Burmese language

Burmese (in Burmese ba-ma-sa, pronounced /baa-MAA-saa/) is a language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma). Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language, meaning that is close to Chinese and Tibetan.

Burmese
ျမန္မာစကား (written Burmese) ျမန္မာစကား (spoken Burmese)
Pronunciation	IPA: [mjəmàzà] or IPA: [mjəmà zəɡá]
Native to	Myanmar Bangladesh India China Laos Thailand Singapore
Ethnicity	Bamar people
Native speakers	33 million (2007) Second language: 10 million
Language family	Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Lolo–Burmese Burmish Southern Burmese
Early form	Old Burmese
Writing system	Burmese script
Official status
Official language in	Myanmar ASEAN
Regulated by	Myanmar Language Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1	my
ISO 639-2	bur (B) mya (T)
ISO 639-3	mya

Writing system

Burmese is written in Burmese script.

Tones

Burmese is a tonal language. Burmese has three tones (high, medium, low: plus two 'stops or abbreviated additional, qualifying 'tones)

Burmese has no gender. For instance, the word သူ (pronounced "thew") could mean "he" or "she". However, some words have natural gender e.g. ဆရာ saya (male teacher) and ဆရာမ sayama (female teacher).

Unlike in English, verbs in Burmese do not change based on tense. Instead, other words are added after to show tense.

Loan words

Burmese has many English and Indian words (loan words) due to colonization by the British and interaction with the neighboring country of India. However, is a very distinct and full language itself with a long history and many different dialects.

Examples

Here are some examples of words and sentences in Burmese.

Hello = min-ga-la-ba

How are you? = Nei kaun la?

I am (name) = Cha-naw yè nan-bè ga _______

(Kya-naw is replaced with kya-ma for females.

What is your name? = Ka-mya na mei be' lo khal le' (OR) na mei be' lo khal le' (You can omit "Ka-mya=You")

Are you from Burma? = Nae ba-ma pyi ga la da la?

(Note: To ask if someone is from other countries, just replace ba-ma pyi with any of the countries below.)

• America = A-mè-ree-ka
• France = Pyin-thit
• Britain = In-ga-lan
• Germany = Ja-ma-nee
• Russia = Ra-sha
• Thailand = Yoe-da-ya
• Japan = Ja-pan
• Chinese = Ta-yote
• Indian = in-di-yah