An Introduction to the language, grammar and script
Introduction
The purpose of this summary
This site is to present the structure of Burmese grammar. It is not a site to teach Burmese. It follows my search for something like this. There are several sites and books on learning the Burmese Language. Most of these include grammar in the introduction or the appendix with the substantive content embedded within the lessons. However, there are few guides to the grammar. Obviously, this is a work in progress and it will expand over time.
Burmese or Myanmar?
The site will refer to the country as Myanmar and the language as Burmese.
Structure
The structure of the site will develop over time. Currently, it is planned to follow a fairly standard structure as follows:
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Part 1 Components
This will introduce the basic components of Burmese:
Script and sounds
An introduction to the script and the sounds.
How to pronounce the 34 initial consonant sounds and the 33 letters and 10 consonant clusters used by the script to make them.
Syllables
Assembling the script and sounds into the key structure of the language - the syllable
Part of speech
How the syllables build up to form words and particles. How these are used to form different parts of speech and to express different meanings and contexts.
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Part 2 Structures
This will be about the structures of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. It will look at how these structures perform different functions. -
Part 3 Expressions
An exploration of different linguistic features and how these are expressed in Burmese. -
Part 4 Usage
Using the above to see how Burmese is actually used in different contexts.