Grammar terms

This vocabulary set contains some basic grammar terms in Myanmar language.

သဒ္ဒါ	grammar
အက္ခရာ	letters/alphabet
သရအက္ခရာ	vowel
ဗြည်းအက္ခရာ	consonant
ဝါစင်္ဂ	parts of speech
ပုဒ်	word; punctuation mark; part numerical classifier for counting pieces of writing such as articles,verse, songs, etc.
ဝေါဟာရ	vocabulary
ဝါကျ	sentence
နာမ်	noun
နာမ်စား	pronoun
ကြိယာ	verb
နာမဝိသေသန	adjective
ကြိယာဝိသေသန	adverb
ဝိဘတ်	postpositional marker; word suffixed to a noun or pronoun to designate it as the subject or object, and to a verb to indicate time or mood
သမ္ဗန္ဓ	conjunction
ပစ္စည်း	particle; word serving to qualify a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb or an adverb
အာမေဍိတ်	exclamation; interjection

The Pali Trap

In his 1990 study Traditions of Buddhist Practice in Burma, Gustaaf Houtman provides some helpful notes on the use of Pali loanwords in contemporary Myanmar language.

Houtman warns against falling into the 'Pali Trap'. By this he means:

the unquestioned acceptance of the meanings of particular Pali loanwords in the vernacular context as being of the same order as that attributed to it in the Buddhological and Indological literature or, indeed, in the work of other anthropologists. [p.21]

He goes on:

This 'Pali trap' of habitual use of romanised Pali for Pali loanwords in the vernacular as pursued in most prominent works on Buddhism in Thailand and Burma (e.g. Spiro and Tambiah) is problematic. It is doubtful that even terms such as tha-tha-na, the way used in Burmese, correspond in all contexts to what we reconstruct as being the scriptural/commentarial 'Pali' meanings we attribute to P. sasana. [p.74-75]

And finally:

we must get away from the 'Pali trap' which misleads people into believing that Pali loanwords have 'universal' meanings even across vernaculars. The anthropologist's treatment of Pali loanwords in the vernacular is symptomatic of their textual orientation; they have used the Indologist's romanised spelling in preference to treating the words as part of the vernacular language. Unfamiliarity with context has been sacrificed for familiarity with text. [p.253]

Buddhism and violence

This post presents chapter 58 of the ရုပ်စုံ ပုဒ္ဓသါသနာဝင် (Illustrated History of Buddhism), published by the YMBA. The image below accompanies the text. Vocabulary and my translation are included below.

The first Buddhist synod

This post presents chapter 54 of the ရုပ်စုံ ပုဒ္ဓသါသနာဝင် (Illustrated History of Buddhism), published by the YMBA. The image below accompanies the text. Vocabulary and my translation are included below.

Ngaba (3)

This post continues on from the previously translated segment of Ngaba posted earlier and covers the text between the two red lines in the scanned page below. You can click on the image below to view a larger version. Key vocabulary is listed below, followed by the translation.

Ngaba (2)

This post continues on from the previous translation of Ngaba posted earlier and covers the text below the red line in the scanned page below. The last sentence at the bottom ends on the subsequent page with the words "မှတ်သား လိုက်ရဖူးသည်။". You can click on the image below to view a larger version. Unfortunately, the text is a bit blurry on the left side. Key vocabulary is listed below, followed by the translation.

Online dictionaries

Here are links to some useful online dictionaries:

SEAlang Library - Burmese Lexicography (here) - this is the best online Myanmar/Burmese dictionary, but is still missing some words.

Planet Myanmar dictionary (here) - this dictionary has problematic translations and is missing some words, but give it a try if you can not find a particular word in the SEAlang dictionary.

The Pali Text Society's Pali-English Dictionary (here) - this dictionary is in Roman script, rather than Myanmar, but is still a useful aid.