_______________________ BULLETIN OF THE BURMA STUDIES GROUP _______________________ In honor of our teachers… Denise Bernot visiting with a librarian from Central Universities Library, Rangoon University, Burma, 1993 Photo from C. Raymond Number 80 Fall 2007 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Southeast Asia Council Association for Asian Studies Number 80, Fall 2007 Editor Ward Keeler Department of Anthropology University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 email: [email protected] Assistant Editor Jake Carbine CONTENTS Whittier College ____________________________________ email: [email protected] Book Review Editor Introduction ................................................. 2 Leedom Lefferts Department of Anthropology In Honor of Our Teachers (Continued) ....... 2 Drew University Madison, NJ 07940-4000 Denise Bernot, “Why Burmese?” ............... 3 email: [email protected] Nance Cunningham, “Why Compile a Subscription Manager New English–Burmese and Burmese– Catherine Raymond English Dictionary?” ................................. 10 The Center for Burma Studies Northern Illinois University Paul Sarno, Review of Secret Histories .... 13 DeKalb, 60115-2853 office: (815) 753-0512 Hans-Bernd Zoellner, News from the fax: (815) 753-1776 Myanmar Literature Project ...................... 16 email: [email protected] web: www.grad.niu.edu/burma Announcement, A Chinese Translation of the Glass Palace Chronicle........................ 17 Subscriptions Individuals and Institutions: $25 Call for Papers: 8th International Burma (Includes Journal of Burma Studies) Studies Conference ................................... 17 Send checks, payable to The Center for Burma Studies, or email Beth Bjorneby at [email protected] (Visa and Mastercard accepted only). Next Issue Spring, 2008 (Submissions due April, 2008) ____________________________________ explanation of just why, despite the excellent Myanmar Language Commission Introduction Burmese–English dictionary published ____________________________________ about fifteen years ago, the world still needs a learner’s dictionary for Burmese and This issue arrives late, for which I have to English. apologize to readers. But the good news is that holding back this issue has enabled me A number of books about Burma have to give much of it over to Denise Bernot’s appeared in recent years that attempt to illuminating account of her engagement with reach beyond the restricted audience of Burmese and related languages over the Burma monographs to address a wider years. I am delighted that she has given us public. One such plays on both Burma’s this article to put along Anna Allott’s and greater salience (often for unfortunate John Okell’s recent pieces about their reasons) in the international news and respective experiences learning and teaching George Orwell’s fame: Emma Larkin’s Burmese. These three hsaya were by no Finding George Orwell in Burma , which means the first Westerners to gain a good Paul Sarno reviews in this issue. mastery of Burmese. Yet they were the first to set about putting their own knowledge of The issue concludes with two notices about the language systematically at the service of recent Burma-related publications and with the rest of us: their combined efforts, both as the call for papers for the upcoming Burma teachers in the classroom and as writers and Studies Conference to be held on October compilers of language-learning materials, 3-5, 2008, at Northern Illinois University in have been invaluable to many of us as we De Kalb. try to achieve something approaching their command of Burmese. It is perhaps not out of place to say that the tragic events of recent months in Burma Anna Allott, John Okell, and Denise Bernot obviously weigh on the minds of all readers all continue to work on our collective behalf of this issue. Since this publication is as teachers and scholars of Burmese. (Justin intended to keep people interested in Burma Watkins and San San Hnin Tun are among in touch with each other, including people those who have taken up the baton more living in the country, it would be imprudent recently, as is evident in their recent to delve further into the matter of what contributions to the Bulletin .) Meanwhile happened and what ramifications they may back in Rangoon, Nance Cunningham and have. But we would appear feckless not to Aung Soe Min toil away at another project express our deepest concern. that promises great benefits for both –The Editor English-speakers studying Burmese and ____________________________________ Burmese-speakers studying English: a Burmese–English and English–Burmese In Honor of Our Teachers (Continued) dictionary written specifically with ____________________________________ language-learners’ needs in mind. Nance follows up on her contribution to the last In the autumn of 1968 I arrived in Paris to issue, in which she acquainted us with some start a self-directed junior year abroad. I had of the (mind-spinning) complexities of spent the summer in Indonesia and intended dictionary compilation, with a further to continue my study of Indonesian at the 2 / Fall 2007 Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group École nationale des langues orientales, It was impossible not to be enchanted by which as it turned out was located close-by Mme Bernot’s charm and good-heartedness. the seventh floor walk-up chambre de bonne Parisians have lived at the center of power, I found to rent. My primary purpose, learning, and glory for centuries. Is it however, was to study anthropology. This because Mme Bernot lives in the suburbs was in the glory days of Claude Lévi- that she shows none of the polite Strauss, at whose feet I wished to sit, but I indifference with which most of us also sought out the most important of foreigners are treated in that city? Well, France’s anthropological specialists on probably not; more likely it is because she Southeast Asia, George Condominas. When knows, as the following delightful account I mentioned to him my plan to study reveals, what it’s like to find oneself Indonesian at Langues O (as everyone called struggling in a strange environment with it), he suggested instead that I study compromised linguistic skills. Then again, Burmese with Mme Bernot “for the maybe it’s because she is simply a treasure method.” of a person, much loved in France and Burma alike. It is an honor as well as a great As it happened, the previous year, at pleasure to acquaint readers with the history Cornell, Margaret Aung-Thwin had of her wonderfully fruitful engagement with approached a fellow student in my first-year the Burmese language (and its cousins), as Indonesian class asking if she wouldn’t like part of our series on our teachers’ own to study Burmese as well. (Poor Margaret experiences as language-learners. had been hired to teach Burmese, but with –The Editor no students signing up to take the course she ____________________________________ had been consigned to cataloguing Burmese books in the depths of the library basement.) Why Burmese? I was intrigued enough to go to the library to ____________________________________ see what Burmese looked like and was immediately captivated: who wouldn’t want Every time I try to answer the question, to learn a language whose script was as cool often put to me, as to why I chose to study as that? So Condominas’s remark (along Burmese, I find myself starting in on a with his claim that the Indonesian teacher at confused tale, one that reveals no single Langues O was a Russian princess who had “choice,” but rather a number of fled the Revolution via the Malay Peninsula) opportunities and encounters that led to a set me on an unexpected but not wholly growing, and eventually passionate, interest. unanticipated path. The starting point was a research project As it turned out, we had only one class awarded, through the good offices of Claude meeting for Burmese at the old building Lévi-Strauss, to my husband, Lucien Bernot, where Langues O had long been housed: the and myself in 1951. At the time I saw in this NATO buildings in Paris had recently been project not the first step toward a clear goal commandeered for more sensible use by the but rather a jump into the unknown. It meant French Government (aka De Gaulle), and that we would spend a year in Southeast soon two fellow students and I were Asia sponsored by the CNRS (the National practicing the first line of the Burmese syllabary under Mme Bernot’s tutelage in those less august but more practical halls. Bulletin of the Burma Studies Group Fall 2007 / 3 Center for Scientific Research). 1 We had Preparations two children; Lucien had just been accepted The ethnographic part of the project fell to into the CNRS as an ethnographer; and I, in Lucien, and to me, the linguistic. This order to be free to travel with him, had given required, at a minimum, an initiation into up—temporarily, I thought—my career as a Burmese, of which Marma was a dialect. librarian, for which I had already spent five What I had studied, however, was Sanskrit years in training at the Ecole des chartes in and Hindi. My husband and our fellow Paris. 2 Our future field site was in the students, who were all studying exotic Chitaggong Hill Tracts, at that time a part of languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, East Pakistan but under special jurisdiction. and Tibetan, declared themselves interested Claude Lévi-Strauss was recently returned in Burmese, which was not taught in Paris at from there and thought that the the time. So every Tuesday, the day our concentration