Description:
Abstract: "Burmese has a documented history of one thousand years, and from the very
first texts shows influence from foreign languages,
especially in its
vocabulary. Much less evidence of foreign influence
is found in the
grammatical structure of Burmese, though a closer look reveals some phrase
structures that look rather un-Burmese and seem to
be pattern replications
from a non-verb-final language, such as Mon. The regular use of
postpositional grammatical markers especially in the written language,
probably in indigenous feature of Burmese, may have
been reinforced by
literary contact with Pali.
Foreign elements in Burmese are important indicators of the
development of the language and contact with other
cultures. They not only
tell us something about which cultures Burmese was
in contact with, but also
about the period and kind of contact. Three main sources of foreign elements
in Burmese can be identified, namely early Indian (Pali and Sanskrit), early
Mon, English, together with various more recent sources, including new Indo-
Aryan languages, Malay, Chinese varieties, and others. This study takes the
linguistic evidence, together with what is known of
the history of the involved
languages and peoples, to draw a picture of contact
scenarios into which the
Burmese language and culture entered over the past
one thousand years.
The Myanmar-English Dictionary
by the Myanmar Language
Commission (1993) identifies a large number of loan
words in Burmese and
indicates the source language, together with a more
or less accurate
transcription of the original form of the respective words, either in Burmese
script (for Sanskrit, Pali, Mon, and Shan) or in Romanized transcription (for
all other languages, including Hindi).".....Paper delivered at the International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies: Burma/Myanmar in Transition: Connectivity, Changes and Challenges: University Academic Service Centre (UNISERV), Chiang Mai University, Thailand, 24-26 July 2015.
Source/publisher:
International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies: Burma/Myanmar in Transition: Connectivity, Changes and Challenges: University Academic Service Centre (UNISERV), Chiang Mai University, Thailand, 24-26 July 2015
Date of Publication:
2015-07-26
Date of entry:
2015-08-11
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- Individual Documents
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Language:
English
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