Burmese is a language of syllables and these syllables are almost always consistently structured. This affects the Burmese alphabet, alphabetical order and the B2K keyboard.
The standard form of a syllable is C(c)V(ʔ) + T where:
C(c) is the onset or head of the syllable and V(ʔ) + T is the rhyme of the syllable.
C is the leading consonant. There are 33 plain consonants, one with two forms and 34 consonant sounds.
(c) refers to the medial consonants. These are the second consonant in consonant cluster. There are only 3 medial consonants - ျ ၊ ြ ၊ ွ. A ှ can be added to the lead consonant, but this means that this consonsant is pronounced either as a voiceless or a pre-aspirated consonant.
V is the vowel. Most of the vowels are dependent vowels that are either implicit or attach to the consonant or consonant cluster. The implicit vowel is the equivalent of /a/ or a /ə/. The explicit dependent vowels can attach to the right of the consonant group (eg ာ), above the group (eg ိ), below (eg ု) , both above and below (ို) or both to the left and right (ော). The vowel may be open or close.
(ʔ) is the closed end. This can be a nasalised end or a glottal stop.
The T refers to a tone. A syllable that ends with an open vowel or a nasalised vowel will have one of three tones. In addition to this the syllable can end with a glottal stop or a neutral /ə/.
This is reflected in the order of the default opening layout of the B2K:
These first 9 columns are the consonants (excluding the ္ which is a special character to create a stack consonant)
The 10th column is the medial consonants and the aspiration marker
The next 4 colums are the vowel and tone markers that attach to the consonant clusters.
The last 3 columns are numbers and basic punctuation - ၊ is a like a comma and ။ is like a full stop.
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