Myanmar: Notes

Transliteration

Abbreviations:

• MMArch = combination of ALA-LC, BGN and MLC: precise like ALA-LC, local sounds like BGN, tones like MLC
• BGN (1970) = amplified restatement of the official Tables for the Transliteration of Burmese into English (1907)
• MLC = MLCTS (1980)
• ◌ = placeholder (for a consonant), indicating relative position
• C = placeholder (for a final consonant, incl. killer)

General rules:

• consonants: inherent vowel 'a' (+ tone mark), exc. when accompanied by dependent vowel or end-of-syllable mark (killer)
• consonant voicing (BGN only): k/s/t/p/ch→g/z/d/b/gy after any roman script vowel, n, or ng, except when first in stack
• consonant stacks (mostly in polysyllabic loans from Pali, Sanskrit, English, etc.) according to components, upper consonant romanized first
• ambiguous sequences hyphenated (BGN; syllable final n followed by g/y, syllable final t followed by h)
• independent vowels: with prefixed hyphen if non-initially (BGN)
• word division: syllables separately (ALA-LC; in loan words separate as in original)
• capitalization: as appropriate (ALA-LC: in PN capitalize each syllable)
• common abbreviations (ligatures):
  • ၍ (ရုယ္အ်) [jwḛ] conjunction joining two predicates
  • ၌ (နှိုက်) [n̥aɪʔ] locative particle acting as postposition after nouns (at, in, on)
  • ၎င်း,၎ (လည်းကောင်း) [ləɡáʊɰ̃] demonstrative noun (this or that) when preceding a noun & connecting nouns within a clause (as well as)
  • ၏ (ဧအ်) [ḭ] genitive particle (follows possessor, precedes possessed) & sentence-final affirmative particle