Talk:Myanmar

Lead paragraph

I made an edit today in the attempt to assist readers in understaning the names of the country. There may be a better way to state it, but my objective is to introduce the names of the country as well as to aid readers in understanding that Burma, the common name, is the previous name of the country. It is covered later in the article so it is unnecessary to provide a long explanation. I hope I was not jumping the gun and just trying to move forward. -^StormRider 08:55, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Totally unacceptable change referencing burma as just the "previous name". I believe we should wait for the outcome of the review before moving on to deal with the introduction. I believe the introduction should continue to say Burma first, but go on to say officially Myanmar or the full name. BritishWatcher (talk) 09:00, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Burma, alone, does not give readers any context for why Wikipedia is naming it so. It was the reason that I began with the offical name. Do you think it is helpful to let readers now why it is being called Burma? Is it not what the country was previously called or am I mistaken? What do you think we should note about the name Burma? I guess it could also be recognized as "commonly known", but then we would have to also state the same thing about Myanmar since both names are "commonly known". Do you disagree?

As I stated above, I probably jumped the gun. As long as we aid readers in understanding why the name of the article is Burma, I have no problems. The current wording is totally unacceptable. -^StormRider 10:29, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

it was the old name of the country, the trouble was wording it like that sounded as though its only commonly known as Burma because that use to be its name, rather than the fact it is continued to be called Burma by numerous sources. I think saying "Burma, officially Myanmar" would be enough of a change with the full title in the infobox title already. However i would not oppose "The Republic of the Union of Myanmar officially Myanmar and commonly known as Burma is a sovereign state in Southeast Asia. If there was consensus for such a change, but best to wait awhile especially until after the review has taken place and see how others feel. After the title Burma being reaffirmed some may not agree with such a big alteration to the introduction. BritishWatcher (talk) 10:59, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I would suggest: "Burma or Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, is a sovereign state..."

And while we're talking about the lead sentence, is it really necessary to have 6 different pronunciations of "Myanmar"? It adds a lot of clutter and really seems like overkill to me. Perhaps there could be 1 pronunciation in the lead sentence with a link to an explanatory note at the bottom of the article with alternate pronunciations. Actually, an explanatory note or an internal link to the "Etymology" section might also be useful. Attempting to qualify or explain the different names in the lead sentence will either be inadequate or will add way too much clutter. Rreagan007 (talk) 17:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

I rather like the six pronunciations: they imply how little used the word is (and I have thought of a seventh, but never mind). Rothorpe (talk) 19:44, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

But is it useful to readers to have that many different pronunciations in the lead sentence? And yes there are even more. In fact, the 2 pronunciations listed on Dictionary.com (mahy-ahn-mah and /maɪˈɑnmɑ/) aren't even ones that are listed in our article....yet. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:03, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps 'various pronunciations' and dump them all in a footnote? Rothorpe (talk) 21:18, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Having so many pronuciations in the lead is never good; I would not have any problem putting them in a footnote or addressing it later in the article if someone else feels strongly that it needs to be in the article. Different pronunciations has nothing to do with use of a word; it only deals with how different peoples pronounce the word.

I still think you need to provide a reason for calling the country Burma. It is quickly, easily understood by a reader when Myanmar is used for the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; it is not understood why Wikipedia is referring to it as Burma. Do we explain that we call it Burma because GB calls it Burma; or BBC uses the term Burma? Maybe we use an explanation of how Wikipedia is concerned about common names and even though it is evident that the country is Myanmar. This seems a bit absurd. It is called Burma because that was the previous name of the country and some people still use the term. Is this incorrect or is it a fact? Why resist explaining the use of the term? -^StormRider 08:50, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it necessary. The reason we title the article Burma is because the consensus amongst Wikipedia editors is that the common name of the country is Burma. That's based oh Wikipedia's policies and we don't need to explain our policies on the article page. The very next section deals with the names of Burma and interested readers can go look at it, or at the subarticle, for more detail. --regentspark (comment) 15:38, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

This does not explain Wikipedia's policy at all? Where did you get that? What it explains is why the article is called Burma, a previous name of the country, and what the actual name of the country is. This is not rocket science and is very straight forward. It would be similar to if an article was entitled "Stingray" for the Chevrolet Corvette. Stingray was a previous name of a corvette, but it is not the name of the car. The car is called a corvette. So if we call the article Stingray we need to explain that it was a previous name and the actual name is Corvette or the official name Chevrolet Corvette. -08:56, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Apologies. I misunderstood your question. The country is called Burma (and it is, equally in my opinion, called Myanmar) and that doesn't really require an explanation. I thought you wanted to explain why we title the article Burma rather than Myanmar which is a different question. The titling choice is entirely a result of Wikipedia's policies.--regentspark (comment) 13:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

"Myanmar" is and always has been the common name of the country used by the Burmese themselves - it was called that by ordinary folk in Rangoon when I lived there in the 1980s, for example. There are not any "various pronunciations", just the one - though the English spelling doesn't really give a good idea of the actual pronunciation. "Burma" is what the British called it. The Brits got that from the Arakanese in the late 18th/early 19th century, just as they got the name Rangoon instead of Yangon from them. PiCo (talk) 09:15, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

That's very interesting. I had acquaintances visit a couple years ago who were from the more rural parts of Burma. They and their elders in the local towns have always called it Bama and still do today. They told me some of the more urban areas of the country call it more like Manma. Maybe it's dialects or simply the way certain groups consider themselves, but it sure sounds different than what you're saying. I know of at least three US companies that if you are an international buyer... you are required to use the term Burma. No idea if that's the norm. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be a sort of interchangeability between "my" and "b", and there might well be a Rangoon dialect effect. One odd example was the Beautiland 2 guesthouse - Rangoon streetkids (completely uneducated) called it "Myutilatu". I'll be over there in October and I'll make some inquiries - it is interesting. PiCo (talk) 10:21, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

A possibly interesting news article - the country's independence leader calls it Burma and regards Myanmar as a politically loaded term [1] 124.169.167.84 (talk) 14:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

On January 6, 2012 a user with the IP address of 203.81.175.247 deleted the second lead paragraph and replaced it with the lead paragraph from the history section which was cut from the lead of that section. 203.81.175.247 also repeatedly vandalized the page by removing the Civil War sub-section from the history section, a subsection for which two main articles exist and extensive citation had been provided. I undid these changes but 203.81.175.247 continued to revert these. Because this user's IP is based in Burma and the user consistently has vandalized information relating to the Burmese Civil War I believe he/she is probably someone pushing an POV and therefore vandalizing the page. What can/should be done about this?

Various article title discussions

Moved to Talk:Burma/Myanmar

Moondyne (talk) 01:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Coverage of human rights section

First of all, I would like to say that there are 60 millions people in Myanmar. No less than one-sixth of them are struggling for survival amid of various on-and-off civil wars. A million refugees in Thailand alone. So in comparison, Rohingya, with a population less than one million at most, are victims of just one of the no-less-than 20 internecine conflicts. Devoting an entire paragraph for Rohingya is acceptable at best. But following the tide of media hysteria and covering virtually all of the human rights section for Rohingya is not a good idea. The recent riots casualties are 100 people, probably less than that of the contemporaneous civil war in Kachin State.

Another point is about genocide. Does any reputable international organization call it? No. Over the past sixty years of civil war, there has been millions of news entries about the conflict. So there can be entries which label the conflict as genocide. But the mainstream viewpoint is that there were human right abuses, but not in a magnitude of a genocide. The repeated mentioning of the word "genocide" in human right section, is definitely not neutral. Thank you. 203.81.70.132 (talk) 01:47, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Supporting protection request

I was just taking a look at the Burma page due to recent events. Then I saw in the revision history section that somebody recently vandalized and reversal was done by reputed user. Precisely the reason why protection is needed, it doesn't block users with reputable rank anyways but it be harder for disrupters. Evidently Wikipedia's open policy may be one of their great strengths that draws in talent yet also a questionable weakness. Iwwiki2012 (talk) 04:33, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR

Curious, why is this written in British English? If there's no local variety of English, shouldn't it use Indian English instead? Nyttend (talk) 13:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it should use Burmese English if anything. I don't think it matters too much. Is it a reasonable compromise to endorse no English variant? Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 13:41, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

It uses British English because it is a former colony of Britain and most reporting, scholarly work, and historical works tend to come out of Britain. In practice, English speakers are a rarity in the Burma of today so I doubt if the Burmese care that much. Indian English is not really a variant of English (no dictionaries or references to figure out what it is) so I suggest not using that. --regentspark (comment) 14:26, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

While I do not disagree with that explanation I think the matter is even simpler than that. WP:RETAIN is pretty clear on this point. There is normally no compelling need to switch any aricle from whatever variety of English it is was originally written in. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:24, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

If it were written in Indian English it might be more elegantly written, though the differences are too slight to worry about. Howard Alexander (talk) 14:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)