April 24, 2014

Learning Burmese

မင်္ဂလာပါ

Unlike learning English / Chinese where you can find abundant materials: books, websites, youtube, free online courses, mobile apps, flashcard apps, dictionary; self-learning Burmese resources are still few. There was a great challenge on the "font" (encoding) too: Unicode, Zawgyi, ...

Learning a Language

For me, language is a bridge for people to understand each other. Smile and body language are not enough, we need words.
  • Self-study from books, recording and online website,
  • Online learning,
  • Tutor (costly): 1 on 1 or a group of students,
  • Language class: good chance to be in a class where you can learn from others experiences, and opportunity to practice,
  • Language exchange partner,
  • Youtube,
  • Facebook, Facebook Groups (can find short Burmese paragraphs and videos on Myanmar companies Facebook pages)
There are gifted people able to learn a language more easily. For others, commitment and hard work are crucial. You might not forget your mother language but when you don't use it much for a long time you might forget some words. When we learn a new language, it is important to memorize the words, in Burmese, we also need to memorize the tone; and if we don't keep using it much, no practice, we forget.
It is believed that adult cannot learn a language as good as a child; but who cares? William Shakespeare said: “If there is a good will, there is great way.”
When I study, I like to breakdown things and organize it nicely:
  1. Understanding basic & Alphabets
  2. Memorize the word (vocabulary): the character itself and 'pinyin' (romanization). Moreover, a spoken language might be a bit different from written.
  3. Listening - Speaking
  4. Mimic the sound (pronunciation)
  5. Mimic the tone
  6. Grammar
  7. Reading
  8. Writing
Next steps are to memorize idiom, clause, slang, etc.

Learning Burmese Resources

ONLINE MATERIALS/COURSES

●  Burmese by Ear, or Essential Myanmar, by John Okell. 1993. FREE pdf and audio!
●  Seasite Burmese (Free)
●  Asiapearltravels (Free)
●  Burmese Script Animations - How to write letters
●  Daily Burmese (Facebook)
●  Hurnel BBE & Burmese script writing animation
●  Whiteboylearningburmese
●  A Burmese Reader Oxford Oriental Series - Published 1894
●  burmeselesson.com (Paid)
●  *NEW* Letsreadasia.org Children Books
●  *NEW* NFLC Free sign up

BOOKS

●  Burmese: An Introduction to the Spoken Language, Books 1 and 2, by John Okell. 1994
●  Colloquial Burmese, the complete course for beginners, by San San Hnin Tun. 2014
●  Burmese for Beginners, by Gene Mesher. Paiboon Publishing, Berkeley and Bangkok. 2006
●  Easy Burmese, by Kenneth Wong. Tuttle Publishing. Pre-order Sep 2019
●  Advancing in Burmese, by Yadana Aung. Katha Bridge Publishing. 2020

DICTIONARIES

●  Judson Dictionary. 1921
●  Burmese/ Myanmar: a dictionary of grammatical forms, by John Okell and Anna J. Allott, Curzon Press. 2001. Abe Books. Second revised edition (2017) available in Pansodan Gallery, Yangon AND online Createspace
●  Burmese & English Compact Dictionary, compiled by Nance Cunningham & Aung Soe Min by Paiboon Publishing. 30,000 words. 2009. Abe Books
●  MyanmarBurmese-English - CzechStudentsDictionary - Published 2012

ONLINE DICTIONARIES

OTHERS

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