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Burmese script

The Burmese abugida (Burmese: ; ) is a script in the Brahmic family used in Burma for writing Burmese, Mon, Shan, S'gaw Karen, Eastern and Western Pwo Karen dialects, Geba Karen, Rumai Palaung, Kayah, as well as Pali and Sanskrit. 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. 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 (ka. [ka̰]) to (a. [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, (a. [a̰]), although recognized as a consonant, is actually a vowel. Since is the only lettered vowel, when used with diacritics, is used to create other vowels. Like other members of the Brahmic family, the sounds of these are modified by diacritics put above, below or beside the character.

The following names are transliterated in contemporary Burmese.

Name	IPA	Pāli	Remarks
	/k/	k	Also used as a final (- )
	/kʰ/	kh
	/g/	g
	/g/	gh
none	/ŋ/	ṅ	Also used as a final (- )
	/s/	c	Also used as a final (- [iʔ])
	/sʰ/	ch
	/z/	j
	/z/	jh
none	/ɲ/	ñ	Also used as a final (-), but representing an open vowel
	/t/	ṭ	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative)
	/tʰ/	ṭh	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative)
	/d/	ḍ	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative)
	/d/	ḍh	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative)
	/n/	ṇ	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative); also used as a final (-ဏ်)
	/t/	t	Also used as a final (- )
	/tʰ/	th
	/d/	d
	/d/	dh
	/n/	n	Also used as a final (- )
	/p/	p	Also used as a final (- )
	/pʰ/	ph
	/b/	b
	/b/	bh
none	/m/	m	Also used as a final (-)
	/j/	y	Also used as a final (-) but representing an open vowel ([-ɛ̀])
	/j/	r	Represents /r/ in Rakhine dialect and in certain contexts of modern Burmese.
none	/l/	l	Also used as a final (-), but unpronounced
none	/w/	v
none	/θ/	s
none	/h/	h
	/l/	ḷ	Used primarily for Pāli (Burmese uses as an alternative)
none	/a/	a	Used with diacritics to form other vowels

Diacritics

There are several diactric marks that alter the vowel sound of a letter. Two diacritics are used exclusively for Pali and are rarely seen elsewhere.

Diacritic	Name	Remarks
		creates low tone
		creates an i sound at creaky tone (e.g. English seat)
		creates an i sound at low tone
		creates a u sound at creaky tone (e.g. English truce)
		creates a u sound at low tone
		creates an ei sound at high tone (e.g. English cane)
		creates an è sound at high tone (e.g. English pet)
		Virama; modifies the sound quality of a letter and varies with letters (usually creates a consonant final)
		Visarga; creates high tone, but cannot be used alone
		Anunaasika, creates nasalised -n final
		Anusvara, creates short tone
		used exclusively for Pali
		used exclusively for Pali

One or more of these accents can be added to a consonant to change its sound. In addition, other modifiying symbols are used to differentiate tone and sound, but are not considered diacritics.

Ligatures

Specific consonants (a final and the following consonant), when placed next to one another, may be stacked, with the final placed underneath the consonant. They are considered ligatures, and are typically used to abbreviate, but are not necessary and are primarily used to denote Pali or Sanskrit origin.

Digits

A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as Hindu-Arabic numerals.

The numerals from zero to nine are: (Unicode 1040 to 1049). The number 1945 would be written as . separators (such as commas) to group digits are not used.

Another set of digits from zero to nine is used in the Shan language.

Punctuation

There are two primary break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes (or ), which respectively act as a comma and a full stop . is used as a full stop if the sentence immediately ends with a verb. is roughly the equivalent of a comma and is used to connect two trains of thought.

Burmese in Unicode

The Unicode range for writing Burmese and other languages of Myanmar is U+1000–U+109F. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points. For writing the basic Burmese language, only U+1000–U+104F is needed:

the basic abugida for Burmese and other languages of Myanmar:

U+1000–U+1020: the 33 base consonants.
U+1021–U+102A: the 10 independent vowels (including 1 variant needed for Shan and 1 variant needed for Mon).
U+102B–U+1035: the 11 dependent vowels (diacritics combining on the right, above, below, or left of the base consonant).
U+1036–U+103A: the 5 diacritic signs (anusvara, tone mark, visarga, virama, visible virama).
U+103B–U+103E: the 4 medial consonant signs (diacritics combining on the right, around, or below).

U+103F: the Myanmar letter "Great Sa".
U+1040–U+1049: the 10 digits.
U+104A–U+104B: the 2 punctuation signs (section signs).
U+104C–U+104F: the 4 symbols (locative, completed, aforementioned, genitive).

The rest of the chart contains extensions for other languages:

Extensions for Pali and Sanskrit:

U+1050–U+1051: the 2 base consonants.
U+1052–U+1055: the 4 independent vowels.
U+1056–U+1059: the 4 dependent vowels (diacritics combining on the right or below).

Extensions for Mon:

U+105A–U+105D: the 4 base consonants.
U+105E–U+1060: the 3 medial consonant signs (diacritics combining below).

Extensions for S’gaw Karen:

U+1061: the 1 base consonant.
U+1062: the 1 vowel sign (diacritic on the left).
U+1063–U+1064: the 2 medial consonant signs (diacritics combining on the right).

Extensions for Western Pwo Karen:

U+1065–U+1066: the 2 base consonants.
U+1067–U+1068: the 2 vowel signs (diacritics combining on the right).
U+1069–U+106D: the 5 tone signs (diacritics combining on the right).

Extensions for Eastern Pwo Karen:

U+106E–U+1070: the 3 base consonants.

Extensions for Geba Karen:

U+1071: the 1 vowel sign (diacritic combining above).

Extensions for Kayah:

U+1072–U+1074: the 3 vowel signs (diacritics combining above).

Extensions for Shan:

U+1075–U+1081: the 13 base consonants.
U+1082: the 1 medial consonant signs (diacritic combining below).
U+1083–U+1086: the 4 vowel signs (diacritic combining on the right, left or above).
U+1087–U+108D: the 7 tone signs (diacritics combining on the right or below).

Extensions for Rumai Palaung:

U+108E: the 1 base consonant.
U+108F: the 1 tone sign (diacritics combining on the right).

Extensions for Shan:

U+1090–U+1099: the 10 digits.
U+109E–U+109D: the 2 symbols.

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 in GIF or JPEG). At the end of 2005, the Burmese NLP Research Lab announced a Myanmar Open Type font named Myanmar1. This font contains not only Unicode code points and glyphs but also the OTLs logic and rules. Their research center is based in Myanmar ICT Park, Yangon. Padauk, which was produced by SIL 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.

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 major software vendors. The Myanmar Bible Society launched a Burmese Unicode website, using Mozilla Firefox & Padauk Open Type ver 2.1 font from ThanLwinSoft, and here Burmese characters are displayed correctly. The Australian Government website followed, using the Padauk OT font ().

Many big websites are still using a GIF/JPG display method.