RBM-rule1.htm
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), Daw Khin Wutyi, B.Sc., and staff of Tun Institute of Learning (TIL). Not for sale. No copyright. Free for everyone. Prepared for students and staff of TIL Research Station, Yangon, MYANMAR : http://www.tuninst.net , www.romabama.blogspot.com
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RBM-rules-indx.htm
Rule 01
: Consonants
{byæÑ:} - rhyming with
{byi:}
• Use of ASCII letters only - avoiding
digraphs whenever possible
• The Thibilant phoneme /θ/ and the English digraph <th>
• Failure of IPA to include the Bur-Myan, Skt-Dev, and Engl-Latin phonemes
• Basic consonants : Plosives-stops, Affricates,
Fricatives, Nasals, Approximants
• Nasal consonants : Vertical subgroup
• Approximant
consonants : Horizontal subgroup
---- take a quick look at
Medials in Bur-Myan below
• Latin Letter a : inherent vowel
{mwé-hkän-þa.ra.}
• Hunting for disappearing r1c5 and the forgotten
r2c5
• Medials in Bur-Myan :
{kra:þän} lit. "middle sound" :
---- Virama Rule to be defined in Romabama.
• Conjuncts in Myanmar and Devanagari scripts
• Differentiating Medials from
Conjuncts
• Special conjuncts in Skt-Dev :
{kSa.} - Pseudo-Kha , and
{zña.} - Pseudo-Za
• Rime and Rhyme - UKT 200827: moved to RBM-typewrit-indx.htm > rim00.htm
UKT notes
For information about classification of languages based on consonants and
vowels, see - Romabama-rule2.htm
At present we will look into certain pairs of languages
• Bur-Myan and Georgian-Mkhedruli
• Newari and Nepali
•
Tenuis-voiceless consonant
{byæÑ:} - rhyming with
{byi:}- UKT 150403, 170620, 200807
Romabama was originally designed in 1995 for writing e-mails without using any special fonts and therefore only ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) letters were used. I use four-numbered and three-numbered keystrokes after pressing down the Alt key, e.g. Alt+0241 for ñ, and, Alt+529 for ◄ .
An added problem is due to the English
(sic American) language lacking
graphemes to represent the nasal sounds
such as "Gna" (to my ears), "Nga" (to the Europeans) and "Na"
(to Indians). The phoneme is
{gna.}(onset)/
{ng} (coda)
and is displayed as r1c5 in Bur-Myan akshara-matrix.
The second problematical phoneme is Nya-major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ} represented by r2c5 in Bur-Myan akshara matrix. Pali-Myan is slightly
different from Bur-Myan because of its conjuncts which hides the Virama
{a.þût}. However, if we display the viram we would get Nya-minor
{ña.}/
{ñ} in r2c5 cell.
I've said above that English lacks grapheme to represent r1c5
{gna.}/ {ng}.
Some Indic languages must have lacked this grapheme because they have to
improvised from r3c3:
Sanskrit: ड + dot --> ङ
Gujarati: ડ + dot --> ઙ
Oriya: --- ଡ + dot --> ଙ
Curiously Asokan-Brahmi has an r1c5 which is not derived from r3c3.
The usual practice of using English digraphs (2 characters in tandem), such as <th> for
/θ/, is avoided as much as possible
because they are a source of confusion in
transcription-transliteration. An example
of confusion is the digraph <th>.
In Skt-Dev and Hindi, <th> stands
for Bur-Myan
{hta.} /tʰ/. Instead of the digraph <th>, I've to use the Old English
«þ» "Thorn"
character for /θ/
{þa.}. Yet, there are others digraphs, especially in the nasal codas or nasal
endings.
I am unable to find a "unigraph"
(as opposed to "digraph) for nasal
{ng}(coda). Note
{gna.}(onset) is a non-nasal similar to
{ga.}: it is prominent in Mon-Myan
Pegu-dialect. Even though my relatives
of Kungyangon
{kwûm:hkän-koan:} township can no longer
speak Mon, the Burmese they spoke has
this non-nasal sound in words such as
{gnak} 'bird'. British administrators,
before WWII, had used this transliteration
for place-names such as
{gnak-au sûm:} 'spring where birds sing'.
To get over this problem of unwanted digraph -- using the fact that English has this sound in the coda -- I have come up with a table of nasal sounds shown in the inset.
We find 8 nasals in Myanmar akshara, when Bur-Myan, Mon-Myan, and Pal-Myan are considered as a group. Since each can have 3 pitch-registers (erroneously called "tones") in Bur-Myan, there are over 20. These have to be represented by only 2 in English - <n> and <m>. Borrowing one, <ñ>, from Spanish is a help but not enough.
Since our
method of writing or script is Akshara-Syllable system,
generally known as Abugida, with the
canonical CVÇ structure, instead of CVC of
the Alphabet-Letter system, we have to be careful of the
Nuclear vowel
{Ñu-k~li þa.ra.}.
Keep in mind that Akshara is phonemic with an almost one-to-one mapping of speech to script, and is more scientific than the Alphabet, exemplified by English in which there is no one-to-one relationship between speech and script. Never pronounce an English word from the way it is spelled. In Burmese, you will be understood when you pronounce according to the spelling. You will sound "bookish", but still correct.
UKT 200808: After I had bought the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 16th edition, by Daniel Jones, ed. by Peter Roach, James Hartman & Jane Setter, 2003, I was quite surprised to see /w/ in the Table of English Consonants on p.x in the Introduction. However, when I look for /w/ in the International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 1993, updated 1996) on p.xx , /w/ was curiously absent. That was the first time I lost confidence in the IPA tables. There and then, I have concluded that I've to revise my own version of Table of Consonants, whether approved by IPA or not. I was in a hurry to come up with a reliable method of inter-transcription of Burmese to English and back. I realized that IPA symbols are not ASCII compatible which makes the IPA useless for e-mail. Then I realized that IPA does not have column #2 and #4 phonemes. To help me with my Burmese-to-English inter-transcription, I decided to study Pali and Sanskrit: Pali being related to Burmese and Sanskrit to English. That was how I had launched myself into the study of BEPS speeches in Myanmar-Latin-Devanagari scripts. I am getting old, but age does not matter when engaged in serious study.
In the following IPA table, the Western phoneticians neglected our c2 and c4 consonants, thinking them to be just "aspirated" versions the basic consonants. They have given only c1, c3, and c5.
We have to expand the IPA as follows:
In the expanded tables, you will notice
square brackets: [...], with 2 types of
IPA symbols, e.g. for
{sa.} [c], &
for
{hsa.} [cʰ]. These stand for
Narrow transcription of the sound
of the phoneme. The "Narrow transcription",
captures as many aspects of a specific
pronunciation as possible and ignores
as few details as possible. Using the
diacritics provided in the IPA, it is
possible to make very subtle distinctions
between sounds. However, it is an overkill
in my work on BEPS because the languages
involved belong to different linguistic groups.
Thus, I have to use what are called
Broad transcription (or phonemic
transcription): marked as /.../. It ignores
as many details as possible, capturing only
enough aspects of a pronunciation. The key
factor in a broad transcription is meaning
-- if a pronunciation detail can change
the meaning of words in a language, it must
be included in a broad transcription of that
language. For a discussion of the difference
between Narrow and Broad transcription, see
Kevin Russell
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~krussll/phonetics/transcription/broad-narrow.html
150409
Representing
the basic consonants is relatively
simple for there is a one-to-one correspondence
between Bur-Myan (Burmese-Myanmar) and Skt-Dev
(Sanskrit-Devanagari).
Since, English as it is spoken and written at present-time is non-phonetic, there is no one-to-one correspondence with Bur-Myan. This can be remedied if English is written in IPA.
The basic consonants can be divided into
2 sub-groups, the Wag
{wag} 'classifiable', and the Awag
{a.wag} 'un-classifiable'. The term
'classifiable' refers to the ease of
grouping showing their vowel-quality, such as
Tenuis-voiceless (c1), Voiceless (c2),
Voiced (c3), Deep-H (c4), and Nasal (c5).
We must note here that Bur-Myan and Mon-Myan have different phonologies, and the c3, c4, and c5 are pronounced differently. Mon-Myan is phonologically similar to Pali-Lankan (Pali spoken in Sri Lankan) in many ways: use of affricates in row#2 and being sibilant.
The Wag-consonants are to be viewed as a 5x5 matrix. There are 25 of them in Bur-Myan, Pali-Myan, and Skt-Dev.
There are two Subgroups in the Basic consonants: Nasals and Approximants .
The Nasals, belonging to the basic consonants, are a sub sub-group. They form a class by themselves, and are found in c5 column. They are grouped in a vertical column.
From
the quality of the sound (sonority) they seem
to occupy a position between the regular
consonants and vowels. I've come to find that c5 are of 3 kinds: r1c5 and
r2c5 behave differently from r4c5 and r5c5, with r3c5 in between.
The occupants of r1c5, r2c5, and r3c5 are not recognized by the Indo-Europeans especially the English. They are commonly described as the velar-, palatal-, and retroflex-nasals.
Though Skt-Dev and other Indic languages make a pretence of having r1c5 in their script, I doubt it very much because it seems to have borrowed it from r3c5.
Sanskrit: ड + dot --> ङ
Gujarati: ડ + dot --> ઙ
Oriya: --- ଡ + dot --> ଙ
Though they, r1c5 and r2c5 , are described as nasals, they are not nasals in the
onset position, and I'm prompted to call them semi-nasals . Bur-Myan and
Mon-Myan write r1c5 slightly differently as
{gna.} /ŋa/ and
{gré} /ŋé/. It also seems that Bur-Myan adopted the Mon-Myan
{gn~ré} and rewrites it in Raric form as
{gnra.} with the pronunciation exactly as Nya-major
{Ña.}. Because of this, I've named r1c5 and r2c5 as semi-nasals. Though I'm
familiar with r1c5 in the coda position
{ng},
when it becomes a nasal, I'm not familiar with Mon-Myan phonology to make a
comment.
Please note, so far I've ignored the fact that English, Mon and Sanskrit
pronounce the r2-row as affricates, differently from Bur-Myan which pronounce
the r2-row as stops. Inclusion of this stop-affricate problem into my study
would make my comment on r1c5 beyond my understanding at present. And then,
though Bur-Myan and Mon-Myan have assigned the r2c5 position to Nya-Major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ}, Pali-Myan assigns this cell to Nya-minor
{ña.}/
{ñ} which definitely is a nasal. To solve the problem of occupancy of c2c5, I've
to recognized that Nya-Major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ} is not a palatal-nasal: it is a palatal-approximant.
- UKT: most recent 200908
Another sub sub-group, the Approximants,
are what we have been calling the "Awag"
{a.wag}. The Awag is best divided further
into semi-consonants aka semivowels,
{ya.} &
{ra.},
and fricatives,
{sha.} &
{þa.}, with La-Wa
{la.} &
{wa.}, in between.
The IE language Skt-Dev, has another
fricative
{Sa.} ष /
{S} ष् which they often use for
Bur-Myan thibilant
{þa.}. Mon-Myan does not have thibilant
{þa.} - which they pronounce as
{Sa.}.
In Eng-Lat, the second IE language,
{Sa.} ष /
{S} ष् , becomes the Super-S which is
realized in the following monosyllabic English words
which can be transcribed by Romabama as shown.
Ordinarily these words are transcribed in Myanmarpré
as disyllabic words.
<spin>
{Spín:} vs. {sa.pín:}
<stun>{Stûn:} vs. {sa.tûn:}
<skin>{Skín:} vs. {sa.kín:}
Mon-Myan is an Aus-Asi language which has both Bur-Myan and Skt-Dev elements in pronunciation. Since, I've only scant knowledge of Mon-Myan, I can only make only a few comments.
The La consonant
{la.} is where the tongue is the most agile
without the lips taking part, and Wa
{wa.} where the lips are the most agile without
the tongue taking part. The two are what we
should be calling proteans. [Protean
from the character of Greek-Roman sea-god
Proteus.]
The Bur-Myan fricatives are widely misunderstood in the West, because both Bur-Myan and Pali-Myan are Thibilant languages whereas most languages spoken in the world are Sibilant languages.
Though both Burmese and Mon use the basic Myanmar
script, there are two more characters in Mon-Myan:
{ßa.} and
{ßé.}. They are in row#7: I suspect (not confirmed) that
{ßa.} and
{ßé.} were invented in Mon-Myan to handle Skt-Dev
ब «ba» which itself has been derived from
Skt-Dev व «va» by addition of a diagonal:
व «va» + diagonal --> ब «ba».
Listen to pronunciation of Approximants of what I heard in rows #6 and #7 of Mon-Myan: (link chk 200908)
row#6:{yé},
{ré},
{lé},
{wé},
row#7:{ha.},
{La.},
{ßa.},
/
{a.},
{ßé} - Mon-r7<))
To refresh your memory, listen to a Mon-Myan Akshara song - MonAksSong<))
The number of Approximants vary from language to language. Even in Bur-Myan and
Mon-Myan the number of approximants is not the same: Burmese has 8, whereas Mon
has 10. Bur-Myan has
{a.}
as inherent-vowel
{mwé-hkän þa.ra.} in the consonantal table, but in Mon-Myan, only some inherent
vowels are pronounced as
{a.},
the rest are
{é} (or
{É}). In Skt-Dev,
there is no Thibilant: only Sibilants. In place of one Bur-Myan
Thibilant, Skt-Dev has 3 Sibilants.
The Bur-Myan
{þa.} 'Old-English thorn-character',
though a fricative, is Thibilant with the
sound /θ/. It is found in regular
English words such as <thin>
/θɪn/ . It is represented as the Thorn character of Old
English: þ /θ/ . Because of this I suggest English in ancient times
was a Thibilant language.
Now that Romabama is to be used
for BEPS (Burmese-English-Pali-Sanskrit
speeches), there is a need to invent
new Myanmar graphemes to handle the
labio-dental, /f/ and /v/, sounds:
{fa.} &
{va.} . The most natural place
for them is r5.
The most important tool to study the approximants is to study the effect of
killed-approximants on the preceding Nuclear vowel
{Ñu-k~li þa.ra.}. At present, I'm not
fully equipped for this task.
{mwé-hkän-þa.ra.}
In Eng-Latin the letter a is a vowel, but in Bur-Myan,
{a.} is a consonant. In Mon-Myan, it can even be "killed":
{ }. It is included in the table of consonants.
{a.} or "short-a" is taken to be inherent vowel
{mwé-hkän-þa.ra.} in consonantal aksharas. In Eng-Lat can be used as a
prefix to show negation
{a.}, but it is not so in Bur-Myan. The negation prefix
is
{ma.} in front of vowels. Some common English vowels such as <able> can also
be made negative by adding the word <not> in front of it such as <not
able>. Here also the "negation" is not
{ma.}, but
{na.}.
In spite of using the same Myanmar akshara, Bur-Myan and Mon-Myan show a
striking dissimilarity in using different kinds of inherent vowel
{mwé-hkän-þa.ra.}. In transcription, Bur-Myan uses Latin letter /a/ for
all the basic aksharas , i.e. aksharas stable under the virama.
However, Mon-Myan uses two kinds /a/ and /é/ as in /ka./, /hka./,
/ké/ (/gé/), /hké/, /gné/ , which is very different from Bur-Myan, /ka./, /hka./,
/ga./, /Ga./, /gna./. Burmese and Mon also differs in row#2, the Palatal
row. Burmese uses Palatal stops, but Mon uses Palatal affricates. Listen
carefully to Mon-Myan:
bk-cndl-{ka.}-row<)) :
,
,
bk-cndl-{sa.}-row<)) :,
,
- Palatal affricate
{nga.} &
{Ña.} r1c5
UKT: latest 200909
Pali and
Sanskrit syllables do not start with r1c5
{gna.} ङ , however it is very common in
Burmese syllables. I am looking at the
possibility of using this as an
indicator of the language-family to which
a language belongs. There are a few words
in Newari language of the Kathmandu
valley - the birth place of Gautama Buddha
- that begins with
{nga.}, i.e. onset of the syllable. See:
- from
http://worldpubliclibrary.org/articles/newar_/_nepal_bhasa_language
160114
¤ गोङ्ङ 'cock' -->
{gaung:gna.}
¤ फोङ्ङा 'pillow' -->{hpaung:gna}
TIL accepted transcriptions are¤ ल्होङ (= ल ् ह ो ङ) 'fat' -->
{lhau:gna.} : if I were to use Super-L, it would be
{l~hau:gna.}
vs. गाइसी 'thin' -->{ga-I.þi} इ द :
Note: I had difficulty in sorting out इ {I.}, ड {ða.}, द {da.}, and ङ {gna.} at the beginning of my Skt-Dev study¤ ङा 'fish' :
{gna} (long vowel) cf. Bur-Myan
{gna:} (emphatic)
In गोङ्ङ 'cock', and फोङ्ङा 'pillow' ,
Since Bur-Myan words tend to end with emphasis, I have given the emphatic instead of the long vowel.Though I am on very shaky ground, I must still note the "L-colouring" of the first syllable in
See F. Edgerton, Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary,
- BHS-vol01-indx.htm - (link chk 200809),
and proceed to An 'original language' of Buddhism -- i02original.htm (link chk 200809)
and see passage 1.22 & footnote fn003-09 : [In] Lāghula = Rāhula (fn003-09); l for r does indeed agree with Māgadhī, ...
Since Newari is a Tibeto-Burman language,
albeit under heavy influence of
Indo-European Sanskrit, we should expect
to see
{gna.} ङ as the onset. This is what
we found in the above words. Incidentally,
the word for fish in Burmese is the most
difficult for the Europeans and
Hindi-speakers. It is almost the
same in Newari and Burmese. -- UKT130116 .
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepal_Bhasa
140511.
The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newar_language#Ranjana_alphabet 150406, gives the orthography of the Newar vowels as follows:
It is interesting to find the 4 registers
of "allophones" of a ,
to be similar to Myanmar:
{a} आ /
{a:} आः
On the right-hand are given BEPS vowels to handle all the 4 constituent languages.
In the above, I've found the Bur-Myan
{gna.} ङ in Newari. As for the forgotten Nya-major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ}, I can not expect to see it in Newari since it writes in Devanagari script.
My only hope is to establish it from Bur-Myan usage.
I can cite the presence of
{gna.} in Newari and Nepali. Bur it seems Nya-major
/
is lost for ever - except in Bur-Myan.
- UKT 200809, 200909:
By "medials"
{kra:þän} lit. "middle sound", I mean the special types of conjuncts which are
monosyllabic. They are definitely not glides. Conjuncts are
generally disyllabic. It is usual to find the shape of the "medial-former"
- which are basic aksharas - changed beyond recognition. Though in properties
the medials are close to basic aksharas, being conjuncts, they break down
under virama
{a.þût}. See Virama Rule .
Just as Nya-major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ}, medials, particularly the
{ya.pín.}-medial, might be unique to Bur-Myan, and not even to Mon-Myan.
There are 4 medial formers in Bur-Myan. Though Mon-Myan claims to have more than 4, they are actually conjuncts because they are disyllabic. The 4 Bur-Myan medial formers are:
{-ya.}
{ra.ric} with the sign
{-ra.}
{wa.hswè:} with the sign
{-wa.}
{ha.hto:} with the sign
{-ha.}
It is claimed that there is a 5th, present in Pagan period and is still extant in the Dawei dialect of Bur-Myan.
{la.hswè:} with the sign
{-la.}
I don't think it is of the same genre as the above four, because it forms disyllables.
In Romabama, medials are written as: {CbCmfa.} where Cb
is the basic consonant such as
{ma.}, and, Cmf is the medial former,
{ya.},
{ra.},
{wa.}, or
{ha.} with the signs
{-ya.},
{-ra.},
{-wa.}, and
{-ha.} . With
{ma.} we get the following, however not all are used in regular Bur-Myan words.
Since Rakhine dialect of Bur-Myan - like Pali-Myan - is somewhat rhotic, I'm
using a different Raric
{ra.ric} sign: one with a full-hood.
{mya.},
{mya},
{mya:}
{mra.},
{mra},
{mra:}
{mRa.},
{mRa},
{mRa:}
{mwa.},
{mwa},
{mwa:}
{mha.},
{mha},
{mha:}
Of the above lot, you'll have to find out which are used in modern Bur-Myan from
various Bur-Myan dictionaries, and orthographies. Medials are difficult for
foreigners to pronounce, and can become messier when two or more medial formers
are used together the classic being the tongue-twisting medials of
{la.} such as
{lhya:} and
{lhwa.}.
- UKT 200809
Caveat: Since I'm still learning Sanskrit speech in Devanagari script, take my words on Sanskrit with caution. You should refer to works like Higher Sanskrit Grammar by M. R. Kale, first ed. 1894, 1960, in TIL HD-PDF and SD-PDF libraries:
- MRKale-HigherSktGramm<Ô> / Bkp<Ô> (link chk 200908)
Conjunction of two or more consonantal characters are quite common in both Myanmar and Devanagari scripts. There are two kinds: the vertical where the two characters are stacked one above the other, and the horizontal where the two are conjoined sideways. They are generally mute.
The vertical conjunct is known as
{paaHT-hsín.}, exemplified by 
{k~ka.} क्क
Now let's analyze a Bur-Myan word containing
{k~ka.} क्क , which is mute.
{ta.} +
{tak~ka.} - syllabic (ie. pronounceable)
{þoal} -->
{tak~ka.þoal} - syllabic "university"
An example of Bur-Myan horizontal conjunct is
{þ~þa.}. It is known as Tha-major
{þa.kri:}. There is no term in Bur-Myan
for horizontal conjunct, and I propose
to coin the word
{paaHT-twè:}. The prefix
{paaHT} stands for Pali, they are quite
common in Bur-Myan.
- UKT 200815: Because of the syllabic nature of Akashara-Syllabic of Bur-Myan,
we can easily differentiate the Medial (syllabic) from the Conjunct (mute). It
is not so in Mon-Myan and Skt-Dev. It is because of this that my American
friends and Indian friends cannot properly pronounce my Bur-Myan name KYAW. Both
English and Sanskrit-derived Indic speakers fail to recognize
{ka.} modified by
{ya.}.
As medial:
{kya.} - syllabic
We can even have 3 registers:{kya},
{kya:}
As a conjunct (vertical):{k~ya.} - mute
Though
To bring out this fact Romabama shows a tilde in the conjunct.
Those who cannot pronounce
I'm hoping to use my method of differentiating Medial from Conjunct in solving
the mystery of disappearing Bur-Myan:
{Ña.} 'night',
{Ña} 'to cheat', and
{Ña:} 'to have intimate relation between male and female'. In Chemistry it is
usual to transcribe <nuclear> as
{nyu-ka.li-ya} for 'nuclear reactions'. Why not
{Ñu-ka.li-ya} ? I was one of those responsible for transcribing English terms in
Chemistry to Burmese in 1950-60, and we realized that
{Ña.} would be foreign to the foreigners.
{kSa.} - Pseudo-Kha , and
{zña.} - Pseudo-Za There are unusual conjuncts (from Bur-Myan viewpoint) in Skt-Dev. At least two of them are quite important, and I propose to call them by the prefix "Pseudo-".
{Za.} of Pali-Myan
Pseudo-Kha,
{kSa.}, is present the words such as
क्षत्रिय
«kṣatriya» which in Bur-Myan is
{hkût~ti.ya.} .
Pseudo-Za,
{zña.}, may be related to English
words ending in -ism , such as
"Communism", from which we get
the informal word "ism".
ism n. Informal 1. A distinctive doctrine, system, or theory: “ Formalism, by being an ‘ ism,’ kills form by hugging it to death ” Peter Viereck [From -ism ] -- AHTD
UKT 150407, 200810: I'll now take the Bur-Myan words,
{Zaan} and
{ñaaN} (MLC MED2006-155c2) [the official form is
which could be mistaken as a derivative of Nya-major
Secondly, look into the First Jhana of Prince Siddhartha (who was still a child, and who would eventually became the Gautama Buddha), I believe that the word
For the First Jhana of Prince Siddhartha, see Zen-Brain Horizons: Toward a Living Zen by James H. Austin*, p034, https://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/james-h-austin 150407
" On this memorable day, young Prince Siddhartha is attending that spring planting festival, and his own father's hands are performing this royal plowing ritual. Left to himself, Siddhartha sits off to one side. There he chooses the cool shade afforded by a rose-apple tree to shelter himself from the heat. Mindfully attentive to each breath in and out, secluded from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states, he enters spontaneously into the first (jhana) state of meditation. After emerging from this memorable state of rapture and bliss, he then goes on to carefully examine his thoughts in solitude."
[*James H. Austin, a clinical neurologist, researcher, and Zen practitioner for more than three decades, is Professor Emeritus of Neurology at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and Courtesy Professor of Neurology at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He is the author of Zen and the Brain, Chase, Chance, and Creativity, Zen-Brain Reflections, Selfless Insight, and Meditating Selflessly, all published by the MIT Press.]
I opine that if we were to take the row#2 as Palatal stops, we must take Nya-major as legitimate occupier of r2c5 cell. It would be the case when the language of Arigyi was in use in Burma. When the Arigyis were persecuted by King Anawrahta, and Pali-Lanka became the dominant language of Buddhism in Burma, Nya-minor has taken hold of c2c5 cell. For practical reasons in Romabama, I'll take the Nya-minor to be the sole occupier of r2c5 as Palatal-nasal, and assign Nya-major to the Approximants, but still under the heading of Palatal as Palatal-approximant.
UKT 200807
Few in Myanmarpré would have known anything about the Country of Georgia, let alone its language (speech and script). Some would get confused between State of Georgia in the United States of America and the Country of Georgia.
Most older generation would have known our childhood story of Maung Pauk Kyaing the Dragon-killer - of the Tagaung City-State in northern Burma. And some of them would know about St. George the Dragon-killer the patron saint of England and the Cross of St. George in the Union Jack of the United Kingdom. The British colonialist had come to enslave our country in the 19th century in war-ships flying the Flag of St. George of the British Navy.
It was also probable that the same St. George the Dragon-killer of England was the patron saint of the Country of Georgia. My fond speculation - childish you may say - is that St. George the Dragon-killer was no other than our Maung Pauk Kyaing . Whether Maung Pauk Kyaing had flown all these distances in the distant past on the back of his tame dragon, or not, it was the horse-men - the Mrun {myûn} who had married the Pyu women and who had become {mrûn-ma} had given the name Mkhedruli to Georgian script.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_scripts 200817
"The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language: Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, all three are unicase, their letters share the same names and alphabetical order, and are written horizontally from left to right. Of the three scripts, Mkhedruli, once the civilian royal script of the Kingdom of Georgia and mostly used for the royal charters, is now the standard script for modern Georgian and its related Kartvelian languages, whereas Asomtavruli and Nuskhuri are used only by the Georgian Orthodox Church, in ceremonial religious texts and iconography."
Now, the following is what I've found in the Georgian script. It is also because of what I've found, I've given a childish theory about the relationship of Burmese and Georgian.
The Georgian consonant t თ (consonant
Letter Tan) and a ა (vowel Letter An)
have Bur-Myan counter part
{ta.} which already has the basic vowel part as its
inherent vowel.
თ + ა -->
It should be emphasised here that: the Akshara
{ak~hka.ra} is neither an Alphabet nor a Letter. The definition given by MLC in Myanmar-English Dictionary MED2006-619 must be rejected.
A script is a set of markings (symbols or glyphs) arranged in a particular order to represent the sounds of the human speech (or language). A cluster of markings is not a script unless it can convey a human idea. Just as an animal or human making grunts and whines does not make sense, any cluster of characters is incapable of conveying ideas. Unless a human makes vocal sounds that convey an idea, we cannot say he is speaking or making the use of a language. Similarly, our group of markings must convey an idea before we can call it a script. We write (or make use of a script) to record the sounds of a language.
- UKT 160114, 200810:
For BEPS work, my interest in
Néwari aka Nepal-Bhasa - the language
of the remnants of the blood relatives of
the Gautama Buddha - is purely linguistic.
In the list of words, from:
http://worldpubliclibrary.org/articles/newar_/_nepal_bhasa_language 160118
I am finding words with the consonant
{gna.} in
the onset of the syllable -- a common
occurrence in Bur-Myan. Another surprising finding is that, there are 4
allophones of the vowel
{a.} just as in Myanmar (Bur-Myan and Mon-Myan taken together. These findings have led me to
suggest that the pronunciation in the speech
of Gautama Buddha and Pali as spoken in
Myanmarpré would be the same or very similar.
And that Pal-Myan is the Old Magadhi - the
mother tongue of our teacher.
See:
BHS-indx.htm >
Indic scripts -
indic-indx.htm > Néwari -
newar.htm
-- UKT 121121, 200810
Whenever, my American friends tried to pronounce my Bur-Myan name KYAW, they pronounce it as /chaw/. It took me more than a year to realize that they were deaf to the /k/ sound. They can only hear /kʰ/. Both /k/ & /kʰ/ are voiceless, but the first is more "soft" and it is called the Tenuis-voiceless, whereas the second is called the Ordinary-voiceless. They can only hear the /k/ when it is preceded by /s/.
In teaching Bur-Myan to children we always
start with the phoneme
{ka.} /k/. I used to think that this method
is the most natural until I realize that
English speakers cannot hear the /k/, nor pronounce it unless
/k/ is preceded by /s/ as in <skin>.
Again it took me time -- until I took up Skt-Dev -- to realize that this /s/ is
not the palatal-plosive-stop and its killed-form
{sa.}/
{c} that we are used to in Bur-Myan.
I'd already studied the
Online Phonetics Course, by Dept of Linguistics, Univ. of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland,
offered in China, (no longer online). Luckily I've it downloaded: -
UNIL-indx.htm (link chk 200810)
and look into:
[ c ] U0063 Voiceless palatal stop. The tongue tip is directed down towards the lower teeth, while the tongue body makes contact with the hard palate. [
{ta-lu.za. HTaan}] Fig.3.4. (It is important to distinguish between the true palatal articulation and that of a dental + [j].) (UNIL)
[ s ] U0073 Voiceless alveolar fricative (hisser). The apico-alveolar hissers are produced by bringing the end of the tongue close to the alveolar ridge. [
What the English speaker used in <skin> is the Voiceless alveolar fricative -
hisser. Not wishing to adopt a new glyph, I've to invent a new
glyph for BEPS:
{Sa.}/
{S}.
UKT: The above descriptions by UNIL are a little confusing for me, and I'll call the two /s/ sounds (as I heard them) as
¤ the Palatal-s :
¤ the Dental-s :
Now we have: Thissar,
{þic~sa}, and Sister,
{siS~ta}
The
dental-fricative-sibilant
{Sa.}/
{S}, and is not present in ordinary Bur-Myan
phonology. Only after realizing this, did I see why Skt-Dev
has two graphemes, phonemes, च &
ष . Then I realize that the second
phoneme represented by ष was probably
not present in Vedic or pre-classical-Sanskrit, and that the Sanskrit speakers,
whom I identified as Ponnar
{poaN~Na:} worshipping male-gods had borrowed it
from प and added a slanting line to it.
प «pa» + slanting-line --> ष «ṣa»
e.g. <kiss> represented as{kiS}
There are three pairs in this category:
ड --> ङ «ṅa»
व --> ब «ba»
प --> ष «ṣa»U Hoke Sein's Pali Myan Dictionary, p.{za.}, gives Myanmar aksharas for Sanskrit transliterations, e.g.
{sha.} श &
{Sa.} ष . However, I will not use the glyphs given by UHS which cannot be related to English phonology.
Bur-Myan speaker-writers and ethnics, know very well that the pronunciation of
{pa.} /p/ has nothing to do with the hissing sound of dental-sibilant /s/. Because of this, I hold the view that the old Sanskrit speakers in Myanmarpré had simply followed what writers of Nagari script had done. They had not taken the phonologies of Sanskrit and Bur-Myan into consideration. It is probably why there is almost none who knows Sanskrit, particularly that written in Devanagari script, in the present-day Myanmarpré .
This is the basis of my grapheme-shape theory. This theory simply states is that when a written language-system realizes that a new grapheme is needed to handle a newly introduced phoneme, it borrows the grapheme representing a familiar sound, and add something - a dot or a line. Words with this newly introduced grapheme would be relatively rare in the corpus of the language.
So the English speakers are not used to
the sound of row #1
{ka.} क !
Are there others? Yes. They are row # 2
{sa.} च, row # 3
{Ta.} ट, row #4
{ta.} त, and row #5
{pa.} प.
They are under column #1 of the akshara matrix, and are simply called "Tenuis".
UKT 150405: With row # 2
The English starts with a dental /t/ and co-articulate with /ʃ/. It sounds just similar to our palatal{hkya.}. My conclusion: Bur-Myan
These are spoken by the English speakers not only voicelessly but very softly as if trying to hide them. Hide them, they did -- behind the hissing /s/ that they are used to. I looked for a suitable term to describe them and found that they belong to the class of tenuis. Now from another source:
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenuis_consonant 121120
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant is a plosive or affricate consonant which is unvoiced, unaspirated, and unglottalized. That is, it has a "plain" phonation like [p, t, ts, tʃ, k], with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s (spy, sty, sky).
In transcription, tenuis consonants are not normally marked explicitly, with voiceless IPA letters such as p, t, ts, tʃ, k assumed to be unaspirated unless indicated otherwise. However, there is an explicit diacritic for a lack of aspiration in the Extensions to the IPA, the superscript equal sign: p= , t= , ts=, tʃ= , k= , and this is sometimes seen in phonetic descriptions of languages. [1]
The term tenuis comes from Latin
translations of Ancient Greek grammar,
which differentiated three series of
consonants:
[UKT's additions within show the corresponding
columns, c1, c2, c3, of the akshara matrix]
¤ voiced β /b/, δ /d/, γ /ɡ/ - [corresponding to column #3 of akshara matrix]
¤ aspirate φ /pʰ/, θ /tʰ/, χ /kʰ/ - [corresponding to column #2 of akshara matrix]
¤ tenuis π /p=/, τ /t=/, κ /k=/ - [corresponding to column #1 of akshara matrix]
These series have close parallels in other Indo-European languages, such as Armenian.
In Unicode, the symbol is encoded at U+02ED
= modifier letter unaspirated
(HTML: ˭).
UKT: End of Wikipedia stub.
Go back tenuis-vl-note-b
End of TIL file
