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The syllable structure of Burmese is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide, and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɴ/. Some representative words are:
Certain sequences of consonants are written one atop the other, or stacked. A pair of stacked consonants indicates that no vowel is pronounced between them. For example, the word ကမ္ဘာ (kambha), which means "world", contains the stacked consonant မ္ဘ (m-bh). The first consonant is မ (m) and the second consonant is ဘ (bh).
In the Mon script, consonants belong to one of two registers: clear and breathy, each of which has different inherent vowels and pronunciations for the same set of diacritics. For instance, က , which belongs to the clear register, is pronounced /kaˀ/ , while ဂ is pronounced /kɛ̤ˀ/ , to accommodate the vowel complexity of the Mon ...
The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as the Myanmar language in English, [3] though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese, after Burma—a name with co-official status until 1989 (see Names of Myanmar). Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca. [4]
The Mon–Burmese script (Burmese: မွန်မြန်မာအက္ခရာ, listen ⓘ; Mon: အက္ခရ်မန်ဗၟာ, listen ⓘ, Thai: อักษรมอญพม่า, listen ⓘ; also called the Mon script, Old Mon script, and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Grantha script of southern India and later of Southeast Asia.
Vowels are represented in the form of diacritics placed next to the consonants. It is written left to right. There are 26 consonants (Pwo Western Karen: လံၬမ့ၬဖျိၪ့). The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and the way the letter is referred to in Western Pwo language: [1]
The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents the Burmese language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Template:IPA and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.
Aside from Burmese and its dialects, the hundred or so languages of Myanmar include Shan (Tai, spoken by 3.2 million), Karen languages (spoken by 2.6 million), Kachin (spoken by 900,000), Tamil (spoken by 1.1 Million), various Chin languages (spoken by 780,000), and Mon (Mon–Khmer, spoken by 750,000).