TIL
Update: 20120808
Introduction to Romabama
- a transcription-transliteration system
for BEPS (Burmese-English-Pali-Sanskrit) languages:
Rule 01
intro-RBM01.htm
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.), Daw Khin Wutyi, B.Sc., and staff of TIL Computing and Language Centre, Yangon, Myanmar. Not for sale. No copyright. Free for everyone.
Years ago a Canadian cartoonist in Pembroke mall: "You have that great smile." I know what he meant -- that quiet laughter of mine at the follies of man with myself at the top. Now, I must translate that smile into writing. -- UKT120802
Contents of this page
Letters of Latin alphabet usedRomabama Rule 01 - ASCII characters
Romabama Rule 02 - Differentiation of capital and small letters
Romabama Rule 03 - Extended Latin alphabet and Digraphs
Romabama Rule 04 - Silent e and <e> as part of digraph <ei>
Romabama Rule 05 - Killed consonants
Romabama Rule 06 -
{king:si:}/{kïn~si:} vowel-sign and repha Romabama Rule 07 - Fossilized killed consonants
Romabama Rule 08 - Non-alphabetic characters
Essentially ~ (tilde) is used to show the
{a.þût} : examples from Skt-DevRomabama Rule 09 - Extension of Myanmar akshara row 2 to accommodate medials
Romabama Rule 10 - Extension of Myanmar akshara vowels to accommodate Sanskrit vowels
Use of ASCII letters
International Phonetic Alphabet
Rows and Columns of the Akshara consonant table
Vowels
UKT notes
• Bur-Myan nasal rimes
Romabama Rule 01
Caution: Follow the TIL bracket convention carefully:
• {...} -- Romabama
• /.../ -- IPA broad transcription (narrow transcription brackets [...] are avoided)
• <...> -- Regular English words in the usual Latin script
• «...» -- IAST: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Alphabet_of_Sanskrit_Transliteration
Use of ASCII letters
Romabama was originally designed for writing e-mails without using any special fonts and therefore only ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) letters are used. An added problem is due to the English (sic American) language lacking in graphemes to represent the nasal sounds. We find 6+1 nasals in Bur-Myan (Burmese speech written in Myanmar script) which have to be represented by only 2 in English - <n> and <m>. Borrowing one, <ñ>, from Spanish is a help but not enough.The 6+1 nasal rimes in Bur-Myan are:{än},
{ing},
{iñ},
{ûN},
{ûn},
{ûm} ending in basic akshara, and another one ending in a
{Ña.} (conjunct in Pal-Myan: basic in Bur-Myan) realized in
{æÑ} ({Ñ} is silent - the syllable has the sound /i/). The problem of transcribing the nasal rimes is compounded because each can be realized in 3 registers (note: there are exceptions). See my note on Bur-Myan-nasal ending rimes and how a hearer might have heard them.
[RBM-alphabet.gif]
The above table which may be called the Unified table of BEPS Pulmonic consonants on comparing to the IPA Pulmonic consonants brings out, what the ancient phoneticians of South Asia had achieved at least 2000 or even 4000 years ago. Their first language, definitely spoken, but most probably written, was Vedic which was codified into Classical Sanskrit about 2000 years ago by Panini the Indian phonetician who was dubbed grammarian, when the Vedic sounds were no longer properly pronounced by new comers into India.
International Phonetic Alphabet
Phonetics and Linguistics were seriously studied by the Europeans only about 200 years ago. Below is the table of Pulmonic consonants of the International Phonetic Association.
Myan-Dev-IPA-conso.gif
The IPA was originally designed for European languages. The IPA when applied to the Asian languages is found to be seriously lacking in listing all the consonants. IPA recognizes only the voiceless, voiced, and nasal consonants depending on the manner of articulation. For our purpose we have to expand it. I have shown below how the rows of Plosives and Nasals are to be expanded.
Rows and columns of the akshara table
The consonantal aksharas of row#1 to row#5 of the BEPS table are known as
{wag}-aksharas because they can be neatly classified according to the manner or modes of articulation as given by column headings: c1-tenuis , c2-voiceless, c3-voiced, c4-deep-h, & c5-nasal. Row#6 & row#7 are 
{a.wag}: they cannot be classified. Of the 5 modes, nasal is the easiest to understand. Even then, for 5 nasals of Bur-Myan, Eng-Lat has just two with sounds /n/ and /m/. This is the first hurdle that has to be overcome by Romabama.
Of the remaining 4 modes, Eng-Lat has only two, exemplified by r4c2 /t/ and r4c3 /d/. On closer examination the /t/ of English has two allophones written in IPA as [t] and [tʰ]. English <t> has the sound [tʰ] - the voiceless-aspirate, but when it follows <s> as in <st>, the <t> has the sound [t] - the voiceless-non-aspirate which is also known as the tenuis. The equivalents in Bur-Myan are [t] =
{ta.}, and [tʰ] = 
{hta.}. Column 2 aksharas have <h> before <k, t, p>. These aksharas are dubbed the aspirates, and when Eng-Lat speakers pronounce the <k, t, p>, the sounds that they produced are these aspirate sounds. Only when there is an <s> sound before the <k, t, p> could they pronounce the non-aspirate sounds. These non-aspirate sounds, are realized for instance:
the <k> of <sk> in <skin>,
the <t> of <st> in <stingy>, and
the <p> of <sp> in <spin>.
I am leaving r2c2 and r3c2 out because of their special problems.
Romabama <h> preceding <k, t, p> stands for aspiration. Thus {ht} stands for IPA [tʰ]. Later we will come across <h> following a consonantal akshara such as <n>. In this case <h> does not stand for aspiration but deep-h which is known as the
{hta.hto:}-sound. This sound is not aspiration at all. The <s> of Eng-Lat <sk, st, sp> is not present in Bur-Myan. It is articulated with the tongue tip touching the bottom of the front teeth and is therefore a dental. It has a very marked hissing sound, and may be termed as the dental fricative sibilant. It is given in Romabama as {Sa.} - present in Skt-Dev as ष IAST «ṣa» - note the dot underneath in IAST. It is not present in Bur-Myan. Since in the onset of syllables, this sound is the same as the palatal-C which is present in Bur-Myan as
{sa.}, I have used the same glyph for both {sa.} च «ca» and 
{Sa.} ष «ṣa». Only when this glyph occurs in the coda of syllables, i.e. as killed consonants, do they have different sounds, and Romabama differentiates them as 
{c} and 
{S}. Ordinarily Bur-Myan does not allow 2 killed consonants in the coda, however, since {S} is used only for imported words it is allowable.I am now aware of an unusual conjunct (from Bur-Myan viewpoint) in Skt-Dev:
«ks» : क ् ष = क्ष , and
«zn» : ज्ञ = ज ् ञ . [Note: IAST «j» has been change to «z» to conform to Bur-Myan usage]
Both conjuncts are not medials.
The first, «ks» : क ् ष = क, on transforming akshara-to-akshara gives
{k~Sa.} a sound not easily articulated by Bur-Myan. Many of the Skt-Dev «ks» is found to be 
{hk} in Pal-Myan. The second, «zn» : ज्ञ = ज ् ञ is more baffling. I cannot articulate it. Akshara-to-akshara transformation gives
{z~ña.}. It is placed in cell r2c4 together with 
{Za.} - 110702 . The sound of this conjunct reminds me of the <sm> of the English <ism> words such as <capitalism> and <communism>.Now that Romabama is to be used for BEPS (Burmese-English-Pali-Sanskrit speeches), there is a need to invent new Myanmar graphemes to handle the labio-dental, /f/ and /v/, sounds. The most natural place for them is r5. - 110909
The Vowels
The vowels are most troublesome for learners of a new language. It is because of the movements of the hyoid bone, the only bone in the human body not directly attached to any bony structure. It is placed in the voice apparatus behind the Adam's apple, and is suspended by a myriad of muscles. Which muscles are used in the movement of hyoid bone depends on the ethnicity, sex, and age of the speaker, and you should never expect to be able simulate the sounds of a foreign language. Though every human infant is equipped at birth to produce all the sounds of all the natural languages, once you are about the age of 6 you started losing that ability and by the age of puberty you can produce only the sounds of your native language.My task of trying to accommodate all the sounds of the languages of BEPS, is almost insurmountable because of vowels, but once you have learned the fundamentals of phonetics, you will be able to speak a foreign language which could be understood by a native-speaker of that language.
We find four classes of vowels in BEPS: similar vowels, rhotic & labial vowels, dissimilar vowels, vowels not belonging to any of the previous classes.
The vowel sounds in Bur-Myan and Indic languages (BPS) are represented in two ways: by vowel-letters, and by vowel-signs+consonant. Vowel-letters are stand alone vowels, but a vowel-sign needs a consonant (Bur-Myan
{a.} can be considered to be one) to go with it. In the tables below, {a} has been used as a dummy to bring a vowel-sign to be identifiable with a vowel-letter.Only 7 of the vowel sounds are represented by vowel letters in Bur-Myan, whereas in Skt-Dev, there are 8 vowel letters. All other vowel sounds are represented by vowel-signs+consonants.
[vow-thawun.gif] & [skt-dev-vowels.gif]{I.} इ (short),
{I} ई (long}
Usually mistaken for derivatives of{ka.} by present-day Bur-Myan: a sad fact ignored by MLC and Myanmar educators. -- UKT 120805
{U.} उ (short),
{U} ऊ (long}
An emphatic,{U:}, has been added in Bur-Myan. A variation of the emphatic,
{U:} is used by some sectors of the Buddhist Clergy and their followers. Their objection to the use of {loän:kri:ting} and in support of their use of {hkyaung:nging} they point to the glyph of
{OÄN} - the equivalent of Skt-Dev ॐ .
{É} ए , -?- {È} ऐ
The above is the front {a.þa.wuN} pair.
{AU:} ओ ,
{AU} औ
The above is supposed to be the back {a.wûN} pair in Pal-Myan. I am not comfortable with it. The reader should compare it to the Skt-Dev.]. Regretfully these vowels are mistaken for derivatives of{þa.} - as in the previous case, overlooked by MLC and Myanmar educators. - UKT 120805
[vow-athawun.gif]
UKT notes
Burmese-Myanmar nasal rimes
The problem of transcribing the nasal rimes is compounded because each can be realized in 3 registers (note: there are exceptions).
Bur-Myan is not a tonal language and is different from Thai with 5 tones. Bur-Myan is a pitch register language, which is quite rare, and is similar to Shanghai dialect of China.
[Bur-Myan-nasal-rimes.gif]
We usually look at human speech from the speaker's side. What about the hearer? If the speakers of different language-groups articulate the "same" sound differently from speakers of other language-groups, then there is the possibility that hearers of different groups would perceive the same sound differently subject to the restraints set by his culture. Thus there is a possibility that a Sanskrit phonetician such as Panini would "hear" the Magadhi
{þa.} as an /s/ and not /θ/. Thus, there is actually no way of knowing how Gautama Buddha had pronounced his {þa.} - as /s/ as in Pal-Latin, or, as /θ/ as in Pal-Myan. Coming back to modern times, we can now study the human speech using instruments instead of human phoneticians.Go back Bur-Myan-nasal-note
End of TIL file
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