Hla Smain - Basic Burmese

Burmese writing

Every human being on earth has been communicating with the people around them using terms that they understand. Gradually, the vocabulary that is commonly understood has become rich and the order of words has become systematic. Even difficult ideas and sciences have been able to be communicated to each other in a way that is understandable to each other. After this kind of language (or speech) has emerged, people have invented a writing system that can record what they want to say.

The emergence of speech and writing did not occur uniformly throughout the world. As groups of people began to speak their own languages, different ethnic groups emerged with different languages. Due to interactions and coexistence, some languages ​​spread widely, while others were understood and used only within a single ethnic group. Some developed vocabulary and system, while others remained primitive. When writing appeared, it also varied according to region.

The earliest writers used symbols. Initially, the idea of ​​drawing a picture to express something was to reduce the size of the picture and focus only on the meaning. This led to the development of symbols for each word. In ancient Egypt and China, the written word was composed of characters that were derived from such pictures.

A step further than the method of assigning each word to a different writing system is to classify sounds and develop a different writing system for each type of sound. Words have the same sounds. In Burmese, for example, “ເສາລາວ, ເສົນ

It is certain that by writing each sound as a letter, the number of letters will be reduced. Taking this into account, the writing system that records sounds has become the writing system that many people around the world have adopted.

When they invented this writing method that recorded each sound individually, if they had to record each sound with a different letter, the number of letters would have been large and it would have been difficult to memorize without any connection, so they had to find another way to find the easiest one.

In this search, they examine how many different sounds there are. When examining the different sounds, they find that they are different in sound, but in a way, they are the same type of sound. This is not the case. This is because the basic sources of sounds, namely consonants and vowels, have been discovered. Since then, by distinguishing between consonants and vowels, it has become possible to write down all spoken sounds with a small number of syllables in a distinct and distinct way.

Consonants and vowels

What are consonants and vowels here? Consonants and vowels are not something that laymen need to understand. It would be wrong to think that only grammarians, literary scholars, and monks who have studied Pali need to know. Although we do not distinguish between consonants and vowels in speech, we cannot talk or think about sound and writing without consonants and vowels. We cannot avoid knowing consonants and vowels. It is not difficult to know them either.

The water we use is just water, but if you analyze it, you will find that it is a combination of two elements: hydrogen and oxygen. In this water, both hydrogen and oxygen can be converted into other elements. It is true that if you create and combine each of these elements, you can get water.

In the same way, if we analyze a spoken sound, we can notice that it is a combination of two consonants and a vowel, forming a single sound.