3. Myanmar Language Nature
Language >> Myanmar language
Native Speakers >> 33 million
>> Second language: 10 million
Language Family >> Sino / Tibetan (တရုတ် / တိဘက်)
>> Lolo / Burmese
>> Burmish
>> Burmese
Writing system >> Burmese alphabet
4. What is Syllable?
• A syllable is a basic sound unit or a sound.
• One word consists of one or more syllables.
• Syllables differ from phonemes in that
a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound.
• The number of syllables in a word is
unrelated to the number of phonemes it
contains.
Cat
Ti-ger
El-e-phant
6. Myanmar Script Writing Style
• Burmese Characters are Round Shape.
• The Script is written is from left to right.
• Spaces are not used to separate between words but sometimes used in sentences.
https://burma.irrawaddy.com/
9. Syllable Structure Types
Your Text Here
Myanmar words can be classified into
(1) Standard words (i.e,words with standard syllable structure) and
ဥပမ ။ ။ သမ်း ၊ မမမမ ၊ မေမေ။
(2) Irregular words (i.e, words with abbreviated characters or words written in special traditional writing forms).
ဥပမ ။ ။ တကက သိိုလ၊ မဂဂလာပါ၊ ဝတထ ု ၊ ဘတစကာ်း ၊
Phonological Segmentation >> တကက သိိုလ (တက / က / သိိုလ)
Orthographic Segmentation >> တကက သိိုလ (တကက / သိိုလ)
10. How A Myanmar Syllable Form?
Base
Character
Above /
base
Character
Post /
base
Character
Below /
base
Character
Pre /
base
Character
Pre, Post, Below and Above + Base word(consonant)
11. Myanmar Syllable Form
ေက င်
Base Character
Pre / base Character
Post / base Character
ဆို
Above / base
Character
Below / base Character
Post / base
Character
12. How to compose Myanmar words or syllables?
• The basic consonants in Myanmar can be multiplied by medials.
ဥပမ ဗ ၊ ကက ၊ ဖ ၊ မ ၊ လျှ ၊ .......။
• Syllables or words are formed by consonants combining with vowels.
ဥပမ အ ၊ အိ၊ အ၊ အု၊ အ၊ ေအ၊ အ၊ ေအ ။
• However, some syllables can be formed using just consonants, without any vowel.
ဥပမ မမ ဝဝ ထထ က ။
• Other characters in the Myanmar script include special characters, numerals, punctuation
marks and signs.
13. Syllable Structure Format
C ဗ ည် (Consonant) (က-အ)
V သရ (Vowel) (ါ ,ါ ,ါု,ါ,ါိ,ါ,ေါ,ါ)
K အသတ် (Killer) (ါ်)
D မခိုသရ(Dependent Various Sign) (ါ ,ါ,ါ)
M ဗ ည် တ (Medial) (ါ ၊ ြါ၊ ါ၊ ါ)
C (က-အ)
CV (က , ေက,...)
CVCK (တိတ်,ကိတ်,..)
CVD (ေက ,ေက,....)
CVCKD (ကုန် ,မုန်...)
CCK (ကတ်,ဂတ်,...)
CCKD (ခန်,ခန် ,...)
CM (က ,လ,...)
CMV (ကက ,ေကက,...)
CMVD (ေကက ,ေဂ ,...)
CMVCK (က ျုပ်,ခ ျုပ်,...)
CMCK (ကကက်,ခ က်,...)
CMCKD (က င်,ခ င်,...)
15. Reference
• Word segmentation for the Myanmar language by Tun Thura Thet and Jin-Cheon Na.
• A Rule-based Syllable Segmentation of Myanmar Text by Zin Maung Maung and Yoshiki Mikami.
• Manually Constructed Context-Free Grammar For Myanmar Syllable Structure by Tin Htay Hlaing.
• Automatic Syllable Segmentation of Myanmar Texts using Finite State Transducer by Tin Htay
Hlaing and Yoshiki MIKAMI
• https://github.com/ye-kyaw-thu/sylbreak/blob/master/jupyter-notebook/using-sylbreak-in-jupyter-
notebook.ipynb
• Syllable Structure for Myanmar Language (Aye Mi San)