Update: 2019-07-31 11:22 PM -0400
Approx.htm
by U Kyaw Tun (UKT) (M.S., I.P.S.T., USA),
Daw Khin Wutyi, Daw Thuzar Myint, Daw Zinthiri Han
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
•
Introduction
¤ English speakers and the Laterals
UKT 180919
By Approximants, I mean rows r6 and r7 of the Myanmar akshara matrix.
They are all consonants: even the English y /j/ which is generally known
as the Semivowel aka Semi-consonant, is considered to be a
basic consonant of BEPS. The IPA classifies the BEPS approximants made up of
Fricatives including Lateral Fricatives, and Approximants including
Lateral Approximants. I opine that IPA should re-classify the whole group simply
as Fricatives and Laterals. Sad to say the Westerners who develop
the IPA have little understanding of the Laterals which are very important to
Myanmar consonants. For example, English speakers could not understand the
Welsh Laterals ending up spelling them with double-L's. See Wikipedia -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_consonant 180919
The language of Angles and Saxons collectively known as Anglo-Saxons was not originally a native of the British Isles. It was the language of the pirates from the North or Norseman who came to plunder the rich country from the ancient Bretons - the original natives carried the booty to their climatically rather bleak countries. They finally decided to settle mainly on the fertile Thames basin, and drove the Bretons out into the mountainous area called Wales, and called the militarily defeated peoples Welsh 'foreigners'. They were successful robbing the Bretons of everything, except their Laterals.
See: A Grammar of Modern Breton by Ian Press, 1947
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https://books.google.com.mm/books?id=SQYPenZO6SUC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=Bretons+and+laterals&source...
180919, 190731
On p34: Phonology: The laterals and vibrants
"We see that /ll/, /l/ function as /nn/, /n/ (to the extent too that their
definite/indefinite article forms are al/ul. After an unstressed
vowel there is some blurring of the difference. The blurring is more or less
total in the case of /rr/, /r/; fortis /rr/ is minimally fortis. The situation
with nasals, laterals and vibrants(s) is created by the absence of any
significant correlation of voice. See Falc'hun in 1951, pp.51, 61)"
The English approximant-consonant w
is always pronounced by Bur-Myan speakers as
{wa.} /w/. However, because the two
speeches, English and Burmese belong to
different linguistic-groups - IE and
Tib-Bur - I am never sure whether it is
correct or not.
Lately, I have come
across a research article English
/w,j/ : frictionless Approximants or
Vowels out of place? by Leigh Lisker
(1918–2006) , Haskins Laboratories, Univ.
of Pennsylvania, in Producing Speech -
contemporary issues by F. Bell-Berti
and L. J. Raphael, 1995.
See downloaded pdf papers in TIL HD-PDF & SD-PDF
libraries:
LLisker-EnglishWJSounds<Ô> /
Bkp<Ô> (link chk 190731)
"English /w/ & /j/ : approximants or vowels ?"
I've to add further, what about Burmese
{wa.} &
{ya.}? Now with my conclusion that Nya-major
{Ña.} is a Palatal, I've to class all
{wa.}/
{w},
{Ña.}/
{Ñ},
{ya.}/
{ý} as approximants, and they can all be under Virama
{a.þût}.
The missing
Bur-Myan "nasal" Nya-major aka Nya'gyi
{Ña.}/
{Ñ} is a special case. It is definitely a basic consonant
on the strength of its stability under Virama
{a.þût}. Moreover, since its killed derivative has all the three tones,
{Ñ.},
{Ñ},
{Ñ:} it also has the properties of a vowel. I've to class it also as a
semi-nasal .
First of all lets recap what we know (as of 170319) of the BEPS (Burmese-English-Pali-Sanskrit) consonants:
•
BEPS consonants are of several kinds which
can be differentiated based on:
¤
their POA (Point of Articulation)
¤ their influence (as coda)
on the preceding vowel in a syllable.
¤ their ability to become hanging consonants which modify the
pronunciation of the first consonant, e.g.:
{ka.} + viram +
{kya.}
{kwa.}
The resulting phoneme is called a medial (monosyllabic) or conjunct (disyllabic).
The POAs have been studied for thousands of years in India, and for about a few centuries in the West. I am sure the coda-influence had also been studied especially by Panini and others when they codified the Prakrits into Sanskrit. There had been many grammars in that period, but only that of Panini has been accepted to this day.
One
grammarian who was not well recorded was a Buddhist monk known to Bur-Myan
speakers as Shin Kicsi
{shin kic~sæÑ:} aka
{rhin kic~sæÑ}. He is the author of the Pali grammar used by monks, nuns, and
laypersons in Myanmarpré.
See
¤ A Pali grammar on the basis of Kaccayano
{kic~sæÑ:} [alternate title: Kaccayana Vyakarana]
- by Rev. F. Mason, Taungoo (then in British Burma), 1868
The following downloaded versions are in TIL HD-PDF and SD-PDF libraries:
#1 -
FMason-KicsiPalGramm<Ô> /
Bkp<Ô> (link chk 171227)
#2 - FMason-KicsiPalGramm-German<Ô> /
Bkp<Ô> (link chk 170319)
#3 -
FMasonMazard-PalGramm<Ô> /
Bkp<Ô> (link chk 171227)
TIL
research library also has a Bur-Myan & Pali-Myan version in ink-on-paper format
in which the learned monk, praised by the Gautama Buddha himself, states as
given in insets:
On Pali Grammar, Rev. Mason states in 1872.
- FMason-PaliLangBurView<Ô> /
Bkp<Ô> (link chk 171227)
"THERE are two schools of Pali. One takes for its basis the Pali derived from
the oldest Burmese manuscripts, and the other the language as it now exists in
books and manuscripts in Ceylon, condemning everything as irregular which
differs from Singalese standards".
UKT 140326: Note the
{ña.}. What the Indologists have done is totally wrong! - showing that they do not realized that
IPA gives the English y as a palatal approximant and transcribed it as /j/
. It is not true for
Bur-Myan
{ya.}/
{ý}. In the case Nya-major
{Ña.}/
{Ñ} it is unknown in all other languages except Bur-Myan. Therefore, I have to
readjust the IPA to suit BEPS:
palatal approximant,
velar approximant,
Skt-Dev speakers, and to some extent Eng-Lat speakers, got mixed up in the Palatal plosive-stops the row#2 aksharas: they pronounce them as Affricates. Because of these mis-pronunciations, I have to be very careful in using IPA and IAST in Romabama.
Bur-Myan speakers pronounce r1c2
{sa.}/
{c} as Palat-stop.
Eng-Lat & Skt-Dev speakers pronounce it as Affricate, i.e. with a hissing sound. They also have Dental-hissing sibilant{Sa.}/
{S}.
Skt-Dev speakers deny the existence of /θ/ , even though they knew of its existence in common English word like <thin> /θɪn/ & <thorn> /θɔːn/ .
To handle BEPS languages as a group, Romabama has to formulate the following Non-rhotic to Rhotic series using {ka.} as the "dummy" consonant:
(non-rhotic):
{kra.} ,
{kRa.} , repha {kar~}* ,
{kRRa.} (rhotic)
* Repha: see Repha in Romabama: introduction
- RBM-intro-indx.htm > Romabama-rule4-9.htm (link chk 170319)
under Romabama Rule 06
The formation of medials is important as it gives us insight into the "full
pronunciation" of a consonant. Thus we know that, for example, the velar
plosive-stop
{ka} /k/, has a deep-H flavour because it cannot be made into a
{ha.hto:},
whereas the velar semi-nasal
{gna.}/
{ng}
/ŋ/ can become
{ngha.}.
It should be noted that the colonial British-Burma European administrators had
recognized that
{gna.} {nga.}
has a /g/ flavour (even though it is designated as nasal /ŋ/), and
had spelled the name of a village in Hanthawaddy District as
{gnak au sûm: rwa} where the Catholic orphanage for Anglo-Indian boys, De La Salle,
was situated from 1919, through the WWII, and for some years after Independence.
The village of
{gnak au sûm:} being in the Public Health area under my father's control, the
Catholic Brothers of the school became our family's friends. I remember Brother
John and one or two companions coming more than once to our house in Kungyangon to have dinner. My mother, who was a school teacher (English and Geography) was
one of the few in the town who could speak fluent English. She used to give them
a proper English dinner. Brother John and his Catholic brothers, being French,
stayed at the school throughout the War years, unmolested by the Japanese. See
also: http://sauvita.wordpress.com/
140325
This immediately bring back to my mind two English
words with the digraphic coda made up of the
same <g> & <n> pair
but spelled differently, thereby producing different
pronunciations:
<sign> /saɪn/ (DJPD16-488)
<sing> /sɪŋ/ (DJPD16-490)
I had given much thought to this problem when I was deciding how to transcribe r1c5 either as {gna.} or {nga.}. In the end I decided to coin the term semi-nasals for /ŋ/ (r1c5) & /ɲ/ (r2c5) in contrast to true-nasals /n/ (r4c5) & /m/ (r5c5). The retroflex /ɳ/ (r3c5) is anybody's guess.
Medial-formation in Mon-Myan is different: I still need to learn the Mon
language and the formation of
{ya.pín.}.
UKT: 180420: I wasn't aware of the great differences between S'gaw Karen aka Burmah-Karen, and Po Karen aka Talaing-Karen* . The Po-Myan has 36 consonants, and is almost the same as Mon which has 35. S'gaw-Myan, on the other hand has only 25 because the missionary (Rev. Jonathan Wade) who invented it, thought that the Myanmar consonants of row #3 was not relevant - little did he knew the retroflex sounds. Others of his kind also had thought the same.
The Karen alphabet was created by American missionary Jonathan Wade in the 1830s, based on the Sgau Karen language; Wade was assisted by a Karen named Paulah. ... The consonants and most of the vowels are adopted from the Myanmar Akshara
Burmese alphabet; however the Karen pronunciation of the aksharalettersis slightly different from that of the Burmese aksharaalphabet. Since Karen has more tones than Burmese, additional tonal markers were added.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27gaw_Karen_alphabet 180420
Listen to S'gaw-Myan in Burma section : SgawKarenAksKid1<Ô>* The word "Talaing" has been painted very negatively by politicians some of who do not even know how to speak the still extant Martaban dialect of Mon-language. My great grandmother Daw MèMa was a Peguan-Mon whose dialect is now totally extinct. No matter I much I would like to learn her dialect, none of my Mon relatives of the ancient Dalla city that had stretched for Twenté to Kungyangon do not even know the Mon-akshara. When I asked them to listen to what the still extant Mon-akshara, they were surprised to hear how different the sounds were from Bur-Myan.
Listen to the Mon-Myan consonants
¤ Mon-Myan Akshara song: BkCdn-Mon-Aks<))
Listen to Pwo-Myan lessons in Mon section:
¤ Akshara lesson 1 : PwoAks1<Ô>
¤ Akshara lesson 2 : PwoAks2<Ô>
¤ Lesson 1-2: PwoLesson1-2<Ô>
End of TIL file