The Burmese alphabet is a script in the Brahmic family used in Myanmar for writing in Burmese. The characters are rounded in appearance, because the traditional palm leaves used for writing would have been ripped by straight lines. Like English, it is written from left to right.

There are about 33 consonant characters က (pronounced ka) to ဠ (pronounced la). Like other members of the Brahmic family, the sound of these is modified by accents put above, below or besides the character.

Accents

There are seven accents that act to alter the vowel sound of a character.

•  ာ which sits to the right of a consonant and changes the sound to a longer aa sound.
•  ိ a small circle over a character, changes the pronunciation to an ee sound.
•  ီ
•  ု lies below a consonant.
•  ူ
• ေ  stands to the left of a consonant, changing the sound to an e as in the English word vet.
•  ဲ

One or more of these accents can be added to a consonant to change its sound. For instance ဟ is pronounced 'ha'. With the addition of the accent  ိ, ဟိ is pronounced 'hee'. If another accent ( ု) is added, ဟို is said as ho.

Digits

A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as arabic numerals.

The numerals from zero to nine are: ၀ ၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉. The number 1945 would be written as ၁၉၄၅. Delimiters (such as commas) to separate numbers are not used.

Punctuation

There are two break characters in Burmese, drawn as one or two downward strokes (၊ or ။), that act as a comma and a full stop respectively.

Burmese in Unicode

The Unicode range for Burmese (Myanmar) is U+1000 ... U+109F.

Fonts supporting Burmese characters

See also:

• Brahmic family
• Burmese language
• Burmese Wikipedia