Burmese (Myanmar): An Introduction to the Literary Style 9781609092214

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Parallel with this course Burmese—An Introduction to the Spoken Language, Book 1 Burmese—An Introduction to the Spoken Language, Book 2 Burmese—An Introduction to the Script

BURMESE

(Myanmar)

An Introduction to the Literary Style

John Okell

With assistance from U Saw Tun and Daw Khin Mya Swe

Northern Illinois University Press DeKalb

© 1994, 2010 Northern Illinois University Published by the Northern Illinois University Press in conjunction with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, DeKalb, Illinois 60115 Manufactured in the United States using postconsumer-recycled, acid-free paper. All Rights Reserved Cover Design: Shaun Allshouse ISBN:978-0-87580-645-7 Series: Southeast Asian language text series LC Control No.: 2010448365

Front Cover Photo—Kalaga or Burmese tapestry representing a detail of the Vessantara  Jataka. BC90.4.275 from the Burma Art Collection at NIU.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

ix xi xiii xv

vii



viii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Funds from the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, part of a grant made to them by the Henry Luce Foundation, allowed me to take time away from my normal duties in order to make a start on writing new courses for beginners in Burmese. During this time the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London kindly allowed me to continue to use its equipment and facilities (room, computers, printers, xeroxing, recording, photography, telephone, mail, fax, stationery and so on). A visit to Burma was funded by money from both the Center and SOAS, and supplemented by a grant from the British Academy. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Michael Aung-Thwin, director of the Center, who successfully applied for the grant, and chose me to write the book; and to Dr. Haig D. Roop, coauthor of Beginning Burmese, the standard textbook for 25 years, for his encouragement. I would also like to acknowledge the part played by my colleague at SOAS, Mrs. Anna Allott, who heroically shouldered a heavy load of teaching and other duties for part of the time I had arranged to be away; and the contribution of my wife Sue, who generously and without complaint took on more than her share of the care of the house and family so that I could make progress with writing. I received valuable comments on parts of the draft from U Saw Tun, of Northern Illinois University, and from Daw Khin Mya Swe and Daw The recordings were made San San Me in London. supervision of the at SOAS under the and the speakers were Technician Jahan Latif, Yu Win, and Ko Aung Daw Yi Yi Mya, Daw Saw Naing. course were used by the Prototype versions of the in the four years from beginners classes at SOAS the SEASSis held at Cor1990/91 to 1993/94, and at nell University in 1990 and at the University of Washington in 1992. Members of all these classes made many helpful comments, as well as finding numerous typing errors, and I would like to thank them for being so tolerant and constructive. My greatest debt is to many friends in Burma, who not only answered my questions about their language and customs with immense patience and goodwill, but also made me welcome in their homes and daily lives, and went to staggering lengths to ensure that my needs were met in generous measure. To them all I extend my heartfelt thanks. The photograph used for the cover is of a carved wooden doorway in the Shwe lnbin Monastery in Mandalay. It was taken by my friend Robert Moore, and the design of the cover was implemented by Alfred Birnbaum, who was attending my class at the time. Illustrations used in the text are taken from books, magazines and other material published in Burma.

ix

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR Change of publisher Publication of all four volumes of Burmese: An Introduction, first published in 1994, has been transferred to the Northern Illinois University Press and the books are now re-issued with minor revisions.

Change of audio format At the time of initial publication, the audio component of Burmese: An Introduction was issued on cassette tapes. Now that digital recordings are more widely used than tapes, the audio material has been converted to digital. Two advantages of this change are, first, that digital files are less bulky to store and transport than cassette tapes and, second, that it is far easier to find a particular section in the audio. Neither the printed text nor the audio files have been changed to reflect the transfer from tape to digital. So when you read or hear a reference to a particular tape, please understand it as referring to the corresponding track in the audio files.

Changes in Burma since the publication of this course Sixteen years have passed since the first publication of this course. During that time several aspects of life in Burma have changed. First and most obvious are price levels: • A cup of tea that cost K4 in 1993 now costs K150, and costs may well rise further. So, when practicing prices in the exercises, bear in mind that most prices need to be multiplied by 30 or 40 to correspond with the cost of living today. Second, some institutions that appear in the course have been renamed, relocated, or discontinued. For example: • Tourist Burma has been renamed Myanmar Travel and Tours. • The National Museum has moved from Pansodan to Pyay Road. • The Diplomatic Store is no longer operating. If you search in Burma for places mentioned in the course, remember that they mayno longer be there. Third, digital cameras have largely replaced film cameras, and most telephones now have keys to press rather than dials to turn. References in the Lessons to film and dialing should be understood as reflecting technology at the time of writing. Apart from such obvious physical changes in the life of the country, the language of the course is still the language that you will hear and read in Burma today.

Errata lists While using the course over the years, teachers, colleagues, and students have helpfully pointed out some errors and inconsistencies in the text. These have been listed and are to be found, with their corrections, on a page at the end of each volume.

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INTRODUCTION The aim of this course is to introduce foreign learners to the literary style of Burmese. It is assumed that learners already know a little colloquial Burmese before they start learning to read the literary style. To use this course they need to be able to read Burmese script, and • s1mp • 1e sen tences lik e 2:cncC o-JOO'f) C , C C t o kn ow common wor d s m c;;;::>.:>ron (1dJ;'°= 3'f) 33('?0C C 1 C C C COC • C C C O T , C'{Uo1cnoo11 '1dl,~33c;;o ~~ c;;ro: ::>ir>=cnoon'1]u;;ccm (\)')CY.>OOn .y.,~~ :r.>OOC'fc.;~1::>.:>ronTh ey a 1so need to be familiar with numbers as used in prices and dates and counting, the names of some places in Rangoon and elsewhere, and Burmese personal names and kin terms. This level of knowledge of colloquial Burmese is the minimum necessary to follow the examples and do the exercises in the "Sentences" section of Part 1. If you know more, you will be able to work through the course more easily. If you don't yet know all the words that are used there, you can look them up in the Vocabulary that follows the Sentences. Words and structures introduced later are glossed and explained as they occur. Q

Q

Structure. The material for reading practice is arranged in three Parts, and consists of "Sentences," sections that introduce some of the commoner literary forms and provide exercises for practice with them, and "Texts," which are passages selected from a textbook used for teaching reading in Burmese schools. Each Text is accompanied by a Vocabulary and a Translation, and there are Exercises to help you memorize the new words and structures. At the end of the volume there are Keys to the Exercises, an Index of grammar words, and a conflated Vocabulary which includes all the words listed separately under each Text. The tape which accompanies this volume enables you to hear the Texts being read aloud.

To add variety and interest there are six additional sections or "Interludes": wedding invitations, obituary notices, two sets of texts taken from publicly displayed signs and notices, and two political statements: one issued by the SLORC and the other by the NLD. All the Interludes are self-contained and can be skipped over without detriment to the progressive acquisition of words and structures that runs through the Sentences and the Texts, but the notes to the Interludes assume that you have worked through those portions of the course that precede them. Classoom activities. The course is designed with the needs of self-study learners in mind. It is hoped that you will find it answers most of your questions and gives you enough practice to become familiar with the ground it covers. If you are studying with a teacher, here are some suggestions for things to do in class: • paraphrase in colloquial Burmese the content of the texts you have read in the literary style; • ask and answer questions based on the text - as after Section 7 "About myself": C' 0 T ' S2: oai,GCY.>?cf>~~ro C' C' C' C' 1 Sl : cf>~~ C' :noo"? GQI:Droll G~COj>OI II C' S1: G~CC\j> 3dG~3dGU

C' C: 1 C: S2: rooo"?UUI0'.)0011 • complete sentences started by the teacher or a classmate; for example: Sl: oaJ~GOY?3dG~ro . . • - S2: oa]~GOY?3dG~ro G3TG3d:o111 Sl: G3TG3d:ro . . . - S2: G3TG3d:ro oaJ~GOY?3dG~o111 • apply the new vocabulary to the learners' own situation; for example: Sl: G~~ :nuSr.p G,:x>rull - S2: olw~m~Bt"P G,olmuS11 g C' C'O T, d Sl : G~61_.3dG~ .y:,~~ :noo"?GQ1 :x>ron an so on. My own experience in using the course has been that activities like these greatly assist learners to assimilate the new material and memorize the vocabulary. :YY.)

C'

C'

'

3d"?U O?U:Droll

-

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TWO STYLES OF BURMESE Speakers of Burmese use two different "styles" of Burmese for expressing themselves. One is the style you use for talking to people in a friendly, informal way, and the other is used in formal contexts: for newspaper reports and editorials, for memoirs, notices, textbooks, and so on. People use different names for the two styles: here we call the first style "colloquial" and the second "literary."

It is tempting to say that the colloquial style is used for talking and the literary style for writing, but that would not be entirely accurate. In certain contexts you can speak (or at least read aloud) in the literary style: radio broadcasters use it for announcing the news, for example. On the other hand you can write in the colloquial style: people use it for writing personal letters to friends (though letters to government offices are usually in literary), and authors use it for the dialogue passages in fiction (though the narrative passages linking the dialogues are in literary). The difference between the two styles lies mostly in vocabulary: you use one form of a word in colloquial and an alternative form in literary. For example the word for "name" in (pronounced colloquial is t0~~ (pronounced/ tt~:))~

G~:))~11

~C'j>"{J C: ~C'j>:))~ ~ C'j> ( ():Y))

G~®~*II C:

G~:))~11 C:

G~CY)U)II

Ma Hla+subject Ma Hla lives in Sit-twe.

live+pres/pas t

lit.

Gf0~~11

= coll.

Gf0~uS11

words English

Money need+if If I need any money I'll tell you.

tell+future

lit.

§~Ol@l 11 C\Y.lolJ.:>~11

Section 5: [noun] and his/her group The suffix [noun)-07.

[noun] and his/her group

(a) With a single noun [noun]-07. means "[noun] and his group," where "his group" may refer to his family, his friends, his colleagues, his companions, his fellow pop-song addicts, or whatever is appropriate to the situation. (For "his" understand "his/her" throughout.) If this sounds disturbingly ill defined, remember that in English words like "we" and "you" have to be interpreted in just the same way. "We" may stand for: I and my family, I and my colleagues, I and my friends, I and my fellow countrymen, and so on, according to context. In Burmese [noun]-07. calls for the same kind of interpretation. Examples: Ko Thein Tun and his group: family/ friends/ colleagues/ ... we (man speaking) (I and my group) we (woman speaking) (I and my group) they (he/she and his/her group)

07::.3t:oat:O?. oaJtG~CY?. oaJt~CY?. ~O?.

(b) Where -07. is suffixed to a string of two nouns, as in this formula [nounl]-[noun2]-6?. [nounl] and [noun2] and their group OR [nounl] and [noun2] - it can either (a) have the same meaning as above, namely "[nounl] and [noun2] and their group" (friends, family, colleagues, ... ), OR (b) it can refer to just the pair specified by the two nouns, without extending to include other people: "[nounl] and [noun2]." Examples: (a) U Kyi and Daw Nge and their group OR (b) U Kyi and Daw Nge (not including others) ::D0: the son of U Kyi and Daw Nge can only mean "U Kyi and Daw Nge": In the second example it is clear that

2:E:s: G3TcoSCY?. 2:E:s: G3TcoSCY?.®l

the meaning bility.

2:~:G3T coSCY?.

"U Kyi and Daw Nge and their group" would imply a reproductive

impossi-

(c) The suffix-07. may be suffixed to a string of more than two nouns, as in this formula [nounl]-[noun2]-[noun3J-6?. [nounl] and [noun2] and [noun3] and their group OR [nounl] and [noun2] and [noun3] In this case the same two options are available as under (b): it can mean either (a) "[nounl] and [noun2] and [noun3] and their group" (friends, family, colleagues, ... ), OR (b) just the trio specified by the three nouns, without extending to include other people: "[nounl] and [noun2] and [noun3]." The same holds good for even longer strings of nouns.

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Burmese: An Introduction to the Literary Style

These meanings of [noun]-CJ?. are the same in both literary and colloquial styles. Later you will meet a further meaning of [noun]-CJ?. in literary style which corresponds to a different suffix in colloquial. Exercises Section 5, Exercise 1. Translate into English:

(:))

(j) (~) (