll see if I can refind it, as I didn't save the link.

Though I'm not sure if it is as good as Keyman . . . (It seems so, but not sure)

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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-21, 12:30

Ok, found the link I was looking for:
here
and another one here

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Re: Burmese

Postby Formiko » 2010-02-21, 23:27

księżycowy wrote:Ok, found the link I was looking for:
here


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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Re: Burmese

Postby księżycowy » 2010-02-22, 0:10

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.

Actually I had no idea what the second one was like, sorry. I just happened to find it as I looked for the one I downloaded.

Glad you like the one I wanted to find though!

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Re: Burmese

Postby ''' » 2010-02-23, 9:38

Also, ももんが posted http://www.lexilogos.com/clavier/Myanmar1.ttf which I installed on my linux and it runs perfectly. It's just the character support, I'll set up a board later, but for now I'm happy.

EDIT: no longer happy, it lacks diactritics.
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