Old Burmese was an early form of the Burmese language, as attested in the stone inscriptions of Pagan, and is the oldest phase of Burmese linguistic history. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century.[1] The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in the underlying orthography.[1]Word order, grammatical structure and vocabulary have remained markedly comparable, well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g. function words).[1][2]
In Old Burmese, postaspiration can be reconstructed to the proto-Burmese language, whereas preaspiration is comparatively newer, having derived from proto-prefixes.[3] The merging of proto-prefixes (i.e., ဟ as an independent consonant used as a prefix) to preaspirated consonants was nearly complete by the 12th century.[3]
Orthography
Old Burmese maintains a number of distinctions which are no longer present in the orthography of standard Burmese.
Diacritics
Whereas Modern Standard Burmese uses 3 written medials (/-y-/, /-w-/, and /-r-/), Old Burmese had a fourth written medial /-l-/, which was typically written as a stacked consonant ္လ underneath the letter being modified.[2]
Old Burmese orthography treated the preaspirated consonant as a separate segment, since a special diacritic (ha hto, ှ) had not yet been innovated.[3] As such, the letter ha (ဟ) was stacked above the consonant being modified (e.g. ဟ္မ where Modern Burmese uses မှ).[3]
Gloss
Examples of such differences include the consonant yh- and the lateral clusters kl- and khl-. The earliest Old Burmese documents, in particular the Myazedi and Lokatheikpan inscriptions frequently have -o- where later Burmese has -wa.[4] Old Burmese also had a final -at and -an distinct from -ac and -any as shown by Nishi (1974).
Old Burmese
Written Burmese
Example for Old Burmese
Example for Written Burmese
yh-
rh-
pl-
pr-
kl-
ky-
-uy
-we
-iy
-e
-o (early OB)
-wa
ိယ်
ေ
ပိယ်
ပေး (to give)
ုယ်
ေွ (ေွး)
ထုယ်
ထွေး (to spit)
ိုဝ်
ို့
သိုဝ်
သို့ (to)
္လ
ျ/ ြ
က္လောင်း
ကျောင်း/ကြောင်း (school/line)
-ဟ်
ား
သာဟ်
သား (son)
-တ်
-စ်
ဟေတ်
ရှစ် (eight)
ာ
ွ
ကျောန်
ကျွန် (slave)
ော
ူ
ဆော
ဆူ (boil)
-ည်
ေး
စည်ဝည်
စည်းဝေး (gather)
ဲ
-ယ်
ငဲ
ငယ် (young)
-န်
-ဉ်
အစန်
အစဉ်
-ဝ်
ော
စဝ်
စော (early)
Vocabulary
Aside from Pali, the Mon language had significant influence on Old Burmese orthography and vocabulary, as Old Burmese borrowed many lexical items (especially relating to handicrafts, administration, flora and fauna, navigation and architecture), although grammatical influence was minimal.[5] Many Mon loan words are present in Old Burmese inscriptions, including words that were absent in the Burmese vocabulary and those that substituted original Burmese words. Examples include:[5]
"widow" - Mon ကၟဲာ > Burmese kamay
"excrement" - Mon ... > Burmese haruk
"sun" - Mon တ္ၚဲ > Burmese taŋuy
Moreover, Mon influenced Old Burmese orthography, particularly with regard to preference for certain spelling conventions:
use of -E- (-ဧ-) instead of -Y- (ျ) (e.g. "destroy" ဖဧက်, not ဖျက် as in modern Burmese)[5]
use of RH- (ဟြ > ရှ) instead of HR- as done with other preaspirated consonants (e.g. "monk" ရှင်, not ဟြင်)[5] - attributed to the fact that Old Mon did not have preaspirated consonants
Grammar
Two grammatical markers presently found in Modern Burmese are extant to Old Burmese:
၏ - finite predicate (placed at the end of a sentence)[5]
၍ - nonfinite predicate (conjunction that connects two clauses)[5]
In Old Burmese, ၍ was spelt ruy-e(ရုယ်), following the pattern in Pali, whose inflected verbs can express the main predicate.[5]
Pali also had an influence in the construction of written Old Burmese verbal modifiers. Whereas in Modern Burmese, the verb + သော (sau:) construction can only modify the succeeding noun (e.g. ချစ်သောလူ, "man who loves") and သူ (su) can only modify the preceding verb (e.g. ချစ်သူ, "lover"), in Old Burmese, both constructions, verb + သော and verb + သူ were interchangeable.[5] This was a consequence of Pali grammar, which dictates that participles can be used in noun functions.[5]
Pali grammar also influenced negation in written Old Burmese, as many Old Burmese inscriptions adopt the Pali method of negation.[5] In Burmese, negation is accomplished by prefixing a negative particle မ (ma.) to the verb being negated. In Pali, အ (a.) is used instead.
Such grammatical influences from Pali on written Old Burmese had disappeared by the 15th century.[5]
Old Burmese တိုဝ့် was a plural marker, now Modern Burmese တို့.
you (second person)
နင်
နင်
he/she (third person)
အယင်
သူ
Surviving inscriptions
The earliest evidence of Burmese script (inscription at the Mahabodhi Temple in India) is dated to 1035, while an 18th-century recast stone inscription points to 984.[7] Perhaps the most well known inscription is the Old Burmese face of the Myazedi inscription. The most complete set of Old Burmese inscriptions, called She-haung Myanma Kyauksa Mya (ရှေးဟောင်း မြန်မာ ကျောက်စာများ; lit. "Ancient Stone Inscriptions of Myanmar") was published by Yangon University's Department of Archaeology in five volumes from 1972 to 1987.[8] A digitized version of this collection[9] and a corrected version of the same enhanced with metadata and transliteration [10] are available at Zenodo.
Notes
^ abcHerbert, Patricia; Anthony Crothers Milner (1989). South-East Asia: Languages and Literatures: a Select Guide. University of Hawaii Press. p. 5. ISBN9780824812676.
^ abWheatley, Julian (2013). "12. Burmese". In Randy J. LaPolla; Graham Thurgood (eds.). Sino-Tibetan Languages. Routledge. ISBN9781135797171.
^ abcdefYanson, Rudolf A. (2012). Nathan W. Hill (ed.). Aspiration in the Burmese Phonological System: A Diachronic Account. Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages IV. Brill. pp. 17–29. ISBN9789004232020.
^ Hill, Nathan W. (2013). "Three notes on Laufer's law". Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 36 (1): 57–72.
^ abcdefghijkUta Gärtner, Jens Lorenz, ed. (1994). "3". Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar: Proceedings of an International Conference Held in Berlin from May 7th to May 9th, 1993. Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar. LIT Verlag Münster. pp. 366–426. ISBN9783825821869.
^Bradley, David (Spring 1993). "Pronouns in Burmese-Lolo" (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. Melbourne: La Trobe University. 16 (1).
^U Nyein Maung, Lewis-Wong, Jennifer, Khin Khin Zaw, McCormick, Patrick, & Hill, Nathan. (2020). A Structured Corpus of Old Burmese Stone Inscriptions (Version 1) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4321314
References
Aung-Thwin, Michael A. (November 1996). "The Myth of the "Three Shan Brothers" and the Ava Period in Burmese History". The Journal of Asian Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 55 (4): 881–901. doi:10.2307/2646527. JSTOR 2646527.
Aung-Thwin, Michael A. (2005). The Mists of Rāmañña: The Legend that was Lower Burma (illustrated ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN978-0-8248-2886-8.
Dempsey, Jakob (2001). “Remarks on the vowel system of old Burmese.” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 24.2: 205–34. Errata 26.1 183.
Nishi Yoshio 西 義郎 (1974) "ビルマ文語の-acについて Birumabungo-no-ac-ni tsuite" [On -ac in Burmese] 東洋学報 Tōyō gakuhō. The Journal of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 56.1: 01–43. (Translation published as "Proto-Lolo-Burmese and Old Burmese Sources of Written Burmese -ac". Journal of the South East Asian Linguistics Society 9: 97–129.
Nishi Yoshio (1999). Four Papers on Burmese: Toward the history of Burmese (the Myanmar language). Tokyo: Institute for the study of languages and cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Nishida Tatsuo 西田龍雄 (1955) "Myazedi 碑文における中古ビルマ語の研究 Myazedi hibu ni okeru chūko biruma go no kenkyū. Studies in the later ancient Burmese Language through Myazedi Inscriptions." 古代學 Kodaigaku Palaeologia 4.1:17-31 and 5.1: 22–40.
Pān Wùyún 潘悟雲 (2000). "緬甸文元音的轉寫 Miǎndiàn wényuán yīn de zhuǎn xiě. [The Transliteration of Vowels of Burman Script].” 民族語文 Mínzú Yǔwén 2000.2: 17–21.
Wun, Maung (1975). "Development of the Burmese language in the medieval period." 大阪外国語大学学報 Ōsaka gaikokugo daigaku gakuhō 36: 63–119.
Yanson, Rudolf (1990). Вопросы фонологии древнебирманского языка. Voprosy fonologii drevnebirmanskogo jazyka. Moscow: Nauk.
Yanson, Rudolf (2006). 'Notes on the evolution of the Burmese Phonological System.' Medieval Tibeto-Burman Languages II. Christopher I. Beckwith, ed. Leiden: Brill. 103–20.
May 11, 2023
burmese, early, form, burmese, language, attested, stone, inscriptions, pagan, oldest, phase, burmese, linguistic, history, transition, middle, burmese, occurred, 16th, century, transition, middle, burmese, included, phonological, changes, mergers, sound, pair. Old Burmese was an early form of the Burmese language as attested in the stone inscriptions of Pagan and is the oldest phase of Burmese linguistic history The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century 1 The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes e g mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese as well as accompanying changes in the underlying orthography 1 Word order grammatical structure and vocabulary have remained markedly comparable well into Modern Burmese with the exception of lexical content e g function words 1 2 Old BurmeseDetail of the Myazedi inscriptionRegionPagan KingdomEra12th 16th centuriesLanguage familySino Tibetan Tibeto Burman Lolo BurmeseBurmishOld BurmeseWriting systemBurmese scriptLanguage codesISO 639 3 a href https iso639 3 sil org code obr class extiw title iso639 3 obr obr a Linguist ListobrGlottologoldb1235This article contains Burmese script Without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols instead of Burmese script Contents 1 Phonology 2 Orthography 2 1 Diacritics 2 2 Gloss 3 Vocabulary 4 Grammar 5 Pronouns 6 Surviving inscriptions 7 Notes 8 ReferencesPhonology EditUnlike most Tibeto Burman languages Burmese has a phonological system with two way aspiration preaspiration e g မ hma vs မ ma and postaspiration e g ခ kha vs က ka 3 In Burmese this distinction serves to differentiate causative and non causative verbs of Sino Tibetan etymology 3 In Old Burmese postaspiration can be reconstructed to the proto Burmese language whereas preaspiration is comparatively newer having derived from proto prefixes 3 The merging of proto prefixes i e ဟ as an independent consonant used as a prefix to preaspirated consonants was nearly complete by the 12th century 3 Orthography EditOld Burmese maintains a number of distinctions which are no longer present in the orthography of standard Burmese Diacritics Edit Whereas Modern Standard Burmese uses 3 written medials y w and r Old Burmese had a fourth written medial l which was typically written as a stacked consonant လ underneath the letter being modified 2 Old Burmese orthography treated the preaspirated consonant as a separate segment since a special diacritic ha hto had not yet been innovated 3 As such the letter ha ဟ was stacked above the consonant being modified e g ဟ မ where Modern Burmese uses မ 3 Gloss Edit Examples of such differences include the consonant yh and the lateral clusters kl and khl The earliest Old Burmese documents in particular the Myazedi and Lokatheikpan inscriptions frequently have o where later Burmese has wa 4 Old Burmese also had a final at and an distinct from ac and any as shown by Nishi 1974 Old Burmese Written Burmese Example for Old Burmese Example for Written Burmeseyh rh pl pr kl ky uy we iy e o early OB wa ယ ပ ယ ပ to give ယ ထ ယ ထ to spit ဝ သ ဝ သ to လ က လ င က င က င school line ဟ သ ဟ သ son တ စ ဟ တ ရ စ eight က န က န slave ဆ ဆ boil ည စည ဝည စည ဝ gather ယ င ငယ young န ဉ အစန အစဉ ဝ စဝ စ early Vocabulary EditAside from Pali the Mon language had significant influence on Old Burmese orthography and vocabulary as Old Burmese borrowed many lexical items especially relating to handicrafts administration flora and fauna navigation and architecture although grammatical influence was minimal 5 Many Mon loan words are present in Old Burmese inscriptions including words that were absent in the Burmese vocabulary and those that substituted original Burmese words Examples include 5 widow Mon က gt Burmese kamay excrement Mon gt Burmese haruk sun Mon တ ၚ gt Burmese taŋuyMoreover Mon influenced Old Burmese orthography particularly with regard to preference for certain spelling conventions use of E ဧ instead of Y e g destroy ဖဧက not ဖ က as in modern Burmese 5 use of RH ဟ gt ရ instead of HR as done with other preaspirated consonants e g monk ရ င not ဟ င 5 attributed to the fact that Old Mon did not have preaspirated consonantsGrammar EditTwo grammatical markers presently found in Modern Burmese are extant to Old Burmese finite predicate placed at the end of a sentence 5 nonfinite predicate conjunction that connects two clauses 5 In Old Burmese was spelt ruy e ရ ယ following the pattern in Pali whose inflected verbs can express the main predicate 5 Pali also had an influence in the construction of written Old Burmese verbal modifiers Whereas in Modern Burmese the verb သ sau construction can only modify the succeeding noun e g ခ စ သ လ man who loves and သ su can only modify the preceding verb e g ခ စ သ lover in Old Burmese both constructions verb သ and verb သ were interchangeable 5 This was a consequence of Pali grammar which dictates that participles can be used in noun functions 5 Pali grammar also influenced negation in written Old Burmese as many Old Burmese inscriptions adopt the Pali method of negation 5 In Burmese negation is accomplished by prefixing a negative particle မ ma to the verb being negated In Pali အ a is used instead Such grammatical influences from Pali on written Old Burmese had disappeared by the 15th century 5 Pronouns EditPronouns in Old Burmese 6 Pronoun Old Burmesec 12th century Modern Burmese informal form RemarksI first person င င we first person အတ ဝ င တ or တ Old Burmese တ ဝ was a plural marker now Modern Burmese တ you second person နင နင he she third person အယင သ Surviving inscriptions EditThe earliest evidence of Burmese script inscription at the Mahabodhi Temple in India is dated to 1035 while an 18th century recast stone inscription points to 984 7 Perhaps the most well known inscription is the Old Burmese face of the Myazedi inscription The most complete set of Old Burmese inscriptions called She haung Myanma Kyauksa Mya ရ ဟ င မ န မ က က စ မ lit Ancient Stone Inscriptions of Myanmar was published by Yangon University s Department of Archaeology in five volumes from 1972 to 1987 8 A digitized version of this collection 9 and a corrected version of the same enhanced with metadata and transliteration 10 are available at Zenodo Notes Edit a b c Herbert Patricia Anthony Crothers Milner 1989 South East Asia Languages and Literatures a Select Guide University of Hawaii Press p 5 ISBN 9780824812676 a b Wheatley Julian 2013 12 Burmese In Randy J LaPolla Graham Thurgood eds Sino Tibetan Languages Routledge ISBN 9781135797171 a b c d e f Yanson Rudolf A 2012 Nathan W Hill ed Aspiration in the Burmese Phonological System A Diachronic Account Medieval Tibeto Burman Languages IV Brill pp 17 29 ISBN 9789004232020 Hill Nathan W 2013 Three notes on Laufer s law Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area 36 1 57 72 a b c d e f g h i j k Uta Gartner Jens Lorenz ed 1994 3 Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar Proceedings of an International Conference Held in Berlin from May 7th to May 9th 1993 Tradition and Modernity in Myanmar LIT Verlag Munster pp 366 426 ISBN 9783825821869 Bradley David Spring 1993 Pronouns in Burmese Lolo PDF Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area Melbourne La Trobe University 16 1 Aung Thwin 2005 167 178 197 200 Aung Thwin 1996 900 U Nyein Maung 2018 ရ ဟ င မ န မ က က စ မ Ancient Burmese Inscriptions Data set Zenodo http doi org 10 5281 zenodo 1202320 U Nyein Maung Lewis Wong Jennifer Khin Khin Zaw McCormick Patrick amp Hill Nathan 2020 A Structured Corpus of Old Burmese Stone Inscriptions Version 1 Data set Zenodo http doi org 10 5281 zenodo 4321314References EditAung Thwin Michael A November 1996 The Myth of the Three Shan Brothers and the Ava Period in Burmese History The Journal of Asian Studies Cambridge Cambridge University Press 55 4 881 901 doi 10 2307 2646527 JSTOR 2646527 Aung Thwin Michael A 2005 The Mists of Ramanna The Legend that was Lower Burma illustrated ed Honolulu University of Hawai i Press ISBN 978 0 8248 2886 8 Dempsey Jakob 2001 Remarks on the vowel system of old Burmese Linguistics of the Tibeto Burman Area 24 2 205 34 Errata 26 1 183 Nishi Yoshio 西 義郎 1974 ビルマ文語の acについて Birumabungo no ac ni tsuite On ac in Burmese 東洋学報 Tōyō gakuhō The Journal of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 56 1 01 43 Translation published as Proto Lolo Burmese and Old Burmese Sources of Written Burmese ac Journal of the South East Asian Linguistics Society 9 97 129 Nishi Yoshio 1999 Four Papers on Burmese Toward the history of Burmese the Myanmar language Tokyo Institute for the study of languages and cultures of Asia and Africa Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Nishida Tatsuo 西田龍雄 1955 Myazedi 碑文における中古ビルマ語の研究 Myazedi hibu ni okeru chuko biruma go no kenkyu Studies in the later ancient Burmese Language through Myazedi Inscriptions 古代學 Kodaigaku Palaeologia 4 1 17 31 and 5 1 22 40 Pan Wuyun 潘悟雲 2000 緬甸文元音的轉寫 Miǎndian wenyuan yin de zhuǎn xie The Transliteration of Vowels of Burman Script 民族語文 Minzu Yǔwen 2000 2 17 21 Wang Danian 汪大年 1983 缅甸语中辅音韵尾的历史演变 Miǎndianyǔ fǔyin yunwei de lishǐ yǎnbian Historical evolution of Burmese finals 民族语文 Minzu Yǔwen 2 41 50 Wun Maung 1975 Development of the Burmese language in the medieval period 大阪外国語大学学報 Ōsaka gaikokugo daigaku gakuhō 36 63 119 Yanson Rudolf 1990 Voprosy fonologii drevnebirmanskogo yazyka Voprosy fonologii drevnebirmanskogo jazyka Moscow Nauk Yanson Rudolf 2006 Notes on the evolution of the Burmese Phonological System Medieval Tibeto Burman Languages II Christopher I Beckwith ed Leiden Brill 103 20 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Old Burmese amp oldid 1152968411, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
