Romabama

All the consonant-letters (including {a.}) of the Burmese-Myanmar akshara matrix can generate syllables with the vowel-signs. The resultant syllables can be extended further by adding the vowel length signs:

short  - usually inserting an {auk-mris} which can be best described as a "dot-below",
normal - usually no special diacritical mark included, and
long - usually followed by {wus~sa} or {wus~sa.pauk} which looks exactly the same as 'colon' (:).  It is known as visagar in Sanskrit-Devanagari.

An interesting vowel-sign to produce the vowels is the {thé:thé:ting} which can be best described as "dot-above" which produces nasals without either "n" or "m" colouring.

The overall study of Burmese-Myanmar vowels would bring out one very important point. Burmese-Myanmar  vowels are pure vowels. What the non-Burmese speakers would call "tone-marks" to shorten and lengthen the vowels are intrinsic parts of the vowels themselves and are included the respective glyphs. Each vowel is actually a family of three vowels (short-length, normal-length, and long-length). Romabama vowels are presented based on this model and not on vowel-arrangement as given in the Table of Myanmar vowels.

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Extended Burmese-Myanmar vowels
-- Vowels ending in killed-consonants

Romabama, the (almost) one-to-one transliteration, is essentially Burmese speech in Latin script. The effective unit of Burmese-Myanmar is the orthographic syllable, consisting of a consonant and vowel (CV) core and, optionally, one or more preceding consonants. The canonical structure of Burmese-Myanmar syllable is (((C)C)C)V without a coda. However, Romabama uses the structure CVÇ, where Ç is a killed-consonant. For syllables with the killed-consonant, the rhyme or rime is more important than the vowel, and this chapter on the Burmese-Myanmar vowel is actually about the rhyme.

How to represent the rime in Romabama has been a pain in the neck for me for a long time, until I realised that the killed consonant influence the peak vowel. This makes the choice of V in Romabama arbitrary, but generally is based on the pronunciation (transcription) given in the Myanmar English Dictionary (MEDict).

Vowels ending in killed {ka.}-group:
   {ak}   /|e'|/ -- {kak} /|ke'|/ -- MEDict013
Vowels ending in killed {sa.}-group:
   {is}   /|i'|/ -- {is} /|i'|/ -- MEDict625
Vowels ending in killed {ta.}-group:
   {at} or {ut} (tentative)
Vowels ending in killed {pa.}-group:
   {up} (tentative)

Now, lets look at the vowel that has been extended by use of {a·thut}. It is the inherent vowel, with its elusive vowel-sign simply represented by a "dash" in the Table of Myanmar vowels. Now, it is logical to ask, if it is possible to extend other vowels (and vowel-signs). The answer is yes. Examples:

Extending {a}

with {ra.thut}
{màr} /|man|/ - n. doctrine of evil. -- MEDict359

Extending {é}

with {ta.thut}
{hkét} /|khi'|/ - n. 1. extent; domain. 2. age (as in "stone age") -- MEDict064

Extending {o}

with {la.thut}
{bol} /|bou|/ - n. 1. commander of a hundred men.  -- MEDict315

with {wa.thut}
{pa.ol.} /|paou.|/ - n. Pa-o: name of one of the ethnic groups of the
   Union of Myanmar, speaking a Tibet-Myanmar language. -- MEDict254

Note the place of {auk-mis} (dot-below) in {pa.ol.}. The place is before the {wa.thut}. You will also note that, extending the vowels with killed a-wag consonants does not affect the pronunciation, and the tendency has been to drop the {a·thut} completely. Thus, there were more {wa.thut} signs in my parents' days, and you might still see some of them on stone inscriptions in monasteries and pagodas as in {nat-lu tha-Du. hkau-sé thauw}, meaning "May gods and humans acclaim well-done."

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Non-vowel signs

1. {auk-mris} -- dot below
2. {a·thut} (virama) -- the flag
3. {wus~sa.} (visarga) -- the colon

Note: {thé:thé:ting} -- dot above, is not a non-vowel sign (by my definition), because it can take on a consonantal-akshara and change it into a nasal.

A non-vowel sign (my definition) is the one that can augment a vowel sign, but which is incapable of taking on a consonant by itself. A  vowel sign, on the other hand, is a sign that can take up a consonant to form another syllable. In the above table, you will notice that {a} becomes {a:} by adding a non-vowel sign known as {wus~sa.} (visarga), which looks like a 'colon'.

Another non-vowel sign is {auk-mris}, which is what has been called "dot-below".  (Contrast with Devanagari nukta).

The non-vowel signs {auk-mris} and {wus~sa.} cannot take on a akshara by themselves. Thus, and are not allowed.

The consonant-aksharas in scripts derived from Brahmi have an inherent vowel resembling a short English <a>. Under certain circumstances, this inherent vowel has to be removed or "killed". The sign used is known as {a·thut} in Burmese-Myanmar or virama in Sanskrit-Devanagari. In this text (e.g. CVÇ) the Ç (Latin capital letter C with cedilla) stands for a killed consonant. The sign looks like a little flag or {tän-hkun}, . This should be contrasted to Devanagari virama sign: ् (U094D).

{thé:thé:ting}, , can take on a consonant by itself and is a true vowel sign. And therefore, it is not a non-vowel sign. See dot-above and dot-below in my notes.

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Vowel length

Burmese-Myanmar vowels can be extended by tone or length marks: short, normal, and long. To a Burmese-Myanmar speaker, the most conspicuous difference is the way these sounds are produced. The short tone is produced in the front part of the mouth, with normal mouth opening and expanding little energy. The long tone is produced at the back of the mouth, with the widest mouth opening using much energy: you can feel the vocal cords vibrating. The normal tone is produced somewhere and somewhat in the middle.

I have already given a brief introduction to these marks or signs. The question arise whether we should classify these signs just tone marks or not. In the English script, the vowel tones are not explicitly written down. As an example, in the English words <car> and <carbon>, there are no tone and/or stress marks, unless we get ourselves involved in phonemics:

{ka:} (MLC transcript /|ka:|/ -- <car> /kɑːʳ (US) kɑːr/
{ka-bwun} (MLC transcript /|ka bun|/ -- <carbon> /'kɑː.b^ən (US) kɑːr-/.
Note: my choice of the above examples, is rather unsatisfactory, since both the British and US pronunciations involve a shade of /{au:}/ sound. Please refer to the vowel trapezoid given above, and you will see that /ɑː/ is close to {au:}.

However in Burmese-Myanmar, these two words transliterated from English are written {ka:} and {ka-bwun}, respectively. In the first Burmese-Myanmar word, the vowel in <car> is long as is shown by {wus~sa.}-sign (visarga), whereas the vowel in the second word is of normal length. Therefore it is legitimate to treat {a.} {a} {a:} as separate vowels and not one vowel as you would treat them in English-Latin.

All the Burmese-vowels, can be extended by the use of {auk-mris} and {wus~sa.}.

Of course, as in all languages, be prepared to find exceptions. The following are two exceptions: notice the use of {ý} (killed-{ya.} for the middle length in the first case.

{è.} {èý} {è:}
{au.} {au} {au:}

According to U Tun Tint, at one time, {è.} {èý} {è:}, had been written as .

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Dot above 

{thé:thé:ting} -- dot above.
Contrast this to {auk-mris} -- dot below.
See UKT note on dot-above and dot-below

Almost all Burmese-Myanmar consonants can take on {thé:thé:ting} (anunāsika, also called 'chandrabindu') producing a syllable that sounds very similar to phonemic /ʌn/ or /æn/ rhyming with the English word <run>. With consonant {ka.} the syllable produced is {kän} (meaning: fate). This word sounds like {kan} (meaning: to kick), {kaN} (meaning: nil) and {kam} (meaning: nil).