Burmese By Ear or Essential Myanmar Reference text to accompany the audio Burmese By Ear or Essential Myanmar By John Okell Available for free download from http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/ The website of The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Burmese By Ear Acknowledgements or Essential Myanmar The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Daw Khin Mya Swe and Daw Yin First Published in England in 2002 by Audio- Yin May, both of whom read the draft course for Forum, Sussex Publications Limited, Microworld accuracy. He is also grateful to the following for House, 4 Foscote Mews, London W9 2HH. ISBN finding time to come to the studio and con- 1 86013 758 x tribute to the recordings: U Khin Daw Khin Mya Swe Audio-Forum relinquished publication rights in U Nay Tun Daw Mo Mo Khaing 2006, after which the course was distributed by U Nay Win Daw Saw Yu Win the author. U Pe Than Daw Tin Htar Swe U Than Lwin Tun Daw Tin May Aye From 2009 it has been available for downloading The recordings were made at The School of Ori- free of charge from the website of SOAS, Uni- ental and African Studies in the University of versity of London. London by Michael Baptista and Bernard Howard. Some vital late-stage electronic editing would have been impossible without the capable and generous help of Dr Justin Watkins, Lec- turer in Burmese at SOAS. And SOAS provided facilities for computing, printing, copying, tape- editing, faxing, phoning, email and so on. CONTENTS begins on: page nº tape nº Introductory: About this course 5 About Burmese 8 The author Part 1. Foundations 1 Statements and questions, numbers 1-9999, and prices John Okell, a graduate of The Queen's College, 14 1A Oxford, was Lecturer in Burmese (Myanmar) at 2 Going to do, want to do, please do, and counting the School of Oriental and African Studies, 31 1B University of London, until his retirement in 1999. Since then he has undertaken short-term Part 2. First needs teaching engagements in Thailand, the USA and 3 Language help 43 2A London, and is active in developing materials 4 Cafés and restaurants 47 2A for the study of Burmese. 5 Taxis 55 2B 6 Shops 70 3A Okell has made numerous visits to Burma 7 Taking photographs 79 3A (Myanmar), is the designer of the Ava Burmese 8 Asking the way 83 3A font for computers, and acts as consultant for various Burma-related activities. He is a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and Part 3. First conversations African Studies, and Chairman of the Britain- 9 Your visit to Burma 88 3A Burma Society in London. He was awarded the 10 Asking names and ages 104 3B Tuttle Grand Prize for 1996 for his work on 11 Asking about work 112 4A Burmese By Ear. 12 Asking about family 118 4A 12+ Parents, brothers and sisters 125 — In addition to articles on Burmese grammar, linguistics, and lexicography, Okell has published Burmese/Myanmar: a dictionary of Part 4. Review 4B grammatical forms (with Anna Allott, 2001), On the tapes, the Review sections are all placed together on Burmese: an introduction (4 vols, 34 tapes, 1993), Tape 4 Side B, following the end of the Lessons. In the First steps in Burmese (1989), A guide to the booklet each Review section is located immediately after romanization of Burmese (1971), and A reference the group of Lessons it reviews. grammar of colloquial Burmese (2 vols, 1969). BURMESE BY EAR or ESSENTIAL MYANMAR Appendices The language has two names: Burmese and Myanmar. Outline description of Burmese — See “About Burmese” below. 1 pronunciation 127 2 script 136 3 grammar 144 To start using the course 4 the number system 162 Simply put Tape 1 in your player and follow the instructions you 5 Topical vocabularies for — hear. The tapes carry all the teaching and all the practice for 5.1 food and drinks 173 Burmese by Ear, so you can learn everything in the course 5.2 sites and placenames 178 without using the booklet at all. The booklet is provided for 5.3 kin terms 182 reference and backup only. For more detail see “About this 5.4 you and I 184 course” below. 5.5 this, that and what 186 5.6 traditional Burmese clothing 187 6 Further reading 189 Help yourself to learn: two vital steps 7 General vocabulary English-Burmese 193 1. After each Exercise, wind back the tape and repeat the exer- cise until you can speak the answers without hesitating. The audio 2. At the end of each Unit, insert Tape 4 into your player and The audio for Burmese by ear, six hours of playing time, was work through the Review Sections on Side B. Wind back and originally issued on four cassette tapes, distributed as follows: repeat each Review until you can answer fluently and accu- Side at start — Side at start — rately. 1A Lesson 1.1 begins 3A Lesson 6.1 begins 1B Lesson 1.6 continues 3B Lesson 9.2 continues 2A Lesson 2.2 continues 4A Lesson 10.4 continues Why wind back? 2B Lesson 4.5 continues 4B Reviews for all Units begin This is a highly compressed course. In order to squeeze all the material into the narrow compass of four tapes we had to leave For the web edition the audio has been converted to mp3 format. out much of the review and repetition that a longer course Neither the text nor the audio files have been changed to reflect would have given you. This means that you yourself have to the transfer from tape to mp3. So when you read or hear a provide the repetition you need to fix the new material in your reference to a particular tape, please understand it as referring to memory. Hence the importance of the two steps above. the corresponding track on the mp3 files. The new format makes it easier to find your place on the audio as each Lesson and each Section has its own track: Track 1 Lesson 1.1 Track 5 Lesson 1.2 Track 2 Lesson 1.1 pronunciation Track 6 Lesson 1.2 pronunciation Track 3 Lesson 1.1 numbers Track 7 Lesson 1.2 numbers EF Track 4 Lesson 1.1 numbers pron Track 8 Lesson 1.2 numbers pron etc Burmese By Ear 5 ABOUT THIS COURSE BBE is a systematically graded foundation course in modern colloquial Burmese. It aims to give you a confident and enjoyable start in speaking Burmese, focussing on what you are most likely to need when you visit Burma: “survival language” for cafés, taxis, shops, and so on, and “social language” for getting to know people and making friends. You will find that Burmese is a much easier language to learn than many people think. BBE has several advantages over the conventional trav- eller’s phrase book. First, it begins by giving you a grounding in the rudiments of Burmese grammar, concentrating exclusively on the high-frequency elements you need for survival and social purposes. So instead of having to parrot-learn lengthy and un- memorable phrases, you learn how to make up your own sentences and say what you want to say. Secondly, you take a speaking part in the exercises and dialogues in BBE, so you have active practice in talking, and what you learn takes root. Thirdly, because you take in the whole course through your ear you achieve an accurate pronunciation effortlessly from the start — instead of having to try and make sense of baffling romanized spellings and inadequate written descriptions of sounds. Fourthly, you can listen to the tapes when your eyes and hands are occupied, so instead of having to find time in the day to sit down and study, you can learn Burmese while you’re walking or washing or travelling or driving. Course structure The course is divided into four “Parts”. Before you can feel at all confident with a new language you need to get to know the 6 Burmese By Ear Burmese By Ear 7 common sentence types — how to make statements, how to ask In some of the practice dialogues you will find — as you questions, and so on — so Part 1 of BBE concentrates on just that. will in real life — that the Burmese speaker says something you You can get by in Burmese with surprisingly few sentence types, can’t follow. These passages are put in deliberately. They are so the focus of the lessons soon changes from sentence types to there to acclimatise you to the experience (so you won’t panic situations: talking to waiters, talking to shopkeepers, and so on. when it happens for real) and to give you practice in making appropriate responses: “Could you say that again?”, “I’m sorry: I Also built into Part 1 are lessons on the Burmese number don’t understand”, and so on. system and counting, and separate sections on pronunciation. Many of the sounds of Burmese are the same as the sounds of What’s in the book English, so if you’re a speaker of English it won’t be hard to get those sounds right. However, there are other sounds in Burmese All the explanations and practice of the course are on the that English speakers often get wrong, and if you do, the results tapes. The book is an unnecessary extra. It provides — can be quite serious: you can find you’ve said something quite different from what you meant to say — sometimes disastrously 1.