- Burmese script
Infobox Writing system
name=Burmese
time=c. 1050–present
languages=Burmese
type=Abugida
fam1=Proto-Canaanite alphabet
fam2=Phoenician alphabet
fam3=Aramaic alphabet
fam4=Brāhmī
fam5=Pallava
fam6=Mon
unicode= [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1000.pdf U+1000–U+109F]
iso15924=Mymr
sample=Mranmacaka.svgThe Burmese abugida (Burmese: _my. မြန်မာအက္ခရာ; IPA2|mjànmà eʔkʰəyà) is a script in the
Brahmic family used inBurma for writing Burmese, Mon, Shan, S'gaw Karen, Eastern and Western PwoKaren dialects, Geba Karen,Rumai Palaung ,Kayah , as well asPali andSanskrit . The characters are rounded in appearance, because the traditional palm leaves used for writing on with a stylus would have been ripped by straight lines.Fact|date=May 2008 Like English, it is written from left to right. There are no spaces between words, although informal writing often contains spaces after each clause.The script originated in southern Indian script. Burmese adapted from the Mon script , has undergone considerable modifications to suit the phonology of Burmese, and to fit its word order of
Subject Object Verb . The script is altered from language to language (e.g. Shan, Mon, etc.)Alphabet
There are 33 consonants _my. က ("ka." IPA| [ka̰] ) to _my. အ ("a." IPA| [a̰] ) and 23 unique sounds. Consonants are separated into groups of 5, with the exception of the last three letters. The first two letters of each group, except for the "ya"-group are the aspirated and unaspirated sounds. Six letters are designated specifically for
Pāli . The last letter in the alphabet, _my. အ ("a." IPA| [a̰] ), although recognized as a consonant, is actually a vowel. Since _my. အ is the only lettered vowel, when used with diacritics, is used to create other vowels. Like other members of theBrahmic family , the sounds of these are modified by diacritics put above, below or beside the character.The following names are transliterated in contemporary Burmese.
The rest of the chart contains extensions for other languages:
The 4 code points U+109A–U+109D are still not assigned.
Websites using Burmese Unicode
Until 2005, most
Burmese language websites used an image-based dynamically generated method of displaying characters (often inGIF orJPEG ). At the end of 2005, the Burmese NLP Research Lab announced a Myanmar Open Type font named Myanmar1. Thisfont contains not onlyUnicode code points andglyphs but also the OTLs logic and rules. Their research center is based in Myanmar ICT Park,Yangon . Padauk, which was produced bySIL International , is Unicode compliant, but initially required a Graphite engine (now OpenType tables for Windows are in the current version of this font). After Unicode 5.1 Standard released on April 4, 2008, three Unicode 5.1 compliant Fonts are available under public license. [ [http://www.zawgyi.org/tag-11734-Download-subject.aspx Zawgyi.ORG Developer site] ]Many Burmese font makers have created Burmese fonts such as, Win Innwa, CE Font, Myazedi, Zawgyi, Ponnya, Mandalay etc. It is important to note that those Unicode Burmese fonts are not Unicode compliant, because they use unallocated codepoints in the Burmese block to manually deal with shaping that would normally be done by the Uniscribe engine and they are not yet supported by
Microsoft and other majorsoftware vendors. The Myanmar Bible Society launched a Burmese Unicode website, [http://www.myanmarbible.com/bible/Judson/html/] usingMozilla Firefox & Padauk Open Type ver 2.1 font from ThanLwinSoft, [http://www.thanlwinsoft.org] and here Burmese characters are displayed correctly. The Australian Government website followed, using the Padauk OT font ( [http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/my/141] ).Many big websites are still using a GIF/JPG display method.
Fonts supporting Burmese characters
* Burmese Wikipedia:Font page
* [http://www.myanmars.net/unicode/ Burmese Unicode & NLP Research Centre]
* [http://www.parabaik.info Parabaik Myanmar Unicode Project GPLed and OFLed]See also
*
Brahmic family
*Burmese language
*Burmese Wikipedia
* [http://rishida.net/scripts/pickers/myanmar/ Myanmar Unicode Character Picker]
* [http://www.mmlt.org/portal/myanmar-unicode-public-awareness Myanmar Unicode Implementation Public Awareness]External links
* [http://www.myanmarnlp.net.mm/ Myanmar3 keyboard layout]
* [http://www.thanlwinsoft.org/ThanLwinSoft/Downloads/ myWin2.2]References
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