Wiktionary:Burmese transliteration

Burmese transliteration
There are four systems of romanizing Burmese in use at Wiktionary. Two of these put more emphasis on the orthography in the Burmese script (transliterations), and two put more emphasis on the pronunciation of the Burmese word (transcriptions).

The two transliterations are the MLC Transcription System (see also the Wikipedia article) and the ALA-LC Romanization. The two transcriptions are the BGN/PCGN romanization (in slightly modified form) and the system used by John Okell in A Reference Grammar of Colloquial Burmese.

The MLCTS transliteration is added automatically by templates such as, , , and the etymology templates der, bor, inh, cog, and affix. There is therefore no need to add transliterations manually. For example, in the entry cat, under "Translations" the Burmese line should read:
 * Burmese:

(input as: ).

Similarly, where Burmese words occur in the "Etymology" section of entries in other languages, the transliteration appears automatically. For example, in the entry longyi, under "Etymology" it should read:
 * Borrowing from Burmese

(input as: ).

In Burmese-language entries, the pronunciation template my-IPA also automatically generates romanizations in all four systems. In a few cases, however, automatic romanization is not possible; in such cases, the romanization template is used. It shows all four romanizations, specified manually. For example, at, the unusual spelling does not permit automatic romanization; therefore under the "Pronunciation" header we have:

Pronunciation

 * Phonetic respelling: ဗတ်စ'ကား

The romanization box will render as:

The details of these four romanization systems are described below.

Syllable onsets
Syllable onsets (also called "initials") are romanized as follows:


 * Footnotes

Syllable rhymes
Syllable rhymes (also called "finals") are romanized as follows. The following table uses the letter က as a basis, but of course any other syllable onset could be substituted.

ဿ
The letter ဿ, which appears only after a vowel in the same word, is used in words of Pali origin to represent ss in that language, e.g. from. In Burmese, it is pronounced as if it were spelled, thus  is pronounced.

ကွတ်, ဝတ်, etc.
In sequences with ွ or ဝ before တ်, န်, ပ်, မ် or together with ံ, the vowel pronounced is rather than the expected. This is reflected in the BGN/PCGN and Okell transcriptions, but not in the MLCTS and ALA-LC transliterations.

Independent vowel letters
The independent vowel letters are transcribed the same as the vowels formed with အ, except in ALA-LC, where those formed with အ take a preposed apostrophe (’):

Tones
The low tone and checked tone are represented as shown in the table above. The representation of the high tone and creaky tone varies depending on the respective syllable rhyme: sometimes they are inherent in the vowel symbol used, and sometimes they are indicated by a diacritic mark. The ALA-LC romanization indicates these two tones explicitly only in cases where diacritic marks are used; the other three romanizations indicate them regardless of how they are spelled. Examples:

Minor syllables
Minor syllables in Burmese contain only the vowel in the rhyme and do not bear tone. They are always followed by a major syllable (any other kind of syllable). In the orthography, they are most commonly spelled as if their rhyme was (i.e. with no vowel diacritic at all), but are often spelled in other ways. In the MLCTS and ALA-LC systems, minor syllables are romanized exactly as they are spelled in Burmese orthography. In the modified BGN/PCGN system and in the Okell system, minor syllables are indicated by the letter ă regardless of the Burmese orthography. Examples:

Syllable division
Where two consonants appear next to each other between two vowels in a romanization, use hyphens as necessary to avoid ambiguity. For example (the following are not necessarily real words of Burmese):

Consonant voicing
In many words, a written voiceless (aspirated or unaspirated) consonant is pronounced voiced when it appears after a vowel or. This is indicated in the BGN-PCGN and Okell transcriptions, but not in the MLCTS and ALA-LC transliterations. In BGN-PCGN, the letter for the voiced consonant is used; in Okell, the letter for the voiceless consonant is used but underlined. Examples:

Note on the modifications to BGN-PCGN
The modifications to the BGN-PCGN system are necessary because the original version does not represent all meaningful contrasts found in the Burmese language. For example, Burmese contrasts the unaspirated sounds from the aspirated sounds, but the original BGN-PCGN uses just p, t, k, s to represent both series. The modified version transcribes the aspirated as hp, ht, hk, hs, like the MLCTS and Okell systems.

The original version of the BGN-PCGN does not distinguish between low tone (e.g. ), high tone (e.g. ), and creaky tone (e.g. ), so the modified version uses the colon (:) to indicate high tone and the period/full stop (.) to indicate creaky tone, like the MLCTS system.

The original version of the BGN-PCGN has no dedicated character for, so the modified version uses ă, like the Okell system.

The original version of the BGN-PCGN indicates voicing of word-internal consonants in all contexts except after the checked tone (e.g. ), but in fact word-internal consonants are not always voiced in pronunciation. This modified version indicates consonant voicing only in cases where the word is actually pronounced with a voiced consonant.

Finally, the modified version replaces ô with o in the sequences ok and on, since the circumflex serves no purpose there.