Help talk:IPA/Burmese

Great work
Angr, this is great. You've done a great service. Thank you!

Couple of questions:
 * Not sure about tʃʰ to represent the ကြ sound. It's much closer to IPA-Mandarin's "tɕ"... as in Jilin (tɕǐlǐn). E.g., Suu Kyi isn't Suu Chee. It's more like tɕì. Could you double-check?
 * The table should also include how to represent sounds like Tun (ထွန်း) or Htut (ထွဋ်). Would you write tʰúɴ or tʰʊ̃ɴ for (ထွန်း) and tʰʊʔ for (ထွဋ်)?

Thanks, Hybernator (talk) 04:28, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To your first point, I used etc. because that's what's at Burmese language. But of course both this page and that one could use  etc. instead. To your second point, I'd write  and ; see footnote 9. +Angr 09:11, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Just read Burmese language more carefully. It says tʃʰ for the aspirated ချ sound, which I agree with. As for tʃ representing the unaspirated ကြ sound, I think we can do better. If the IPA-Mandarin translation on the Jilin article is correct, "tɕ" is exactly the sound. Thanks again. Hybernator (talk) 14:28, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind, I'm the one who primarily wrote Burmese language! But do you really think unaspirated ကြ and aspirated ချ have different places of articulation? I've never heard that, and it seems very unlikely. And then what about the voiced one, is it dʒ or dʑ? +Angr 14:36, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I went by what was on Burmese language, which says "Examples include the verb "cook," where the aspirated version ချက် ([tʃʰɛʔ]) means "cook", while the unaspirated ကျက်([tʃɛʔ]) means "to be cooked"." I agree with that statement, as far as aspiration/non-aspiration goes. I think you had them flipped here; that's why I changed it. My only point is that tɕ (on the Jilin page) sounds much closer than tʃ in representing ကြ. But I (not a linguist) am not sure whether that IPA translation is accurate (though I have a high degree of confidence that it is). Hybernator (talk) 14:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I looked it up and the affricates are indeed, but the fricative is still . +Angr 20:44, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much! Hybernator (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Transclusions have been adjusted to match. — kwami (talk) 13:58, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Tun, Htut, etc.
I still think it's and tʰʊʔ. The "u" in Htut rhymes with "put" or like "oo" in book or cook. The same vowel applies to Tun/Htun as well. Please check it out. Thanks. Hybernator (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please see footnote 9. Phonetically, yes it's in those contexts, but it's just an allophone (a positional variant) of /u/, so in a broad transcription there's no need to use a separate symbol for it. +Angr 21:15, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. Hybernator (talk) 21:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason we wouldn't want to indicate this allophony for Burmese but we do for languages like Russian? — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 16:17, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never understood why we show so much allophony for Russian. It frankly makes the transcriptions impenetrable. —Angr (talk) 16:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I see two reasons, the first is that vowel reduction is a fairly notable feature of Russian as it is studied by linguists and ignoring it would be akin to ignoring obstruent spirantization of Spanish. The second is that many of the vowels are phonemes in English, meaning English speakers (our target audience) can hear that distinction.  I'd imagine the latter applies to Burmese but I'm not sure about the former. — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  16:33, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I personally find the allophony helpful. If all I want is the phonemics, I can just go by the Russian orthography. I'm not familiar enough with Burmese to have a definite opinion, but we could always note in the key that these are not phonemic distinctions, as we do for WP:IPA for Spanish. — kwami (talk) 18:31, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I hear a clear distinction between "ʊ" and "u" in Burmese. Likewise with 'i' and "ɪ". But I'll leave it to the experts. Hybernator (talk) 18:40, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * At the moment, we note the allophony in a footnote here, and discuss it at Burmese phonology. I think that's enough, but Hybernator and Hintha (who are both native speakers, I believe) apparently think the allophony should be shown, so maybe this (like ach vs. ich-Laute in German) is a case of an allophony that native speakers themselves genuinely notice. And now I come to think about it, we do show the allophony in the case of [e] ~ [ei], [o] ~ [ou], and [ɔ] ~ [au] in Burmese (monophthongs in open syllables, diphthongs in closed syllables), so showing the [i] ~ [ɪ] and [u] ~ [ʊ] allophonies wouldn't be completely unprecedented. —Angr (talk) 18:46, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm convinced. Both of our native speakers feel that the difference between the "tense" and "lax" high vowels is salient enough to note in transcription, so I'm adding lines for /ɪ/ and /ʊ/. I'll need help going through Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:IPA-my and updating all the transcriptions, though. Kwami, is that something you can do quickly with AWB? —Angr (talk) 05:40, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, if you give me the exact conditioning environments. — kwami (talk) 08:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Within IPA-my change:
 * iʔ → ɪʔ
 * uʔ → ʊʔ
 * ìɴ → ɪ̀ɴ
 * ùɴ → ʊ̀ɴ
 * íɴ → ɪ́ɴ
 * úɴ → ʊ́ɴ
 * ḭɴ → ɪ̰ɴ
 * ṵɴ → ʊ̰ɴ
 * Thanks! —Angr (talk) 09:47, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Other than eiʔ, auʔ, ouʔ. Working on it. (If there are trans. w/o tone marking, I won't catch them.) — kwami (talk) 10:58, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Why does Five Precepts have a /y/ in it? Is that s.t. else that should be corrected for? — kwami (talk) 11:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. /y/ should be /j/ in that case, and probably anywhere else you find it. —Angr (talk) 11:16, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Also seeing the wrong r.
 * I'm also converting oʊʔ back to ouʔ - I assume you want that? — kwami (talk) 11:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, r should be upside down. I don't know whether the diphthongs should end in tense or lax vowels. Diphthongs in Burmese only occur in closed syllables anyway (the same context in which the lax high vowels occur), so maybe they should be aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, oʊ. Hybernator and Hintha, do you guys have any intuitions about this? —Angr (talk) 11:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Burmese script gives the /r/ as [j] anyway. — kwami (talk) 11:30, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, historical /r/ has become /j/ in most cases, but in some words, especially loanwords from English and Pali, it's [ɹ]. —Angr (talk) 11:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Nasal vowel in Kommyunit Nezin is not listed here. And what is the ogonek for in Pinya Kingdom? — kwami (talk) 11:46, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Nasal vowels should always be vowel + ɴ. I'm at work now and don't have a Burmese font on my computer, so I'll have to double-check Pinya Kingdom when I get home, but I suspect the ogonek is supposed to be a subscript tilde indicating creaky voice. —Angr (talk) 12:00, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll start a search for tilde. Yup, ogonek = creaky. You might want to check my changes at Burmese script; there were lots. (As you can see there, aɪʔ and oʊʔ have nothing to do with ɪʔ and ʊʔ. I suspect they're from English IPA.) — kwami (talk) 12:09, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * True, but they could still be right anyway. —Angr (talk) 12:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * At least now they're consistent w the key. First pass done. Discovered toward the end that some diphthongs had tone on the 2nd element, so I'm making a 2nd pass. — kwami (talk) 13:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
 * These are really tedious. Needed to be done manually when a vowel-tone combo had a precomposed character in Unicode, which took me a day to figure out. (I think it's because WP makes changes to the document that AWB tried uploading, and that confuses it.) I'll change the rules and get some of it done faster. — kwami (talk) 08:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Needs fixin' (mostly tone): agar, arhat (Buddhism), Computer University, Monywa, University of Computer Studies, Mandalay, University of Computer Studies, Yangon
 * I've added tones for the IPA missing vowels.--Hintha (t) 22:21, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Only [r] left is at Yangon & Bamar, cuz it's Rakhine dialect, and I didn't know which was correct. — kwami (talk) 15:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, made a third pass. All looks in order for the things I was checking. (Apart from the short lists just above.) There might be a few spurious changes to Polish or Latvian iw links that slipped through, but the bots should take care of them if there were. — kwami (talk) 09:18, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Could you please provide the RS for " ... 's just an allophone (a positional variant) of /u/"? It seems in conservative Burmese ʊ is still pronounced [wa]. --146.96.36.47 (talk) 02:53, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, oʊ, and e, ei, eɪ
Angr, to your question about aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, oʊ, I'm not sure. Now that I think about it, isn't "e" as used here a diphthong anyway? If anything, shouldn't it be "ɛi"? I don't see the need for "ei" since e already serves the purpose!? Hybernator (talk) 06:16, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Kyaw
Angr, wouldn't tɕʰɔ̀ be pronounced "Chaw"? Shouldn't it be tɕɔ̀ for Kyaw? It's the same base sound as "Kyi", except it ends with an "aw". Hybernator (talk) 21:18, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should be unaspirated tɕ for anything transliterated "ky" (i.e. anything spelled ကျ or ကြ). +Angr 21:24, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks again! Hybernator (talk) 21:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Burmese Phonetics to IPA Converter
I've compiled a list and scripted a converter here. Please see if this helps. @== { Lion sla yer>         ☎    06:12, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Your link doesn't work The Young Prussian (talk) 16:08, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Unnecessary notes
I am taking attention to reducing the number of footnotes in some of these IPA for X pages. These pronunciation keys are designed primarily for readers wanting to understand the language-specific IPA transcriptions they encounter in Wikipedia articles. We shouldn't swamp them with irrelevant details. Because this information may still be pertinent to the project, I have duplicated the notes below rather than try to find a place for them. This is irrespective of whether I think these claims are true or whether they are sourced. I will leave it to other editors to move the information to the appropriate article space or check that it already is. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 22:35, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * is an allophone of, not a distinct phoneme.
 * is much shorter than the English in  S ue.
 * The glottal stop may also be heard instead of in some varieties of English in words like bu tt on.

Diphthongs
In IPA transcription, it is common to indicate diphthongs with a non-syllable diacritic marker such as [aʊ̯]. Wikipedia uses this marker also in the IPA transcription of other languages; see Examples in the “Diphthong” article, or Diphthongs in “International Phonetic Alphabet”. I’ve taken the liberty to just make an edit for this change, hope you don’t mind. --Sascha Brawer (talk) 07:50, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:16, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Too misleading
The current help page says to transcribe a nasal vowel plus any of, , , , and  as an oral vowel plus , but that's too misleading for a phonetic transcription, and the arguments that have been brought forth to justify it are too weak. (Basically, the arguments are about avoiding two diacritics on one letter, and having the phonetic transcription correspond more closely to the phonology.) Not only does the current system make seem ubiquitous in a language that doesn't even have, and nasal vowels seem non-existent in a language that's full of them, but it also means that the consonants , ,  and  are transcribed differently when syllable-final than when syllable-initial. I therefore propose we let phonology be phonology and switch to a much narrower phonetic transcription. There are limits to how broad transcriptions can be and still be justifiable as phonetic. Libhye (talk) 21:42, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that this might be overly broad. I think addressing the issue of stacking diacritics should be fairly straightforward. Instead of and  we can do  (or ) and . Does that render correctly on most people's devices? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  22:04, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Warning: my command of phonetics and phonology is weak; I hope I haven't misunderstood something calamitously. But I get the impression that when is written above, what's meant is the archiphoneme that I believe is conventionally written  (a regular-sized capital letter). Japanese for example distinguishes between /n/ and /m/ in onsets (/nado/, "and so forth"; /mado/, "window"); however, [n] and [m] (and [ŋ]) are also mere allophones of the (moraic) syllable coda that linguists discussing Japanese often represent as /N/. Thus the bound morpheme 新 ("new") is /siN/, which in standard Japanese is realized as [ɕin], [ɕim] or [ɕiŋ] (the second and third of these resulting from assimilation with a /b/ (etc) or a /g/ (etc) that immediately follows). Sorry, I know nothing about Burmese. -- Hoary (talk) 10:25, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * This thread hasn't gotten a lot of traction, but I think it's warranted to go ahead and change this now. There's an easy way to do this and a hard way. The easy way is to convert all instances of ⟨ɴ⟩ to ⟨ɰ̃⟩. The hard way is to add a bunch of nasalization and tone diacritics in the process of removing ⟨ɴ⟩. I'm leaning towards the former and will likely do so in the next few weeks if someone else doesn't do it first or object. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  20:28, 1 November 2019 (UTC)
 * You mean like in Japanese? 172.58.235.15 (talk) 18:47, 4 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes. We can even have a similar note too. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 20:38, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

"Bottle" in American English
While the glottal stop (ʔ) is present in the word uh-oh, the phrase "bottle" has no glottal stop when said with an American accent; it is pronounced more like how "bawdle" would be pronounced. Should it be specified that the example refers to the English accent, and maybe Australian/NZ (not sure)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aowwl (talk • contribs) 01:33, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It is already specified that the example refers to a Cockney accent. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 16:43, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposals for changes in the transcription of final nasals
For your kind consideration: Burmese pronunciation, IPA, and the like

First of all, sorry for the uncivilized intrusion! As you can surely trace, I am new to Wikipedia, and the person who did the actual work on this page forgot to tell me. I myself, ignorant beginner me, overlooked the caution.

• To some extent, I can consider myself a speaker of Burmese: a foreigner who is able to communicate both in speech and writing at an everyday level. I had the pleasure and the honour to be able to use Mr. Okell’s indispensable original textbooks (altogether four large-format volumes), along with the accompanying cassette tapes (34 in number), to learn the language on my own. By the time I went to Burma for the first time summer 2004, I was capable of conversing on daily topics covered in both volumes of Introduction to the Spoken Language. Also, I could read and write at a basic level by then. — Mr. Okell has hired several native speakers of Burmese for the recordings.


 * Okell, John.
 * Burmese : an introduction to the spoken language / by John Okell ; with assistance from U Saw Tun ::and Daw Khin Mya Swe. [Vols. 1 and 2.]
 * [De Kalb] : Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, c1994.


 * Okell, John.
 * Burmese : an introduction to the script / by John Okell ; with assistance from U Saw Tun and Daw ::Khin Mya Swe.
 * [De Kalb, IL] : Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, c1994.


 * (From: Library of Congress Catalog)

• In the academic year of 2013–14, I attended courses at the International Theravada Buddhist Missionary University (ITBMU) in Rangoon. We had three classes of Burmese weekly. (See Diploma and Academic Transcript on my user’s page.)

• Altogether, I have been to Burma five times until now, the sum total of the duration of my stays being three years.

▲

• Apart from modest experiences in Burma and with Burmese studies, I was, once upon a time, in my lay life, a linguist (and translator). My in-depth introduction to Icelandic, partly diachronic, was published, under my then-lay name István J. Schütz, by Walter de Gruyter in 2003, in their Handbook of Variation Typology, see: https://glottolog.org/resource/reference/id/419117 ill. https://epdf.pub/variationstypologie-variation-typology-a-typological-handbook-of-european-langua.html

This article includes a detailed description, both diachronic and synchronic, of the phonetics and phonology of Icelandic, using IPA transcriptions throughout, see:

https://books.google.hu/books?id=95xRi_H4SQkC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=%22isl%C3%A4ndische+sprachgeschichte%22&source=bl&ots=-3AqAWjiFr&sig=ACfU3U1m4QwThHYDHn3rl_RoLQ6cAt-WlQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjAlcTArLzmAhXrtYsKHVdjA44Q6AEwAHoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22isl%C3%A4ndische%20sprachgeschichte%22&f=false

▲

I have been a monk of the Theravada Buddhist tradition — ordained in Burma — for more then seven years by now. A certain blood condition makes it nearly impossible for me to live in tropical climate. In other words, I have been forced to return to the temperate belt, e.g., Europe, three times until now. I am not really happy to be dragged, against my will, so to say, deep down into the quagmires of Wikipedia articles, especially those discussing Buddhist — or Burmese — topics, both English and Hungarian.

This is how I came across the IPA Help Page for Burmese, and found the phonetic symbols representing some of the nasals, one initial, the other(s) final, not quite fortunate. Furthermore, the IPA page does not list those rhymes with final nasals that may indeed be different at first sight, such as ကောင် ကိုင် or ကိန်, to name but these here.

There is a fine and reliable Burmese to English dictionary, edited by the Myanmar Language Commission, published in the year of 1993 for the first time. Unfortunately, a specific transcription system was developed in Burma, partly very difficult to use, as in this otherwise great dictionary. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar%E2%80%93English_Dictionary

The scholars and experts of the SEAlang project have adopted and adapted this excellent piece of lexicography. As one can see, they have retained the original Burmese transcription system, but added the respective IPA transcription: http://www.sealang.net/burmese/dictionary.htm

David Badley’s paper Changes in Burmese Phonology and Orthography treats all these final nasals as same, cf.: https://www.academia.edu/1559757/Changes_in_Burmese_Phonology_and_Orthography

In all cases listed here above, final nasals are represented using IPA’s tilde on top of the respective nasalized final.

According to the chart of IPA, on the other hand, the symbol [ɴ] used on the IPA Help Page for Burmese represents a voiced uvular nasal, a sound which it is NOT, far from that. (See YouTube link further below.) Instead, in view of aforesaid, it fits better as a respresentation of the initial voiced uvular nasal present in the rhyme ငါ [ɴà] — in lieu of [ŋà], the nasal in which is a voiced velar nasal. In actual fact, the latter would be just as fine, also because it is widely used for major languages, contrary to the former. See: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/inter_chart_2018/IPA_2018.html

• There is an excellent, separate YouTube video titled Learn Burmese Pronunciation IV: Nasal Sounds, devoted solely to Burmese nasals, length 16 min. 52 sec., with charts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaUJDyxwoDA This video is a professional introduction to the area in question, involving a native speaker for authentic representation.

As to Mr. Okell’s textbooks and sounds material, SOAS offers a new version, see: • the book, drastically reduced in contents: https://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/

• the recordings: https://soundcloud.com/soas-university-of-london/sets/burmese-by-ear-by-john-okell

Pronunciation part of unit 1.1 contains some usage examples as well as 1.3 initial ng-. Final nasals are dealt with in unit 1.4 (see respective parts of the book above). Mr. Okell draws a parallel with French nasals which is indeed the nearest plausible approximation in the case of Burmese.

The use of the symbol [ɰ] for the voiced velar approximant — combined with the tilde: [ɰ̃] — does not quite seem justified here either, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_alphabet#Syllable_rhymes

ကောင် [kàʊɰ̃] kaung / ကောင့် [ka̰ʊɰ̃] kaung. / ကောင်း [káʊɰ̃] kaung: ကိုင် [kàɪɰ̃] / ကိုင့် [ka̰ɪɰ̃] / ကိုင်း [káɪɰ̃] ကွန် [kʊ̀ɰ̃]

Instead, French nasal vowels are the closest candidates as approximations, cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/French

▲▲▲

Needless to say, the lack of harmonization in the use of phonetic symbols for Burmese is bound to lead to unnecessary complications — and confusion among innocent, clueless users of Wikipedia articles.

Proceed as you please. It is your responsiblity what you do — feel free to do whatever you like. Oftentimes I feel all too tired to get dragged into quagmires of endless discussions. Please be so kind as to take this into consideration.

With mettā to all of you. — — Preceding unsigned comment added by Venerable Vilasa Hungary (talk • contribs) 15:13, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Hello! Thanks for coming to the talk page. No apologies are necessary and your input is welcome. You can see our rationale for using $⟨ɰ̃⟩$ in the above discussion. You can also see this discussion regarding the symbol used for this final nasal. What do you think would be the best choice? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 01:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

please stop reverting my edit
the current english approximation for [ɴ~ɰ̃] is "nasalization of preceding vowel". this is wildly unhelpful for a monolingual english speaker unfamiliar with the IPA (i.e. the target audience for the english approximations) who would not know what that even means. i have edited it multiple times to be approximated instead as "ha**ng**", as a final velar nasal would be the closest sound in burmese. please stop reverting this edit. Omoutuazn (talk) 23:16, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The reason your edit is being reverted is because it is inaccurate. Approximating it to hang would only work if the following consonant is velar and maybe if appears word-finally. Otherwise, it's simply wrong.
 * The note as it stands links to relevant articles covering the concepts that you seem to think English speakers may not know about. I'm open to ideas on how better present this information, but removing references to those articles is a step in the wrong direction. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 00:32, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * approximating it to "nasalization of previous vowel" is equally wrong because it is a consonant phoneme is the thing. like, it's objectively just not that. Omoutuazn (talk) 14:28, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * What you are saying is at odds with what is at Burmese phonology, which states The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. Every source I've encountered clearly indicates that this is commonly realized phonetically as nasalization of the preceding vowel.
 * I'm not interested in dragging this thread on longer than it needs to be. At this point, the best recommendation I can give you is to come back when you've actually researched the topic. Regards. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 22:53, 18 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Are there any reliable source containing a statistical analysis of spectrograms of Burmese nasal rimes from all different regions? The pronunciation of rimes with breathy voice endings and nasal initials as the final syllable sounds apparently closer to a than to a equally nasalized vowel than to a gradual increase of nasality toward a ghost nasal final, and the Burmese nasality development seems one step closer to vowel nasalization than Southwestern Mandarin does. However, I still stand that one should not use vowel nasalization notation unless reliable sources universal agree that a typical vowel nasalization (without an increase of nasality through time) can be used on all environments (say... laung-ya and laung-pha) and understood by native speakers. 146.96.36.74 (talk) 02:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with Omoutuazn on the "hang" because although sometimes a Burmese relaxed pronunciation may be a true nasalized vowel (unlike Southwestern Mandarin but more like Hokkien and French), in general there is a gradual increase of nasality (a final nasal with neither audible release nor hold, only audible approach) that is more similar to the English "hang" at the end of a sentence without connected discourse. So it should be better approximated hang, ' uh-oh in creaky voice and hang, (pause) in all other cases. I worry pronouncing it as a Hokkien/French evenly nasalized vowel inapproperately may make one's pronunciation harder to decipher by a native speaker unless the reader had previous knowledge when they can pronounce that way (they wouldn't need the IPA if they had previous knowledge anyway) but please correct me if you are an expert in this field (I mean Myanmaʔ̰ studies, not some PhD knowledge on general linguistics which may potentially conclude something against common senses among average Bamars). --146.96.36.74 (talk) 01:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
 * However, I do not at all agree with you on hellhole because the English dark l is one of the most exotic sound in this world. Not even a speaker of a language with a labio-velarized alveolar lateral approximant can pronounce it in the English way (I mean the difference is strong enough that ). This ɫ-colored vowel or dark l in English may be heard as a Danish dark d or even [ʮ] by Asians. IMHO pronouncing it as hellhole may potentially make a Burmese hear a voiceless ʮ or even a zero consonant. I suggest using Pelham but not voiced, but right now I'd revert it to a stable version before your edit. 146.96.36.74 (talk) 01:54, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

The nasal final, yet again
Okay so this is an argument mostly based on aesthetic preference (and a smidge about clarity for the reader), but the current way we transcribe the syllable-final nasal archiphoneme seems really... messy. Not complicated, I guess, but is odd-looking, unfamiliar to many readers, and—most importantly—not a velar approximant in Burmese.

I think the previous discussion has established that it's:
 * a homorganic nasal stop before most consonants
 * merely vowel nasalization otherwise

Libhye earlier proposed we abandon the phonological stance on this one and just transcribe the homorganic with the surface phone. I think that's a pretty reasonable thing to do. For comparison, at Help:IPA/Portuguese we don't try to represent the sibilant final with some wildcard; we just transcribe whichever one comes up in the given phrase for the relevant dialect. Trying to work transcriptions around sandhi processes to elucidate underlying forms can be complicated and misleading, even if it's fulfilling for language nerds like most of us.

As for the cases without a homorganic nasal: the large number of diphthongs do present the opportunity to deploy for their offglides; the problem is that there are a couple nasalized monophthong phones too. We could:


 * 1) do the simple, usual thing and just mark nasal vowels with a tilde above.  Previous discussion seems to accept the idea of stacking diacritics for nasals with a tone marker—personally I'm not a fan of that, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  If we go this route, I'm also thinking we might want to simplify the tone register markings somewhat, since the phonology page is pretty clear that tone itself is only really distinctive on the low tone, all others being high.
 * 2) mark these nasal "ghost" consonants (previous commenters stress them behaving phonologically like consonants) with one of the superscripts, which would be within the parameters of the IPA for "shades of sound; light epenthetic sounds and incompletely articulated sounds", is likely to be interpreted correctly by readers (at least with help from the guide), and doesn't clash in the same space any of the tone or phonation markers.
 * 3) do the superscripted form for nasals vowels and the respective homorganic consonant phones, if we want to further hint at the phonological unity.
 * 4) continue using  purely as a bearer for the nasal diacritic because we don't know where else to put it.

Anyway, interested to hear y'all's thoughts. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 04:54, 20 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I see nothing wrong with, and prefer, stacking diacritics. It's the least ambiguous and most "honest" option, as $⟨ɰ̃⟩$ implies a separate segment. Superscripts also imply separate, or optional, segments. Stacking is done for Yoruba etc. as well. Nardog (talk) 19:12, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Min Aung Hlaing is transcribed [mɪ́ɰ̃ àʊɰ̃ l̥àɪɰ̃] now. Seriously? Not [àʊ̃] & [àɪ̃], but [àʊɰ̃] & [àɪɰ̃]? Is it actually pronounceable? 195.187.108.130 (talk) 16:11, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It's /mɪ́ɰ̃ àʊɰ̃ l̥àɪɰ̃/ not [mɪ́ɰ̃ àʊɰ̃ l̥àɪɰ̃]. I guess the accurate pronunciation should be something like [mɪ́͢j̃ àʊ͢ɰ̃ʷ l̥àɪ͢j̃] or equivalently [mɪ́͢ɪ̃ àʊ̃ l̥àɪ̃]. The current approach should be kept bebause at least applying and  is safe since when you pronounce it that way Burmese people will understand you no matter how awkward your pronunciation is. Applying [j̃], etc., to all finals is unsafe (also, /ɰ̃/ or capital N is a phoneme while [j̃] is a conditional phone). Using capital N is also an option but don't use smallcaps because that's uvular. One other option is using /ŋ/ with the no audible release diacritic but that cannot explain the difference between ang-nga and a-nga (the former doesn't have a longer ng-blockage than the former one) and Bamars may find your pronunciation like a language-learning kid. Mandarin IPA has the same issue. 146.96.29.146 (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Comment Didn't want to comment on Burmese but I read something like "nvm, it's just a nasalization of the preceding vowel (which is NOT how you transcribe it in IPA, but whatever" in the edit summary and wʊ̃̀θa̰ (nasalization of the entire vowel when there's only one vowel precede the nasal final) below. I'm quite concerned with this viewpoint because as far as I know the Burmese final nasal is somewhat similar to that of Southwest Mandarin: the last step of phonological development before fully nasalized. In most nearby Sino-Tibetan languages, although the initial vowel may be slightly nasalized, it shouldn't be considered because the key of that pronunciation is a gradual accumulation/increase of nasality, and at least among Sinologists (I am not certain about "Lolo-logists" and "Bamar-logists") this kind of pronunciation is not identified as nasalization. Even if there were to be a Lithuanian point of view that a slightest nasalization is nasalization, I'd call experts in Myanma studies to take part in this disscussion before any damage is done. Unless there's reliable source written by experts in Myanma studies confirming the "nasalization" notation it should not be used by Wikipedia. If it's a source written by a general phonetician outside the Myanma studies circle I ask everyone to be careful referring it. --146.96.29.146 (talk) 02:38, 6 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Btw you may read this rendering of Tian'anmen for reference. FYI the first n in Tian'anmen can be pronounced as a proper [n] by a native Mandarin speaker if they stop the airflow before the release of that [n] (thus it can be recorded as n with the no audible release diacritic by some), however this approach is impossible in fast or ordinary daily speech. It can only be used in teaching. 146.96.29.146 (talk) 03:35, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I am afraid if superscripts [ᵐ, ⁿ, ᶮ, ᵑ] may be understood as nasal release espcially after semivowels. though [ᴺ] seemed to be ok. [a͡ŋ̚] has similar ambiguity problem in that [A͡B] refers to "coarticulation of A and B" or "A released into B" in IPA (if perceived as a coarticulation, [a͡m̚] would be misunderstood as [ã͡b̚] or [ã͡p̚] which is definitely not how it's pronounced). Ambiguity should always be avoided. 146.96.36.74 (talk) 02:34, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Tone/register
So I think it's a good idea to rework the tone/phonation register key at the same time, if we end up redoing the nasal final... Since each register is a bundle of features, we have to make a call on how narrow we want to be to indicate them unambiguously. Personally I'd go for something like this, with the phonation being the thing we mark (a slight variation of the way it's transcribed in the Cambridge guide):
 * {| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em 2em;"

! colspan="4" |Tone and phonation register ! IPA !! Burmese examples !! Usual name !! Explanation ! colspan="2" | IPA !! Burmese examples !! Explanation
 * align=left| MY လာ ||even || Normally voiced; low (or low-rising) pitch; long duration
 * align=left| MY လား ||heavy || Breathy voiced; high (or high-falling) pitch; long duration
 * align=left| MY လ || creaky || Creaky voiced; high (or slightly falling) pitch; medium duration; may have a lax glottal stop)
 * align=left| MY လတ် || killed || Ends with glottal stop; may lengthen a following consonant. Normally voiced; pitch is often high, but depends on context; short duration
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * align=left| MY လား ||heavy || Breathy voiced; high (or high-falling) pitch; long duration
 * align=left| MY လ || creaky || Creaky voiced; high (or slightly falling) pitch; medium duration; may have a lax glottal stop)
 * align=left| MY လတ် || killed || Ends with glottal stop; may lengthen a following consonant. Normally voiced; pitch is often high, but depends on context; short duration
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * align=left| MY လတ် || killed || Ends with glottal stop; may lengthen a following consonant. Normally voiced; pitch is often high, but depends on context; short duration
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * align=left| MY လတ် || killed || Ends with glottal stop; may lengthen a following consonant. Normally voiced; pitch is often high, but depends on context; short duration
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * align=left| MY ခလုတ် || (reduced) || Very short duration, with no marked pitch or phonation (minor syllable)
 * colspan="2" |
 * align=left| MY ခံ || Nasalizaton of the vowel; only occurs with the even, heavy, or creaky tones.
 * }
 * }
 * }

Just to give an idea what combinations of changes will look like in practice, here's a random long name (Chanmyay Sayadaw) we currently transcribe:


 * (according to current key)


 * (with nasal final replaced by tilde)


 * (with tilde, high tone marker replaced with phonation marker, low tone unmarked)


 * (with all of the above plus marking length on the two longer registers)


 * (heck why not see it with the pitch marked too)

Thanks! — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 23:51, 20 May 2023 (UTC)


 * My question is: since Burmese has a creaky tone like the Ningbo dialect (the yīnshǎng tone) and the phonology explicitly say "may have a lax glottal stop", should we write entering tone with a tense glottal stop [ʔ͈] to avoid ambiguity? I otherwise has generally no objection (I mean suppose we have a̰ˀ and aʔ͈ in accompany with ṳ and u). 146.96.29.146 (talk) 03:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Tone marker replaced with phonation marker
I didn't and do not think [ʔ͈] should be the accurate way to transcript the Burmese checked (asat) glottal stop, but a relative transcription: note the current IPA used for transcripting the Dahalo apical alveolar is [d̠] although the retraction diacritic in ⟨d̠⟩ serves merely to emphasize that it is further back than /d̪/, that said, a diacritic in IPA may simply be used to imply the relative articulation in comparison with another phoneme in the same language rather than the relative articulation in comparison with the prototypical sound represented by the IPA symbol. Below is an example for it: When the creaky tone is applied to a nasal rime, the notation /ʔ̃/ or /ʔ̚/ indicates [ʔ̚~ʔ̰̃] but never the impossible phone "[ʔ̃]". The superscript and the lax diacritic is omitted because there's no longer phonemic contrast against the tense variety, and the no audible release diacritic shouldn't be omitted because /ɰ̃ʔ̚/ or /Nʔ̚/ is a consonant cluster and without that diacritic it may be misunderstood as a released (lang'uh) or aspirated  (lang'cough), two pronunciation not acceptable. The IPA transcription is meant to offer the reader a simplest transcription (with as few diacritics as possible) that can help the reader make a pronunciation acceptable to Myanmaʔ̰ people; it's never meant to help the reader make a natural pronunciation that sounds perfect to native speakers. I haven't seen an expert in Myanmaʔ̰ studies taking part in this discussion (nor am I, had there been one, say, if Okell were here, the vowel-nasalization proposal wouldn't be pushed forward), so (I hope) this draft proposal (and any other) should never be approved (or disapproved) by a simple consensus by people with broad interest in general linguistics. --146.96.36.74 (talk) 01:10, 8 December 2023 (UTC)


 * With this transcription, lang-nga လန်ငါ and la-nga လငါ (not Burmese words) would be /laɰ̃ŋa/ [la͢ŋa] and /laŋa/ [laŋa] respectively, whereas an individual /laɰ̃/ may be written as [la͢ŋ̚] although the actual relaxed pronunciation may be true vowel nasalization. မြန်မာ့ is /mja͢ma̰ʔ̰/ or /mjəma̰ʔ̰/. 146.96.36.74 (talk) 02:05, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Voicing of initials
Should /ɡ̥ z̥ d̥ b̥/ be used in place of [k/ɡ s/z t/d and p/b] except for Pali words? The current IPA transcription seemed to be based on Yangon dialect albeit Yangon being a Mon cultural center. In traditional Mandalay Burmese the aspirated series seemed to be never voiced and in Danu-Intha dialect b and bh are pronounced p and ph. Plus there doesn't seem to be any minimal pair between the voiceless and voiced series (thus they can be considered allophones of the same phoneme except in Pali). Given the fact that Burmese voiceless series came from Burmish voiced series while Burmese aspirated series came from Burmish voiceless series, it makes sense to transcript them as /ɡ̥ z̥ d̥ b̥/ and /kʰ sʰ tʰ pʰ/, which reflect all dialects (including the Yangon one) in general. Burmese Pali words should be transcribed as the current way except that diaphonemes // may be used on the murmured series (gh jh dh bh) to better reflect the pronunciation of both Yangon and Danu-Intha Burmese. --146.96.36.47 (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2023 (UTC) 
 * The consonant table would be: