REPORT ON THE CURRENT STATUS OF
UNITED NATIONS ROMANIZATION SYSTEMS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES
Compiled by the UNGEGN Working Group on Romanization Systems
Version 4.0, September 2013

Burmese

No romanization systems for Burmese have been put forward at the United Nations conferences on the standardization of geographical names or at sessions of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names. Currently there is no official system of romanization in Myanmar. In 1989 the government of Myanmar changed the Roman-alphabet spellings of the names of several cities in Myanmar to bring them closer to Burmese pronunciation but this was done on an ad hoc basis1.

The only known romanization system of Burmese is that of the BGN and the PCGN (1970) which is based on the 1907 version of the Tables for the Transliteration of Burmese into English, published in 1908 by the Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, Rangoon, Burma.

Burmese uses an alphasyllabic script. The romanization is not reversible to its original script form.

System of romanization

The BGN/PCGN 1970 System2 is given below.

I. Consonant characters

1 က kaA
2 kaA
3 ga
4 ga
5 nga
6 saA
7 saA
8 za
9 za
10 nyaB
11 taA
12 taA
13 da
14 da
15 na
16 taA
17 taA
18 da
19 da
20 na
21 paA
22 paA
23 ba
24 ba
25 ma
26 ya
27 ya
28 la
29 wa
30 thaC
31 ha
32 la
33 aD

II. Independent vowel characters (see also note 4)

1 i
2 i
3 u
4 u
5 eA
6 e
7 awB

III. Abbreviated vowel characters (က stands for any consonant character)

1 ကံ an
2 ကာ aA
3 ကိ i
4 ကီ i
5 ကု uB
6 ကူ uB
7 ကဲ è
8 ကော awA
9 ကော်‌ awA
10 ကို oB
11 ကေ e

IV. Other symbols (က or မ stands for any consonant character)

1 ကြ -yA
2 ကျ -yB
3 ကွ -w
4 မှ h-C
5  င်္ in-D
6 က် (E)

Symbols 1, 2 and 3 may also occur in combinations: ကြွ -yw, ကျွ -yw.

V. Syllable endings (က stands for any initial consonant character; syllables beginning with ဝ /w/ may have different romanization equivalents, these are also listed below)

1 ကက် et
2 ကိုက် aik
3 ကောက် auk
4 ကင် in
5 ကိုင် aing
6 ကောင် aung
7 ကစ် it
8 ကိဇ် eik
9 ကည် i, in, eA
10 ကတ် at
11 ကိတ် eik
12 ကုတ် ôk
13 ကွတ် ut
14 ဝတ် wut
15 ကေတ် it
16 ကန် an
17 ကိန် ein
18 ကုန် ôn
19 ကွန် un
20 ဝန် wun
21 ကပ် at
22 ကိပ် eik
23 ကုပ် ôk
24 ကွပ် ut
25 ကမ် an
26 ကိမ် ein
27 ကုမ် ôn
28 ကွမ် un
29 ဝမ် wun
30 ကယ် è
31 ကဥ် in
32 ကံ an
33 ကိံ ein
34 ကုံ ôn
35 ဝံ wun

Notes

  1. Certain consonant sounds change their value if used after any vowel letter or nasal consonant except as cited in note 5. The changes, as expressed in Roman letters, are the following: ch > gy, k > g, p > b, s > z, t > d.
  2. In romanization, -a is always accompanying the Burmese consonant character unless this has got a dependent vowel character or an end-of-syllable mark: မဒမ madama.
  3. At the beginning of a word, the character အ should not be romanized, unless followed by a consonant character that does not bear a vowel character or an end-of-syllable mark, in which case the character အ should be romanized a: အကာ aga, but အိုဘဲ့ obè, အပ် at. At the beginning of a medial or final syllable, အ should be rendered by a hyphen: မအူ ma-u, သီးပင်အိုင် Thibin-aing.
  4. The independent vowel characters should be romanized with a hyphen at the beginning of medial and final syllables: ကြေဧ kye-e.
  5. When two consonant characters are written one above the other without an end-of-syllable mark, the upper character should be romanized first, followed by the lower character, and then the vowel and consonant characters, if any: ပည္ဇ panyza, အန္တိမဘဝ andimabawa. Alternative romanizations, as indicated in note 1, do not apply to the upper character: သေတ္တာ thetta, မိစ္ဆာ missa, ဥက္ကဌ ukkada.
  6. When the letter n at the end of a syllable is followed by g or y at the beginning of the next syllable, hyphen should be added in between them; similarly hyphen should be used between t and h if they are in different syllables: အင်းကွတ် in-gut (but ဖွေါငန် shwengan).
  7. Tone marks ့ and း should not be romanized.

References

  1. Government of the Union of Myanmar Notification 5/89. Eighth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names, Berlin, 27 August – 5 September 2002. Document E/CONF.94/INF.75.
  2. BGN/PCGN Romanization Systems, available at: http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/romanization.html and http://www.pcgn.org.uk/Romanisation_systems.htm.