Overview of the Burmese Written Language

Burmese language has 33 main letters or characters known as byi3 | ဗျည်း. Those are comparable to 26 alphabets in English, but without uppercase and lowercase differentiation.

Each of those byi3 has the sound with the vowel "a" in the first tone. E.g., Ka1, Kha1, Ga1, Nga1, Sa1, Za1, Nya1 | က၊ ခ၊ ဂ၊ င၊ စ၊ ဇ၊ ည and so on. Several of those byi3 have variant byi3 with the same sound and some are seldom used.

Unlike English which can form words only with the vowels A,E,I,O,U within the 26 alphabetical system (except "by" and "my"), Burmese makes use of additional symbols known as tha1-ra1 | သရ, and byi3 tweare3 | ဗျည်းတွဲ. In this learning system, I have categorized those symbols under three groups:

• Vowel Shift Symbols
• Consonant Modification Symbols
• Tone Change Symbols
  
  

In additional, Myanmar Written Language has standalone characters, double stacked words called thun2-yoat byi3 | သံယုဂ်ဗျည်း or pup hsin1 | ပါဌ်ဆင့် and other characters outside the 33 main characters that behave almost like byi3.

To simplify the learning process, I have categorized and grouped those symbols slightly different from Myanmar Spelling & Orthography Reference Book (မြန်မာစာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံကျမ်း) as published by the Ministry of Education (ပညာရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန ၊ မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ဦးစီးဌာန) in Naypyitaw. The official publication in Burmese language intended to be used by teachers, students, government employees, and monks had the list of

• 34 byi3 in byi3 sin2 | ဗျည်းစဉ် where sin2 means ordered list. The one extra byi3 shown with the brackets is Nya1 ga1-lay3 | ဉ, which is a Pali byi3 and, is given the same 10th position as the Burmese Nya1 | ည, which in official publication is called Nya1 Ji3 | ညကြီး.
  
  
• 150 possible variations in vowels, tones including 8 single tone groups, combination of closing thut and tones, and standalone characters all lumped under the list of tha1-ra1 + a-thut sin2 | သရ နှင့် အသတ်စဉ်.
  
  
• 11 possible combinations of "consonant modification symbols" listed under byi3 tweare3 sin2 | ဗျည်းတွဲစဉ် where tweare3 means to append or to attach.
  
  

All 33 plus one byi3, those listed under tha1-ra1 and thut sin2, and byi3 tweare3 sin2 fall under the category of et-kha1-ya2 | အက္ခရာ.

Myanmar Language written in left to right word order has punctuation marks similar to comma, and full stop (or period). poat pfyut | ပုဒ်ဖြတ် is a vertical line that has the same height as the normal character "Ka1" and usually used in separating the items in the list of similar items. Example:

က၊ ခ၊ ဂ၊ ဃ၊ င၊

poat ma1 | ပုဒ်မ is a double vertical line to indicate the end of the sentence. In addition, poat ma1 can also be used after the number 1,2,3 in the list instead of the brackets. Example:

၁။ တစ်
၂။ နှစ်
၃။ သုံး

"Double poat ma1" with ample space in between known as poat ma1 ji3 | ။ ။ | ပုဒ်မကြီး is used as tab in official business letters and government application forms following the word "Subject" in the header. Example:

အကြောင်းအရာ။     ။

"Double pote ma1" is also used as a writing style at the end of long articles and essays to indicate the ending.