Talk:Burmese alphabet

Hello

Hi. Tristanb

Does anyone know the name of the script in Burmese? I would like to include the full name on the map on the writing systems page. Please let me know on my Talk page; I'm equipped to display Burmese fonts.

Thanks! kwami 07:48, 2005 August 30 (UTC)

Problems viewing Burmese characters

Hello, I have downloaded about 6 Burmese fonts (including all the recommended ones) in order to see the Burmese characters, yet all the Burmese characters show up as empty boxes on my computer (it is a PC, with Windows XP). Any assistance anyone could provide would be great. Thank you, Badagnani 09:23, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

The problem appears to be with how the characters themselves are stored, as they do not appear to be stored in Unicode format. This means that unless your computer happens to be using the specific encoding used by the author, you get to see lots of pretty blocks. Hopefully somebody will come along and fix it by either using a Unicode-compliant encoding or by manually entering the relevant Unicode character entities. pgdudda 22:51 CDT 8 Aug 2007

I'm pretty sure all the Burmese characters on this page use the Unicode-compliant encoding. —Angr 05:01, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I just downloaded the Burmese fonts from the link in the article, and all I get are little boxes. DuncanHill 19:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I forced all the characters in this article to display correctly with the new {{lang-my-Mymr}} template I created. Now all characters display correctly in every browser, not just Firefox. Taric25 (talk) 18:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm running Vista -- Burmese characters won't display in the latest Firefox and Explorer 128.255.202.110 (talk) 02:25, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

They show up for me on Firefox in Windows XP, so I'd be astonished if they didn't work in Vista. Are you sure you have a Unicode 5.1-compliant Burmese font installed? +Angr 06:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

pictures with alphabet

could anyone make a picture or few with all Burmese letters? Just to show how script looks like to those who doesn't have special fonts... --Monkbel 11:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Unicode change

I wonder if the new encoding model ought to be discussed here. -- Evertype·✆ 23:50, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Go for it! I'm sure you know more about it than anyone else here. Angr 06:25, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Glyph inverted due to typewriter error?

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/000323.php

He spent much of his time assigned to the Army's Morale Services Division, at 165 Broadway, which dealt in information and propaganda. There he received his hardest job of the war—a rush request to convert typewriters to twenty-one different languages of Asia and the South Pacific. Many of the languages he had never heard of before.... Morale Services found native speakers and scholars to help with the languages. Martin obtained the type and did the soldering and the keyboards. The implications of the work and its difficulty brought him to near collapse, but he completed it with only one mistake: on the Burmese typewriter he put a letter on upside down. Years later, after he had discovered his error, he told the language professor he had worked with that he would fix that letter on the professor's Burmese typewriter. The professor said not to bother; in the intervening years, as a result of typewriters copied from Martin's original, that upside-down letter had been accepted in Burma as proper typewriter style.

—Hobart 17:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I suspect that's false. Burmese typewriters date to WWI not WWII, so why would anyone copy that one typewriter? This Unicode document doesn't mention such a story, nor does any other source I find. It would be a Unicode issue. Even if no extra location was assigned for that glyph, it would have been discussed.  Randall Bart   Talk  23:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The story is currently being repeated in the "Did You Know" section of today's front page. The person in question is Martin Tytell. I've found a few other sources for the claim, though some of them merely say the inverted letter became a typewriter standard, without suggesting that handwriting and computers followed suit. Still, I would like to see better confirmation--I can't find a single source that says which character was set upside down. Several Burmese characters would become identical to others if set upside down, so I trust it wasn't any of those. —Angr 07:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Subject Object Verb

The text says Burmese script was adapted "to suit the phonology of Burmese, and to fit its word order of Subject Object Verb." Phonology I understand; that's what alphabets are all about. I understand how palm leaves affect orthography, too. But Subject Object Verb has me flummoxed. If the alphabet had some markers for part of speech or clause structure I could understand, but the article mentions no such thing. How does word order impact orthography?  Randall Bart   Talk  23:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Burmese alphabet table

The order of letters is off in second and third rows of the table. Someone please fix the order.Hybernator (talk) 23:16, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

It's actually an image, commons:Image:Burmese alphabet.svg. It will have to be corrected offline and re-uploaded. —Angr 23:49, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Y Done That was easier than I expected it to be. —Angr 23:59, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks.Hybernator (talk) 00:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Why does this matter?

Quoted from the article "The Burmese script, adapted from the Mon script, has undergone considerable modifications to suit the phonology of Burmese, and to fit its word order of Subject Object Verb.", my question is why do the SOV word order matters when modifying the Mon script to fit Burmese? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.201.148.200 (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Syllable onsets

Hello Angr, I just restored the original pronunciation for ဋတံလင်းချိတ် ([ta̰ tə lín dʒeɪʔ]). I'm less sure about the actual name of ဋ; it could be ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်. But the pronunciation in standard Burmese is not ([ta̰ θəljín dʒeɪʔ]) for sure. I'm a native Burmese speaker, and I've pronounced it as "tə lín dʒeɪʔ" and recognized the name as ဋတံလင်းချိတ် all my life. Where did you get that it's ဋသံလျင်းချိတ်? (Some Burmese who grew up in ethnic enclaves tend to mix up 'ta' and 'tha' sounds.) Hybernator (talk) 02:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The spelling ဋသံလျင်းချိတ် is offered in Adoniram Judson's Grammar of the Burmese language. The correct spelling is actually with a tha: ဋသန်လျင်းချိတ်. I confirmed it with a dictionary at home. That makes sense though, because သန်လျင်းချိတ် is the iron hook on a sedan (the kinds carried by people). As for the IPA, [ta̰ θəljín dʒeɪʔ] or [ta̰ θəlín dʒeɪʔ] is technically correct but [ta̰ tə lín dʒeɪʔ] is commonly used. --Hintha (talk) 11:05, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Burmese letters

Why does the table use black letters against a black background? It makes the letters effectively invisible. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 10:21, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

It may be that your browser is incorrectly rendering the table. The letter's background is #CCC [1] (a shade of gray), not black. --Hintha(t) 16:13, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, on that page, I get a gray background. But here in the article, it is pitch black. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 16:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I tried it with a handful of browsers. It's definitely a problem with Internet Explorer. I've fixed it so it works on IE too. --Hintha(t) 16:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Open vowel

How is the term "open vowel" being used on this page? It doesn't seem to mean what phoneticians mean by open vowel, i.e. synonymous with "low vowel". —Angr (talk) 12:35, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

funked up diacritic

the final diacritic in the table is =, or at least is replaced with = by AWB. I don't know what it's supposed to be. — kwami (talk) 05:47, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I tried to fix it. Hope it worked! —Angr (talk) 06:39, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Files at commons

Categorization inside commons:Category:Burmese script needs expert eyes, see commons:Commons:Categories for discussion/2011/02/Category:Burmese script. NVO (talk) 07:36, 26 February 2011 (UTC)