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Burmese thread

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viedums
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Thailand
Joined 4679 days ago

327 posts - 528 votes 
Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French
Studies: Vietnamese

 
 Message 9 of 22
16 February 2012 at 1:14pm | IP Logged 
I live next door to Burma, so it's not distant for me.

If you'd like to check it out on the Internet, you could look at a news website called Democratic Voice of Burma (www.dvb.no). Besides the news stories on the main page, you can click "Burmese language" to see the same stories in Burmese, plus video, and (maybe most interesting) radio news broadcasts in half a dozen minority languages, which are totally different from Burmese, like Mon, Karen etc. Karaoke is popular in Burma, and there a lot of videos on Youtube with easy-to-follow texts good for language learning.

I don't think Burmese should be the first Asian language for a Westerner, frankly you're unlikely to get much out of it. Although at the moment there's a flow of refugees from Burma into different parts of the States, communities are developing in places like upstate New York, Indiana etc. Finding native speakers this way would be one idea for getting real exposure to the language, depending on how motivated you are I suppose.


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Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5742 days ago

568 posts - 886 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

 
 Message 10 of 22
16 February 2012 at 5:39pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for the resources.

I agree, I was just interested because another language learner said I might like the language. If I wanted to learn an Asian language I'd try Mandarin, Japanese, or Hindi, and I think Hindi might be the easiest, plus it's Indo-European.

Anyway, sorry I can't chat in Burmese since that's what this thread is for.
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clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
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1116 posts - 1367 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

 
 Message 11 of 22
16 February 2012 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
Well, I think it's not wrong if the thread change into a post bout Burmese in general.

Of course Burmese has not close vocabulary to Japanese, but I wanted to say that
the grammar structure is strangely similar.

I hope the situation in Burma is really going to improve, when it come to
democratization.

As for resources, I know:

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/
Very nice course, you have to install the fonts firsts, as they don't use unicode,but I
think it's very good.
Also the audio does not work well :( (you can listen to it, but it downloads the audio,
and opens the player, instead of playing it from the website)
http://el.osaka-gaidai.ac.jp/flc/bur/lesson02/01.html
Available in Japanese

Also, on soyouwanttolearnalanguage website, there are some books to download
(legal, of course).

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Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5742 days ago

568 posts - 886 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

 
 Message 12 of 22
17 February 2012 at 1:39am | IP Logged 
Thanks, clumsy.

That was the free course I was talking about it in an earlier post.

Only 24 people listed Burmese as a language they speak or study on the forum, so I don't know if many people are going to chat in this thread.
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viedums
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Thailand
Joined 4679 days ago

327 posts - 528 votes 
Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French
Studies: Vietnamese

 
 Message 13 of 22
17 February 2012 at 3:26am | IP Logged 
Yes, the NIU page is good, although the fonts are a pain. Okell (the uber-guru for Burmese) also wrote "Burmese by Ear". Both the text in pdf and audio in mp3 are available for free on the SOAS website - here's the link:

http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/

The SOAS website has a lot of good info on the language, including a list of universities around the world where Burmese is taught.


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Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5742 days ago

568 posts - 886 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

 
 Message 14 of 22
17 February 2012 at 11:57am | IP Logged 
I looked at Burmese by Ear, but unfortunately the audio files are zipped and I don't know how to unzip them.
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viedums
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Thailand
Joined 4679 days ago

327 posts - 528 votes 
Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French
Studies: Vietnamese

 
 Message 15 of 22
22 February 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged 
There are also some materials in French, like "Parlons Birman" in the l'Harmattan series. I don't know if this publisher's "Parlons..." books have been mentioned on this forum, but they have a wide range of obscure minority languages from different parts of the world - including for Southeast Asia Mon and Kuy. The books include both cultural background and language instruction. The Burmese one is by M-C Cardinaud, there are 2 volumes and it looks like fun, with a cartoon as well. I've heard it's used at INALCO. There are also dictionaries etc by Denise Bernot.

About Burmese and Japanese - well, maybe structurally there is some sort of similarity. But I have studied both and I see very few links - knowing Pali is much more useful for getting Burmese vocabulary, just as it is for Thai, etc. In fact, Pali has influenced written Burmese structurally, there are particles (only in the written language) that stand for the nominative, accusative and other cases. This is because Burmese was first written mainly to translate Pali, and there was a type of religious literature where both languages were read side by side.

You might find some Burmese people who believe in the affinity between Japanese and their language, but it's really just wishful thinking. Maybe interesting to think about, though.






Edited by viedums on 22 February 2012 at 3:22pm

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simon43
Newbie
Thailand
Joined 6222 days ago

3 posts - 10 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Laotian, Burmese, Arabic (Gulf)

 
 Message 16 of 22
02 June 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged 
I've just started to learn Burmese. I've lived in Thailand since 2002 and can speak,
read and write good Thai. Now, as Myanmar/Burma is starting to open up, I find myself
travelling on a weekly basis into the country to provide free English language lessons
for the Burmese community. Knowledge of both written and spoken Burmese will definitely
help me with my NGO work.

Simon


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