Arakanese language

Arakanese
ရခိုင်ဘာသာ
Pronunciation IPA: [ɹəkʰàɪɴbàθà]
Native to Myanmar, Bangladesh, India
Region Rakhine State of western Myanmar; Bandarban, Khagrachari, Patuakhali, and Barguna Districts of Bangladesh, Tripura in India
Native speakers
 1 million (2011–2013)[1]
1 million second language in Myanmar (2013)
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
rki – Rakhine ("Arakanese")
rmz – Marma ("Burmese")
Glottolog arak1255[2]

The Arakanese language (also known as Rakhine /rəˈkaɪn/; Burmese: ရခိုင်ဘာသာ [ɹəkʰàɪɴ bàθà], MLCTS: rakhuin bhasa) is often considered a dialect of Burmese. Sometimes it is considered a separate language. "Arakan" is the former name for the Rakhine region. Arakanese can be divided into three dialects: Sittwe–Marma (about two thirds of speakers), Ramree, and Thandwe.[3]

Vocabulary

There are significant vocabulary differences from Standard Burmese. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like "sarong" (လုံခြည် in Standard Burmese, ဒယော in Arakanese). Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is "hospital," which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သေပ်လှိုင် (pronounced [θeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]/[ʃeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]) in Arakanese, from English "sick lines." Other words simply have different meanings (e.g., "afternoon", ညစ in Arakanese and ညနေ in Standard Burmese). Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese (not ကျွန်တော်, as in Standard Burmese).

Comparison

A gloss of vocabulary differences between Standard Burmese and Arakanese is below:[4]

English Standard Burmese Arakanese Notes
thirsty ရေဆာ ရီမွတ်
go သွား လား Arakanese for "go" was historically used in Standard Burmese.
kick a ball ဘောလုံးကန် ဘောလုံးကျောက်
stomach ache ဗိုက်နာ ဝမ်းခဲ Arakanese prefers ဝမ်း to Standard Burmese ဗိုက် for "stomach."
guava မာလကာသီး ဂိုယံသီး Standard Burmese for "guava" is derived from the word Malacca, whereas Arakanese for "guava" is from Spanish guayaba.
papaya သင်္ဘောသီး ပဒကာသီး Standard Burmese for "papaya" literally means "boat."
soap ဆပ်ပြာ သပုန်
superficial အပေါ်ယံ အထက်ပေါ်ရီ[5]
blanket စောင် ပုဆိုး[5] ပုဆိုး in Standard Burmese refers to the male longyi (sarong).
dark မှောင် မိုက် The compound word မှောင်မိုက် ("pitch dark") is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.
pick a flower ပန်းခူး ပန်းဆွတ်[5] The compound word ဆွတ်ခူး ("pick") is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.
wash [clothes] လျှော် ဖွပ်[5] The compound word လျှော်ဖွပ် ("wash") is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese.

Phonology

Arakanese prominently uses the /r/ sound, which has merged to the /j/ sound in standard Burmese. Also, Arakanese has merged various vowel sounds like ဧ ([e]) vowel to ဣ ([i]). Hence, a word like "blood" is သွေး ([θwé]) in standard Burmese while it pronounced [θwí] in Arakanese. According to speakers of standard Burmese, Arakanese only has an intelligibility of seventy-five percent with Burmese.[6] Moreover, there is less voicing in Arakanese than in Standard Burmese, occurring only when the consonant is unaspirated.[7] Unlike in Burmese, voicing never shifts from [θ] to [ð].[8]

Because Arakanese has preserved the /r/ sound, the /-r-/ medial (preserved only in writing in Standard Burmese with the diacritic ြ) is still distinguished in the following consonant clusters: /ɡr- kr- kʰr- ŋr- pr- pʰr- br- mr- m̥r- hr-/.

The Arakanese dialect has a higher frequency of open vowels weakening to /ə/. An example is the word for "salary," (လခ) which is [la̰ɡa̰] in standard Burmese, but [ləkha̰] in Arakanese.

The following are consonantal, vowel and rhyme changes found in the Arakanese dialect:[9][10]

Written Burmese Standard Burmese Arakanese Notes
-စ် /-ɪʔ/ /-aɪʔ/ e.g. စစ် ("genuine") and စိုက် ("plant") are both pronounced [saɪʔ] in Arakanese
ိုက် /-aɪʔ/
-က် -ɛʔ -ɔʔ
-ဉ် /-ɪɴ/ /-aɪɴ/ e.g. ဥယျာဉ် ("garden"), from Standard Burmese [ṵ jɪ̀ɴ] → [wəjàɪɴ].
Irregular rhyme, with various pronunciations.
In some words, it is /-ɛɴ/ (e.g. ဝိညာဉ် "soul", from Standard Burmese [wèɪɴ ɲɪ̀ɴ] → [wḭ ɲɛ̀ɴ]).
In a few words, it is /-i -e/ (e.g. ညှဉ်း "oppress", from Standard Burmese [ɲ̥ɪ́ɴ] → [ɲ̥í, ɲ̥é]).
ိုင် /-aɪɴ/
-င် /-ɪɴ/ /-ɔɴ/
-န် ွန် /-aɴ -ʊɴ/ ွန် is /-wɔɴ/
-ည် /-i, -e, -ɛ/ /-e/ A few exceptions are pronounced /-aɪɴ/, like ကြည် ("clear"), pronounced [kràɪɴ]
-ေ /-e/ /-i/ e.g. ချီ ("carry") and ချေ ("cancel") are pronounced [tɕʰì] and [tɕʰè] respectively in Standard Burmese, but merged to [tɕʰì] in Arakanese
-တ် ွတ် /-aʔ -ʊʔ/ /-aʔ/
ိန် /-eɪɴ/ /-ɪɴ/
-ုန် /-oʊɴ/ /-ʊɴ/
Nasal initial + -ီ
Nasal initial + -ေ 		/-i/ /-eɪɴ/ e.g. နီ ("red") is [nì] in Standard Burmese, but [nèɪɴ] in Arakanese
In some words, the rhyme is unchanged from the standard rhyme (e.g. မြေ "land", usually pronounced [mrì], not [mrèɪɴ], or အမိ "mother", usually pronounced [əmḭ], not [əmḛɪɴ]
There are few exceptions where the nasal rhyme is /-eɪɴ-/ even without a nasal initial (e.g. သီ "thread", from Standard Burmese [θì] → [θèɪɴ]).
Nasal initial + -ု -ူ -ူး /-u/ /-oʊɴ/ e.g. နု ("tender") is [nṵ] in Standard Burmese, but [no̰ʊɴ] in Arakanese
ွား /-wá/ /-ɔ́/ e.g. ဝါး ("bamboo") is [wá] in Standard Burmese, but [wɔ́] in Arakanese
ြွ /-w-/ /-rw-/ Occurs in some words (e.g. မြွေ ("snake") is [mwè] in Standard Burmese, but [mrwèɪɴ] in Arakanese)
ရှ- /ʃ-/ /hr-/
ချ- /tɕʰ-/ /ʃ-/ Occasionally occurs (e.g. ချင် ("want") is [tɕʰɪ̀ɴ] in Standard Burmese, but [ʃɔ̀ɴ]~[tɕʰɔ̀ɴ] in Arakanese)
တ- → ရ- /t- d-/ /r-/ e.g. The present tense particle တယ် ([dɛ̀]) corresponds with ရယ် ([rɛ̀]) in Arakanese

e.g. The plural particle တို့ ([do̰]) corresponds with ရို့ ([ro̰]) in Arakanese

ရှ- ယှ- ယျှ- /ʃ-/ /h-/ Found in some words only
-ယ် ဲ -ɛ -e
Written အမေက သင်္ကြန်ပွဲတွင် ဝတ်ရန် ထဘီ ရှစ်ထည် ပေးလိုက်ပါ ဆိုသည်။
Standard Burmese ʔəmè ɡa̰ ðədʒàɴ pwɛ́ dwɪ̀ɴ wʊʔ jàɴ tʰəmèɪɴ ʃɪʔ tʰɛ̀ pé laɪʔ pà sʰò dɛ̀
Arakanese ʔəmì ɡa̰ θɔ́ɴkràɴ pwé hmà waʔ pʰo̰ dəjɔ̀ ʃaɪʔ tʰè pí laʔ pà sʰò rì
Arakanese (written) အမိက သင်္ကြန်ပွဲမှာ ဝတ်ဖို့ ဒယော ရှစ်ထည် ပီးလတ်ပါ ဆိုရယ်။
Gloss
English Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival."
Rhymes
Open syllables weak = ə
full = i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Closed nasal = eɪɴ, ɛɴ, aɪɴ, aʊɴ, ɔɴ, oʊɴ
stop = eɪʔ, ɛʔ, aɪʔ, aʊʔ, ɔʔ, oʊʔ

References

  1. ↑ Rakhine ("Arakanese") at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Marma ("Burmese") at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Arakanese–Marma". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Okell 1995, p. 3.
  4. ↑ "ရခိုင်စကားနဲ့ ဗမာစကား". BBC Burmese. 1 April 2011. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 4 အသျှင်စက္ကိန္ဒ (1994). ရခိုင်ဘာသာစကားလမ်းညွှန် (in Burmese). Burma.
  6. ↑ Information on Arakanese
  7. ↑ Okell 1995, p. 4, 14.
  8. ↑ Okell 1995, p. 14.
  9. ↑ Okell 1995.
  10. ↑ Houghton 1897, pp. 453–61.

Bibliography

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