Burmese

Burmese, or Myanmar, belongs to the Lolo-Burmese sub-branch of of the Tibeto-Burmese branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is not known exactly when the Burmese-speaking people arrived in central Burma, but the earliest religious inscriptions in Burmese date back to around 1,000 AD. It is thought that standard Burmese evolved from a dialect spoken in the lower valleys of central Burma. Today, Burmese is spoken with some regional variations by the vast majority of Burmese people.

Throughout its history, Burmese has been in contact with speakers of other languages such as Pali and Mon, one of the earliest groups to occupy Burma in the 12th-13th centuries, and European languages such as Portuguese, Dutch, English and French in the 16th-19th centuries. These languages have all influenced the spoken but not the written form of Burmese. As a result, modern colloquial Burmese used in everyday conversations differs significantly from the formal written form of the language used in textbooks, academic writing, newspapers, fiction, and expository prose. The written version retains many Pali words and syntactic constructions largely absent in the spoken language. In Burmese, the spoken form is called ba-ma, and the written form is called myan-ma. In English, however, it is customary to refer to both forms of the language as Burmese.

Burmese is the official language of Myanmar (since 1989, the name for Burma). It is spoken by 21.5 million people as a first language, and by another 3 million speakers (mostly minorities in Myanmar) as a second language. Burmese is also spoken in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, and the U.S. The total Burmese-speaking population of the world is estimated at 32-37 million people (Ethnologue).

In Myanmar, Burmese is used in the media, government administration, and education from kindergarten to the university level. The use of minority languages is suppressed by the authoritarian regime.

Professional Burmese language services

Trusted by some of the biggest names in business, we are proud to be the most quality-focused language company around. For more information about any of our language services, please contact the team or choose one of the following links:

Translation services | Interpreting services | Multilingual creative services