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116-721: The Ledo Road ( Burmese : လီဒိုလမ်းမ ) was an overland connection between British India and China , built during World War II to enable the Western Allies to deliver supplies to China and aid the war effort against Japan. After the Japanese cut off the Burma Road in 1942 an alternative was required, hence the construction of the Ledo Road. It was renamed the Stilwell Road , after General Joseph Stilwell of

232-565: A pitch-register language like Shanghainese . There are four contrastive tones in Burmese. In the following table, the tones are shown marked on the vowel /a/ as an example. For example, the following words are distinguished from each other only on the basis of tone: In syllables ending with /ɰ̃/ , the checked tone is excluded: In spoken Burmese, some linguists classify two real tones (there are four nominal tones transcribed in written Burmese), "high" (applied to words that terminate with

348-664: A considerable numerical superiority. On the engineering side I had no doubts. We had built roads over country as difficult, with much less technical equipment than the Americans would have. My British engineers, who had surveyed the trace for the road for the first eighty miles [130 km], were quite confident about that. We were already, on the Central front, maintaining great labour forces over equally gimcrack lines of communication. Thus far Stilwell and I were in complete agreement, but I did not hold two articles of his faith. I doubted

464-419: A highway stretching from Assam, India to Kunming, China 1,736 km (1,079 mi) length. On 12 January 1945, the first convoy of 113 vehicles, led by General Pick, departed from Ledo; they reached Kunming, China on 4 February 1945. In the six months following its opening, trucks carried 129,000 tons of supplies from India to China. Twenty-six thousand trucks that carried the cargo (one way) were handed over to

580-550: A lesser extent, Burmese has also imported words from Sanskrit (religion), Hindi (food, administration, and shipping), and Chinese (games and food). Burmese has also imported a handful of words from other European languages such as Portuguese . Here is a sample of loan words found in Burmese: Since the end of British rule, the Burmese government has attempted to limit usage of Western loans (especially from English) by coining new words ( neologisms ). For instance, for

696-537: A major re-organization of the postwar USAAF that had included the establishment of Major Commands (MAJCOM), who would report directly to HQ United States Army Air Forces. Continental Air Forces was inactivated, and Tenth Air Force was assigned to the postwar Air Defense Command in March 1946 and subsequently to Continental Air Command (ConAC) in December 1948 being primarily concerned with air defense. The command

812-760: A mountain slope in Qinglong County in Guizhou province of China. It turned out to be a photo taken by Findlay Kember on his earlier trip. In 2015, it was not possible to cross the border on the Ledo Road due to visa restrictions. In 2015, the section from Namyun to Pangsau Pass in Burma was a "heavily rutted muddy track" through the jungle according to a BBC correspondent. In 2016, China called for restoration of Stilwell road. 27°41′18″N 95°55′57″E  /  27.68839°N 95.93262°E  / 27.68839; 95.93262 Burmese language Burmese

928-502: A politically well-connected travel agent. These groups successfully travelled the road but none made any comment on the political or human rights situation on Burma afterward. Burmese from Pangsau village saunter nonchalantly across Pangsau Pass down to Nampong in India for marketing, for the border is open despite the presence of insurgents on both sides. There are Assam Rifles and Burma Army posts at Nampong and Pangsau respectively. But

1044-693: A reduced-weight versions sharing many of the external characteristics of the D series aircraft including the bubble canopy. All U.S. pilots assigned to the CACW were listed as rated pilots in Chinese Air Force and were authorized to wear the pilot's wings of both nations. One of the known Chinese pilots is Captain Ho Weng Toh of Singapore, the last known surviving Flying Tigers' member in Asia. Captain Ho flew

1160-607: A road from Assam into northern Burma . British engineers had surveyed the route for a road for the first 130 kilometres (80 miles). After the British had been pushed back out of most of Burma by the Japanese, building this road became a priority for the United States . After Rangoon was captured by the Japanese and before the Ledo Road was finished, the majority of supplies to the Chinese had to be delivered via airlift over

1276-466: A stop or check, high-rising pitch) and "ordinary" (unchecked and non-glottal words, with falling or lower pitch), with those tones encompassing a variety of pitches. The "ordinary" tone consists of a range of pitches. Linguist L. F. Taylor concluded that "conversational rhythm and euphonic intonation possess importance" not found in related tonal languages and that "its tonal system is now in an advanced state of decay." The syllable structure of Burmese

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1392-409: Is C(G)V((V)C), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide , and the rime consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong with a consonant. The only consonants that can stand in the coda are /ʔ/ and /ɰ̃/ . Some representative words are: Fourteenth Air Force The Fourteenth Air Force ( 14 AF ; Air Forces Strategic )

1508-643: Is a tonal , pitch-register , and syllable-timed language , largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with a subject–object–verb word order. It is a member of the Lolo-Burmese grouping of the Sino-Tibetan language family . The Burmese alphabet is ultimately descended from a Brahmic script , either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabets. Burmese belongs to the Southern Burmish branch of

1624-442: Is pronounced [mõ̀ũndã́ĩ] . The vowels of Burmese are: The monophthongs /e/ , /o/ , /ə/ , /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ occur only in open syllables (those without a syllable coda ); the diphthongs /ei/ , /ou/ , /ai/ and /au/ occur only in closed syllables (those with a syllable coda). /ə/ only occurs in a minor syllable , and is the only vowel that is permitted in a minor syllable (see below). The close vowels /i/ and /u/ and

1740-759: Is remarkably uniform among Burmese speakers, particularly those living in the Irrawaddy valley, all of whom use variants of Standard Burmese. The standard dialect of Burmese (the Mandalay - Yangon dialect continuum ) comes from the Irrawaddy River valley. Regional differences between speakers from Upper Burma (e.g., Mandalay dialect), called anya tha ( အညာသား ) and speakers from Lower Burma (e.g., Yangon dialect), called auk tha ( အောက်သား ), largely occur in vocabulary choice, not in pronunciation. Minor lexical and pronunciation differences exist throughout

1856-584: Is the value of the four native final nasals: ⟨မ်⟩ /m/ , ⟨န်⟩ /n/ , ⟨ဉ်⟩ /ɲ/ , ⟨င်⟩ /ŋ/ , as well as the retroflex ⟨ဏ⟩ /ɳ/ (used in Pali loans) and nasalisation mark anusvara demonstrated here above ka (က → ကံ) which most often stands in for a homorganic nasal word medially as in တံခါး tankhá 'door', and တံတား tantá 'bridge', or else replaces final -m ⟨မ်⟩ in both Pali and native vocabulary, especially after

1972-638: Is the word "moon", which can be လ la̰ (native Tibeto-Burman), စန္ဒာ/စန်း [sàndà]/[sã́] (derivatives of Pali canda 'moon'), or သော်တာ [t̪ɔ̀ dà] (Sanskrit). The consonants of Burmese are as follows: According to Jenny & San San Hnin Tun (2016 :15), contrary to their use of symbols θ and ð, consonants of သ are dental stops ( /t̪, d̪/ ), rather than fricatives ( /θ, ð/ ) or affricates. These phonemes, alongside /sʰ/ , are prone to merger with /t, d, s/ . An alveolar /ɹ/ can occur as an alternate of /j/ in some loanwords. The final nasal /ɰ̃/

2088-491: The [ ɹ ] sound, which has become [ j ] in standard Burmese. Moreover, Arakanese features a variety of vowel differences, including the merger of the ဧ [e] and ဣ [i] vowels. Hence, a word like "blood" သွေး is pronounced [θw é ] in standard Burmese and [θw í ] in Arakanese. The Burmese language's early forms include Old Burmese and Middle Burmese . Old Burmese dates from

2204-588: The /l/ medial, which is otherwise only found in Old Burmese inscriptions. They also often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop . Beik has 250,000 speakers while Tavoyan has 400,000. The grammatical constructs of Burmese dialects in Southern Myanmar show greater Mon influence than Standard Burmese. The most pronounced feature of the Arakanese language of Rakhine State is its retention of

2320-611: The Arctic Circle . Additional radars came under the command's control for the sole purpose of detecting, identifying, tracking and sending back to NORAD data on any SLBM. All man-made objects became numbers in the USAF SPACETRACK network operated by the 14th Aerospace Force. Budget reductions and reorganizations within ADCOM brought many changes and reductions in aerospace resources along with almost continual turmoil in

2436-475: The Burmese alphabet began employing cursive-style circular letters typically used in palm-leaf manuscripts , as opposed to the traditional square block-form letters used in earlier periods. The orthographic conventions used in written Burmese today can largely be traced back to Middle Burmese. Modern Burmese emerged in the mid-18th century. By this time, male literacy in Burma stood at nearly 50%, which enabled

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2552-562: The English language in the colonial educational system, especially in higher education. In the 1930s, the Burmese language saw a linguistic revival, precipitated by the establishment of an independent University of Rangoon in 1920 and the inception of a Burmese language major at the university by Pe Maung Tin , modeled on Anglo Saxon language studies at the University of Oxford. Student protests in December of that year, triggered by

2668-707: The Flying Tigers ) of the Chinese Air Force was called to Chongqing , China, on 29 March 1942, for a conference to decide the fate of the AVG. Present at the conference were Chiang Kai-shek ; his wife, Soong Mei-ling ; Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell , commander of all U.S. forces in the China Burma India Theater ; and Colonel Clayton L. Bissell , who had arrived in early March. Bissell was General Henry H. 'Hap' Arnold's choice to command

2784-540: The Korean War , 14 AF participated in the mobilization of Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units and individuals from its headquarters at Robins Air Force Base (AFB), Georgia. After the Korean War, the reserve wings of 14 AF participated in various airlift operations, such as Operation SIXTEEN TONS, Operation SWIFT LIFT and Operation READY SWAP. 14 AF was inactivated on 1 September 1960. Fourteenth Air Force

2900-643: The Lake of No Return ). Recent attempts to travel the full road have met with varying results. At present the Nampong-Pangsau Pass section is passable in four-wheel drive vehicles. The road on the Burmese side is now reportedly fit for vehicular traffic. Donovan Webster reached Shingbwiyang on wheels in 2001, and in mid-2005 veterans of the Burma Star Association were invited to join a "down memory lane" trip to Shingbwiyang organised by

3016-723: The Mon people , who until recently formed the majority in Lower Burma . Most Mon loanwords are so well assimilated that they are not distinguished as loanwords, as Burmese and Mon were used interchangeably for several centuries in pre-colonial Burma. Mon loans are often related to flora, fauna, administration, textiles, foods, boats, crafts, architecture, and music. As a natural consequence of British rule in Burma , English has been another major source of vocabulary, especially with regard to technology, measurements, and modern institutions. English loanwords tend to take one of three forms: To

3132-534: The Myanma Salonpaung Thatpon Kyan ( မြန်မာ စာလုံးပေါင်း သတ်ပုံ ကျမ်း ), was compiled in 1978 by the commission. Burmese is a diglossic language with two distinguishable registers (or diglossic varieties ): The literary form of Burmese retains archaic and conservative grammatical structures and modifiers (including affixes and pronouns) no longer used in the colloquial form. Literary Burmese, which has not changed significantly since

3248-651: The Pangsau Pass (nicknamed "Hell Pass" for its difficulty), and down to Shingbwiyang , Burma. Sometimes rising as high as 1,400 m (4,600 ft), the road required the removal of earth at the rate of 1,800 cubic metres per kilometre (100,000 cubic feet per mile). Steep gradients, hairpin curves and sheer drops of 60 m (200 ft), all surrounded by a thick rain forest was the norm for this first section. The first bulldozer reached Shingbwiyang on 27 December 1943, three days ahead of schedule. The building of this section allowed much-needed supplies to flow to

3364-614: The Pyu language . These indirect borrowings can be traced back to orthographic idiosyncrasies in these loanwords, such as the Burmese word "to worship", which is spelt ပူဇော် ( pūjo ) instead of ပူဇာ ( pūjā ), as would be expected by the original Pali orthography. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g. mergers of sound pairs that were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in

3480-746: The Republic of China Air Force . American missionary John Birch was recommended to Chennault for intelligence work by Jimmy Doolittle , whom he had assisted when Doolittle's crew landed in China after the raid on Tokyo . Inducted into the Fourteenth on its formation, and later seconded to the OSS , he built a formidable network of Chinese informants to provide the Flying Tigers with intelligence on Japanese land and sea military positions and

3596-566: The Sino-Tibetan languages , of which Burmese is the most widely spoken of the non- Sinitic languages. Burmese was the fifth of the Sino-Tibetan languages to develop a writing system, after Classical Chinese , Pyu , Old Tibetan and Tangut . The majority of Burmese speakers, who live throughout the Irrawaddy River Valley, use a number of largely similar dialects, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in

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3712-739: The U.S. Army , in early 1945 at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek . It passes through the Burmese towns of Shingbwiyang , Myitkyina and Bhamo in Kachin state . Of the 1,726 kilometres (1,072 mi) long road, 1,033 kilometres (642 mi) are in Burma and 632 kilometres (393 mi) in China with the remainder 61 km was in India . The road had the Ledo - Pangsau Pass - Tanai (Danai)- Myitkyina -- Bhamo - Mansi - Namhkam -Kunming route. To move supplies from

3828-413: The 11th to the 16th century ( Pagan to Ava dynasties); Middle Burmese from the 16th to the 18th century ( Toungoo to early Konbaung dynasties); modern Burmese from the mid-18th century to the present. Word order , grammatical structure, and vocabulary have remained markedly stable well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g., function words ). The earliest attested form of

3944-457: The 13th century, is the register of Burmese taught in schools. In most cases, the corresponding affixes in the literary and spoken forms are totally unrelated to each other. Examples of this phenomenon include the following lexical terms: Historically the literary register was preferred for written Burmese on the grounds that "the spoken style lacks gravity, authority, dignity". In the mid-1960s, some Burmese writers spearheaded efforts to abandon

4060-713: The 19th century, British railway builders had surveyed the Pangsau Pass, which is 1,136 metres (3,727 feet) high on the India-Burma border, on the Patkai crest, above Nampong , Arunachal Pradesh and Ledo , Tinsukia (part of Assam ). They concluded that a track could be pushed through to Burma and down the Hukawng Valley . Although the proposal was dropped, the British prospected the Patkai Range for

4176-470: The 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma (e.g., increased tax burdens from the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma. British rule in Burma eroded the strategic and economic importance of the Burmese language; Burmese was effectively subordinated to

4292-593: The 74th, 75th and 76th Fighter squadrons, its table of organization rounded out by the transfer of men and P-40s from two squadrons of the 51st Fighter Group in India. A fourth fighter squadron for the 23rd Group was obtained by subterfuge. In June and July 1942, Chennault got the Tenth Air Force to relocate the 51st FG's 16th Fighter Squadron , commanded by Major John Alison , to his main base in Kunming, China, to gain combat experience. Chennault took them into

4408-609: The AVG into the USAAF, after Stilwell promised that the fighter group absorbing the induction would remain in China with Chennault in command. With the situation in Burma rapidly deteriorating, Stilwell and Bissell wanted the AVG dissolved by 30 April 1942. Chennault, wanting to keep the Flying Tigers going as long as possible, proposed the group disband on 4 July, when the AVG's contracts with the Nationalist Chinese government expired. Stilwell and Bissell accepted. Chennault

4524-663: The AVG pilots accepted them. The remainder of the AVG pilots, many disgruntled with Bissell, became civilian transport pilots in China, went back to America into other jobs, or joined or rejoined the other military services and fought elsewhere in the war. An example was Fritz Wolf who returned to the Navy with the rank of Lieutenant, senior grade and assigned as fighter pilot instructor at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida. The 23rd Fighter Group with

4640-517: The Air Force space operational component of United States Strategic Command. As the Air Force's sole Numbered Air Force for space and its concurrent United States Strategic Command mission of Joint Space Operations, the operational mission of 14 AF included space launch from the east and west coasts, satellite command and control, missile warning, space surveillance and command and control of assigned and attached joint space forces. The overall mission

4756-489: The B-25 bomber, as part of the 1st Bomber Group. Members of the 3rd FG were honored with a Distinguished Unit Citation (now Presidential Unit Citation) for a sustained campaign: Mission "A" in the late summer of 1944. Mission "A" halted a major Japanese ground offensive and resulted in the award of individual decorations for several of the group's pilots for the planning and execution of the mission. Most CACW bases existed near

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4872-471: The British in the lead-up to the independence of Burma in 1948. The 1948 Constitution of Burma prescribed Burmese as the official language of the newly independent nation. The Burma Translation Society and Rangoon University's Department of Translation and Publication were established in 1947 and 1948, respectively, with the joint goal of modernizing the Burmese language in order to replace English across all disciplines. Anti-colonial sentiment throughout

4988-557: The Buddhist clergy (monks) from the laity ( householders ), especially when speaking to or about bhikkhus (monks). The following are examples of varying vocabulary used for Buddhist clergy and for laity: Burmese primarily has a monosyllabic received Sino-Tibetan vocabulary. Nonetheless, many words, especially loanwords from Indo-European languages like English, are polysyllabic, and others, from Mon, an Austroasiatic language, are sesquisyllabic . Burmese loanwords are overwhelmingly in

5104-577: The Burmese government focused on the reconstruction of the Ledo Road as an alternative to the existing Lashio - Kunming Burma Road . The Chinese government completed construction of the Myitkyina - Kambaiti section in 2007. Rangoon-based Yuzana Company constructed the section between Myitkyina and Tanai (Danai) which was already operational in 2011 as the company owns thousands of acres of land there for its multiple crop plantation including sugarcane and cassava. India's government, however, fears that

5220-688: The Burmese language into Lower Burma also coincided with the emergence of Modern Burmese. As late as the mid-1700s, Mon , an Austroasiatic language, was the principal language of Lower Burma, employed by the Mon people who inhabited the region. Lower Burma's shift from Mon to Burmese was accelerated by the Burmese-speaking Konbaung Dynasty 's victory over the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. By 1830, an estimated 90% of

5336-469: The Burmese language is called Old Burmese , dating to the 11th and 12th century stone inscriptions of Pagan . The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984. Owing to the linguistic prestige of Old Pyu in the Pagan Kingdom era, Old Burmese borrowed a substantial corpus of vocabulary from Pali via

5452-659: The CATF – and never returned them. On 19 March 1943, the CATF was disbanded and its units made part of the newly activated Fourteenth Air Force, with Chennault, now a major general, still in command. In the nine months of its existence, the China Air Task Force shot down 149 Japanese planes, plus 85 probables, with a loss of only 16 P-40s. It had flown 65 bombing missions against Japanese targets in China, Burma and Indochina, dropping 311 tons of bombs and losing only one B-25 bomber. The members of Fourteenth Air Force and

5568-628: The Chinese. As General Chennault had predicted, supplies carried over the Ledo Road at no time approached tonnage levels of supplies airlifted monthly into China over the Hump. However, the road complemented the airlifts. The capture of the Myitkyina airstrip enabled the Air Transport Command "to fly a more southerly route without fear of Japanese fighters, thus shortening and flattening the Hump trip with astonishing results." In July 1943

5684-527: The Expedition of Eric Edis and his team also used the road from Ledo to Myitkyina en route to Rangoon, Singapore and Australia. Ten months later they returned in the opposite direction. In his book about this expedition The Impossible Takes a Little Longer , Edis (2008) reports that they have removed a yellow sign with India/Burma on it from the Indian/Burmese border and that they have donated it to

5800-757: The Imperial War Museum in London. For many years, travel into the region was also restricted by the Government of India . Because of continuous clashes between insurgents (who were seeking shelter in Burma) and the Indian Armed Forces , India imposed harsh restrictions between 1962 and the mid-1990s on travel into Burma. Since an improvement in relations between India and Myanmar, travel has improved and tourism has begun near Pangsayu Pass (at

5916-542: The Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of the country. These varieties include the Yaw , Palaw, Myeik (Merguese), Tavoyan and Intha dialects . Despite substantial vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among most Burmese dialects. Below is a summary of lexical similarity between major Burmese dialects: Dialects in Tanintharyi Region , including Palaw, Merguese, and Tavoyan, are especially conservative in comparison to Standard Burmese. The Tavoyan and Intha dialects have preserved

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6032-443: The Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း , "food offering [to a monk]", Lower Burmese speakers use [sʰʊ́ɰ̃] instead of [sʰwáɰ̃] , which is the pronunciation used in Upper Burma. The standard dialect is represented by the Yangon dialect because of the modern city's media influence and economic clout. In the past, the Mandalay dialect represented standard Burmese. The most noticeable feature of

6148-407: The Japanese were forced to retreat south, the Ledo Road was extended. This was made considerably easier from Shingbwiyang by the presence of a fair weather road built by the Japanese, and the Ledo Road generally followed the Japanese trace. As the road was built, two 10 cm (4 in) fuel pipe lines were laid side-by-side so that fuel for the supply vehicles could be piped instead of trucked along

6264-408: The Japanese. Work continued through 1944 in late December it was opened for the transport of logistics . In January 1945, four of the black EABs (along with three white battalions) continued working on the now renamed Stilwell Road , improving and widening it. Indeed, one of these African American units was assigned the task of improving the road that extended into China. Winston Churchill called

6380-403: The Ledo Road met the Burma Road. To get to the Mong-Yu junction the Ledo Road had to span 10 major rivers and 155 secondary streams, averaging one bridge every 4.5 km (2.8 mi). For the first convoys, if they turned right, they were on their way to Lashio 160 km (99 mi) to the south through Japanese-occupied Burma. If they turned left, Wanting lay 100 km (60 mi) to

6496-467: The Ledo Road route would supply 65,000 tons of supplies per month, greatly surpassing tonnage then being airlifted over the Hump to China. General Claire Lee Chennault , the USAAF Fourteenth Air Force commander, thought the projected tonnage levels were overly optimistic and doubted that such an extended network of trails through difficult jungle could ever match the amount of supplies that could be delivered with modern cargo transport aircraft. The road

6612-402: The Ledo Road. Major General Wheeler, in turn, assigned responsibility of base commander for the road construction to Colonel John C. Arrowsmith . Later, he was replaced by Colonel Lewis A. Pick , an expert US Army engineer. Work started on the first 166 km (103 mi) section of the road in December 1942. The road followed a steep, narrow trail from Ledo, across the Patkai Range through

6728-422: The Ledo Road." The units initially assigned to the initial section were: In 1943 they were joined by: From the middle of April until the middle of May 1944 Company A of the 879th Airborne Engineer Battalion worked 24 hours a day on the Ledo Road, construction of their base camp and Shingbwiyang airfield, before deploying to Myitkyina to improve the facilities of an old British airfield recently recaptured from

6844-518: The Mandalay dialect is its use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် , kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon, the said pronoun is used only by male speakers while ကျွန်မ , kya.ma. [tɕəma̰] is used by female speakers. Moreover, with regard to kinship terminology , Upper Burmese speakers differentiate the maternal and paternal sides of a family, whereas Lower Burmese speakers do not. The Mon language has also influenced subtle grammatical differences between

6960-431: The OB vowel *u e.g. ငံ ngam 'salty', သုံး thóum ('three; use'), and ဆုံး sóum 'end'. It does not, however, apply to ⟨ည်⟩ which is never realised as a nasal, but rather as an open front vowel [iː] [eː] or [ɛː] . The final nasal is usually realised as nasalisation of the vowel. It may also allophonically appear as a homorganic nasal before stops. For example, in /mòʊɰ̃dáɪɰ̃/ ('storm'), which

7076-409: The Stilwell road, a World War 2-era cemetery between Jairampur and Pangsau Pass for the Chinese soldiers and labourers who built the road, a still existing bridge near Nampong nicknamed "Hell's Gate" due to treacherous conditions and landslides in the area. In Myanmar, he found villagers using a World War II gas tank as a water tank in Kachin state , and the gravel road between Myitkyina and Tanai

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7192-582: The Tenth Air Force). Friction developed when Chennault and the Chinese government were disturbed by the possibility that Chennault would no longer control combat operations in China. However, when Tenth Air Force commanding general Lewis Brereton was transferred to Egypt on 26 June, Stillwell used the occasion to issue an announcement that Chennault would continue to command all air operations in China. The CATF had 51 fighters in July 1942: 31 Curtiss 81A-1 (export Tomahawks) and P-40B Tomahawks, and 20 P-40E Warhawks. Only 29 were flyable. The 81A-1s and P-40Bs were from

7308-429: The US press adopted the name Flying Tigers for themselves after the AVG's dissolution. Especially the 23d Fighter Group was often called by the same nickname. The Fourteenth Air Force official web site says: In addition to the core Fourteenth Air Force (14AF) structure, a second group, the Chinese-American Composite Wing (CACW), existed as a combined 1st Bomber, 3rd Fighter, and 5th Fighter Group with pilots from both

7424-614: The USAAF's proposed combat organization in China. As early as 30 December 1941, the U.S. War Department in Washington, D.C., had authorized the induction of the Flying Tigers into the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF). Chennault was opposed to inducting the Flying Tigers into the Army. Stilwell and Bissell made it clear to both Chennault and Chiang that unless the AVG became part of the U.S. Army Air Force, its supplies would be cut off. Chennault agreed to return to active duty but he made it clear to Stilwell that his men would have to speak for themselves. Chiang Kai-shek finally agreed to induction of

7540-409: The USAF's Fourteenth Air Force was redesignated as the United States Space Force 's Space Operations Command (SPOC). On 21 Oct 2020, Space Operations Command, HQ was redesignated back to Fourteenth Air Force and inactivated. With the United States entry into World War II against the Empire of Japan in December 1941, Claire Chennault , the commander of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) (known as

7656-539: The United States and the Republic of China. U.S. service personnel destined for the CACW entered the China theater in mid-July 1943. Aircraft assigned to the CACW included later series P-40 Warhawks (with the Nationalist Chinese Air Force blue sky and 12-pointed white sun national insignia, rudder markings, and squadron/aircraft numbering) and B-25 Mitchell medium bombers. In late 1944, USAAF-marked P-51 Mustangs began to be assigned to CACW pilots—first P-51B and C series followed by, in early 1945, D and K series. The latter were

7772-416: The United States military. The 1st American Volunteer Group was formally disbanded on 4 July 1942. Each member was offered a commission in the United States Army Air Forces. Some accepted the offer, once again put on their American uniforms, and remained in China. Others later returned to the ranks of the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps but fought in other areas of the world. Eighteen accepted offers to fly for

7888-491: The adoption of neologisms. An example is the word "university", formerly ယူနီဗာစတီ [jùnìbàsətì] , from English university , now တက္ကသိုလ် [tɛʔkət̪ò] , a Pali-derived neologism recently created by the Burmese government and derived from the Pali spelling of Taxila ( တက္ကသီလ Takkasīla ), an ancient university town in modern-day Pakistan. Some words in Burmese may have many synonyms, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example

8004-409: The air tonnage was 5,500 rising to 8,000 in September and 13,000 in November. After the capture of Myitkyina deliveries jumped from 18,000 tons in June 1944 to 39,000 in November 1944. In July 1945, the last full month before the end of the war, 71,000 tons of supplies were flown over the Hump, compared to only 6,000 tons using the Ledo Road; the airlift operation continued in operation until the end of

8120-445: The boundary of Japanese-Occupied China and one "Valley Field" existed in an area within Japanese-held territory. Specific field locations included Hanzhong , Ankang , Xi'an , Laohekou , Enshi , Liangshan , Baishiyi , Zhijiang , Hengyang , Guilin , Liuzhou , Zhanyi , Suichwan , and Lingling . Today, the 1st, 3rd and 5th Groups of CACW are still operating in Taiwan, reorganized as 443rd, 427th and 401st Tactical Fighter Wings of

8236-406: The brief Indian section – is usable." In 2014, to document the status of the road, photographer Findlay Kember, working on a photo feature for the South China Morning Post , traveled the entire length of the road across three nations on three different trips due to not being allowed to cross the international borders. In India, there is Stilwell park in Lekhapani near Ledo to mark the beginning of

8352-525: The close portions of the diphthongs are somewhat mid-centralized ( [ɪ, ʊ] ) in closed syllables, i.e. before /ɰ̃/ and /ʔ/ . Thus နှစ် /n̥iʔ/ ('two') is phonetically [n̥ɪʔ] and ကြောင် /tɕàũ/ ('cat') is phonetically [tɕàʊ̃] . Burmese is a tonal language , which means phonemic contrasts can be made on the basis of the tone of a vowel. In Burmese, these contrasts involve not only pitch , but also phonation , intensity (loudness), duration, and vowel quality. However, some linguists consider Burmese

8468-714: The command organization for the Air Force Reserve and state Air National Guard units. By 1949 with the establishment of the Western Air Defense Force (WADF) and Eastern Air Defense Force (EADF), the air defense mission of the command was transferred to primary to the EADF, leaving Fourteenth AF free to focus on its reserve training tasks. It was then reassigned to Continental Air Command and moved to Robins AFB , Georgia, in October 1949. During

8584-508: The command structure of 14 AF during the 1970s. In 1976 the headquarters of the 14th Aerospace Force was inactivated, being moved to Dobbins AFB , Georgia and activated as the Fourteenth Air Force (Reserve). The mission of the command at Dobbins was changed to the supervision, management and support of Air Force Reserve airlift forces for Military Airlift Command and participated in such missions as Operation Just Cause . It

8700-545: The disposition of shipping and railways. He was killed by Chinese communists when he attempted to see a downed plane they had been assigned to guard ten days after the war ended, which led to him being chosen as the namesake of the John Birch Society . The incident is recounted in the memoir of Paul Frillmann , China: The Remembered Life , who had started the war as the chaplain for the Flying Tigers. In March 1946, USAAF Chief General Carl Spaatz had undertaken

8816-669: The early post-independence era led to a reactionary switch from English to Burmese as the national medium of education, a process that was accelerated by the Burmese Way to Socialism . In August 1963, the socialist Union Revolutionary Government established the Literary and Translation Commission (the immediate precursor of the Myanmar Language Commission ) to standardize Burmese spelling, diction, composition, and terminology. The latest spelling authority, named

8932-598: The eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains known as the Hump . After the war, the road fell into disuse. In 2010, the BBC reported "much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle." On 1 December 1942, British General Sir Archibald Wavell , the supreme commander of the Far Eastern Theatre , agreed with American General Stilwell to make the Ledo Road an American NCAC operation. The Ledo Road

9048-598: The form of nouns . Historically, Pali , the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism , had a profound influence on Burmese vocabulary. Burmese has readily adopted words of Pali origin; this may be due to phonotactic similarities between the two languages, alongside the fact that the script used for Burmese can be used to reproduce Pali spellings with complete accuracy. Pali loanwords are often related to religion, government, arts, and science. Burmese loanwords from Pali primarily take four forms: Burmese has also adapted numerous words from Mon, traditionally spoken by

9164-504: The globe. On December 20, 2019, Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett redesignated the 14 AF as Space Operations Command (SPOC), part of the newly established U.S. Space Force. On 21 Oct 2020, Space Operations Command, HQ was redesignated back to Fourteenth Air Force and inactivated. 14th Air Force's component wings and groups in 2019 were: * Authorized as a "Special Air Unit" by President Roosevelt in 1941 and equipped with United States equipment, however not officially affiliated with

9280-522: The introduction of English into matriculation examinations , fueled growing demand for Burmese to become the medium of education in British Burma; a short-lived but symbolic parallel system of "national schools" that taught in Burmese, was subsequently launched. The role and prominence of the Burmese language in public life and institutions was championed by Burmese nationalists, intertwined with their demands for greater autonomy and independence from

9396-515: The literary form, asserting that the spoken vernacular form ought to be used. Some Burmese linguists such as Minn Latt , a Czech academic, proposed moving away from the high form of Burmese altogether. Although the literary form is heavily used in written and official contexts (literary and scholarly works, radio news broadcasts, and novels), the recent trend has been to accommodate the spoken form in informal written contexts. Nowadays, television news broadcasts, comics, and commercial publications use

9512-558: The mission of the 14th Aerospace Force was to detect foreign missile launches, track missiles and satellites in space, launch space vehicles, maintain a satellite data base of all man-made objects in space, and performing anti-satellite actions. Its former region of the southeast was reassigned to the 31st and 32d Air Divisions. As the 14th Aerospace Force, the command supervised the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) network of Radars along

9628-613: The north just over the China-Burma border. However, by late 1944, the road still did not reach China; by this time, tonnage airlifted over the Hump to China had significantly expanded with the arrival of more modern transport aircraft. In late 1944, barely two years after Stilwell accepted responsibility for building the Ledo Road, it connected to the Burma Road though some sections of the road beyond Myitkyina at Hukawng Valley were under repair due to heavy monsoon rains. It became

9744-617: The original 100 fighters China had purchased for use by the Flying Tigers; the P-40E Warhawks had been flown from India to China in May 1942 as part of the 23rd Fighter Group , attached to the AVG to gain experience and provide continuity to the takeover of operations of the AVG. Both fighters were good medium-altitude day fighters, with their best performance between 15,000 and 18,000 feet, and they were excellent ground-strafing aircraft. The 11th Bombardment Squadron (Medium), consisting of

9860-499: The overwhelming war-winning value of this road, and, in any case, I believed it was starting from the wrong place. The American amphibious strategy in the Pacific, of hopping from island to island would, I was sure, bring much quicker results than an overland advance across Asia with a Chinese army yet to be formed. In any case, if the road was to be really effective, its feeder railway should start from Rangoon, not Calcutta. After Burma

9976-668: The peripheral areas of the country. These dialects include: Arakanese in Rakhine State and Marma in Bangladesh are also sometimes considered dialects of Burmese and sometimes as separate languages. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among Burmese dialects, as they share a common set of tones, consonant clusters, and written script. However, several Burmese dialects differ substantially from standard Burmese with respect to vocabulary, lexical particles, and rhymes. Spoken Burmese

10092-649: The population in Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking territory, from the Irrawaddy Delta to upriver in the north, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay), and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking. The language shift has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon–Burmese bilingual populations in

10208-620: The project "an immense, laborious task, unlikely to be finished until the need for it has passed". The British Field Marshal William Slim who commanded the British Fourteenth Army in India/Burma wrote of the Ledo Road: I agreed with Stilwell that the road could be built. I believed that, properly equipped and efficiently led, Chinese troops could defeat Japanese if, as would be the case with his Ledo force, they had

10324-612: The railheads to the Army fronts, three all-weather roads were constructed in record time during the autumn (fall) of 1943: Ledo Road in the north across three nations, which went on to connect to the Burma Road and supply China; the campaign-winning Central Front road within India from Dimapur to Imphal ; and the southern road from Dohazari south of Chittagong in British India for the advance of troops to Arakan in Myanmar. In

10440-425: The region. Standardized tone marking in written Burmese was not achieved until the 18th century. From the 19th century onward, orthographers created spellers to reform Burmese spelling, because of ambiguities that arose over transcribing sounds that had been merged. British rule saw continued efforts to standardize Burmese spelling through dictionaries and spellers. Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout

10556-416: The road going further to Pangsau Pass on India-Myanmar having restricted civilian access. From Pangsau to Tanai was a mud track, from Tanai to Myitkyina was a wide compacted-earth road maintained by a commercial plantation company, the road section from Myitkyina to China border was reconstructed by a Chinese company, from China border to Kunmin is a 6 lane highway. Since the beginning of the 21st century,

10672-476: The road may be useful to militants in North East India who have hideouts in Myanmar. In 2010 the BBC described the road as such: "Much of the road has been swallowed up by jungle. It is barely passable on foot and is considered too dangerous to use by many because of the presence of Burmese and Indian ethnic insurgents in the area....At present the road from Myitkyina to the Chinese border – along with

10788-493: The road. After the initial section to Shingbwiyang, more sections followed: Warazup , Myitkyina, and Bhamo , 600 km (370 mi) from Ledo. At that point the road joined a spur of the old Burma road and, although improvements to further sections followed, the road was passable. The spur passed through Namkham 558 km (347 mi) from Ledo and finally at the Mong-Yu road junction, 748 km (465 mi) from Ledo,

10904-401: The rules for locals in these border areas do not necessarily apply to westerners. The governments of both countries keep careful watch on the presence of westerners in the border areas and the land border is officially closed. Those who cross without permission risk arrest or problems with smugglers/insurgents in the area. As of 2022, the road from Ledo to Nampong in India was a paved road, with

11020-459: The seven B-25s flown in from India, made up the bomber section of Chennault's command. These seven B-25C Mitchells were the remnants of an original 12 sent from India. Four were lost on a bombing mission en route and a fifth developed mechanical problems such that it was grounded and used for spare parts. The AVG was disbanded on 4 July 1942, simultaneous with the activation of the 23rd FG. Its personnel were offered USAAF commissions but only five of

11136-764: The spoken form or a combination of the spoken and simpler, less ornate formal forms. The following sample sentence reveals that differences between literary and spoken Burmese mostly occur in affixes: Burmese has politeness levels and honorifics that take the speaker's status and age in relation to the audience into account. The suffix ပါ pa is frequently used after a verb to express politeness. Moreover, Burmese pronouns relay varying degrees of deference or respect. In many instances, polite speech (e.g., addressing teachers, officials, or elders) employs feudal-era third person pronouns or kinship terms in lieu of first- and second-person pronouns. Furthermore, with regard to vocabulary choice, spoken Burmese clearly distinguishes

11252-448: The traditional homeland of Burmese speakers. The 1891 Census of India , conducted five years after the annexation of the entire Konbaung Kingdom , found that the former kingdom had an "unusually high male literacy" rate of 62.5% for Upper Burmans aged 25 and above. For all of British Burma , the literacy rate was 49% for men and 5.5% for women (by contrast, British India more broadly had a male literacy rate of 8.44%). The expansion of

11368-573: The troops engaged in attacking the Japanese 18th Division , which was defending the northern area of Burma with their strongest forces around the towns of Kamaing , Mogaung , and Myitkyina . Before the Ledo road reached Shingbwiyang, Allied troops (the majority of whom were American-trained Chinese divisions of the X Force ) had been totally dependent on supplies flown in over the Patkai Range. As

11484-425: The underlying orthography . From the 1500s onward, Burmese kingdoms saw substantial gains in the populace's literacy rate , which manifested itself in greater participation of laymen in scribing and composing legal and historical documents, domains that were traditionally the domain of Buddhist monks, and drove the ensuing proliferation of Burmese literature , both in terms of genres and works. During this period,

11600-547: The varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties, the verb ပေး ('to give') is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly used in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct. More distinctive non-standard varieties emerge as one moves farther away from

11716-476: The war, with a total tonnage of 650,000 tons compared to 147,000 for the Ledo Road. By the time supplies were flowing over the Ledo Road in large quantities, operations in other theaters had shaped the course of the war against Japan. When flying over the Hukawng Valley during the monsoon, Mountbatten asked his staff the name of the river below them. An American officer replied, "That's not a river, it's

11832-466: The wide circulation of legal texts, royal chronicles , and religious texts. A major reason for the uniformity of the Burmese language was the near-universal presence of Buddhist monasteries (called kyaung ) in Burmese villages. These kyaung served as the foundation of the pre-colonial monastic education system, which fostered uniformity of the language throughout the Upper Irrawaddy valley,

11948-410: The word "television", Burmese publications are mandated to use the term ရုပ်မြင်သံကြား (lit. 'see picture, hear sound') in lieu of တယ်လီဗီးရှင်း , a direct English transliteration. Another example is the word "vehicle", which is officially ယာဉ် [jɪ̃̀] (derived from Pali) but ကား [ká] (from English car ) in spoken Burmese. Some previously common English loanwords have fallen out of use with

12064-539: Was a United States Army Air Forces combat air force activated in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of World War II. It primarily fought in China. After World War II Fourteenth Air Force subsequently served Air Defense Command , Continental Air Command , and the Air Force Reserve (AFR). 14 AF was commanded by Major General Stephen N. Whiting . Its Command Chief Master Sergeant was Chief Master Sergeant Patrick F. McMahon . On 20 December 2019,

12180-690: Was a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Space Command (AFSPC). It was headquartered at Vandenberg Air Force Base , California. The command was responsible for the organization, training, equipping, command and control, and employment of Air Force space forces to support operational plans and missions for U.S. combatant commanders and their subordinate components and was the Air Force Component to U.S. Strategic Command for space operations. Established on 5 March 1943 at Kunming , China, 14 AF

12296-405: Was activated on 20 January 1966, at Gunter AFB , Alabama as part of Air Defense Command with the inactivation of its organization of Air Defense Sectors. Its area of responsibility was essentially the same as its 1948 region, with its region shifted slightly west to include New Mexico. Eastern North and South Carolina were under the activated First Air Force. On 16 January 1968 Air Defense Command

12412-579: Was again re-designated Fourteenth Air Force on 1 December 1985, and inactivated on 1 July 1993. On 1 July 1993, 14 AF returned to its former space role and became a Numbered Air Force for Air Force Space Command , responsible for performing space operations. In 1997, 14 AF established the Space Operations Center at Vandenberg AFB in California for the 24-hour command and control of all space operations resources. In 2002, 14 AF became

12528-414: Was built by 15,000 American soldiers (60 percent of whom were African-Americans) and 35,000 local workers at an estimated cost of US$ 150 million (or $ 2 billion 2017). The costs also included the loss of over 1,100 Americans lives, as many died during the construction, as well as the loss of many locals' lives. The human cost of the 1,079 mile road was therefore described as "A Man A Mile" . As most of Burma

12644-410: Was in Japanese hands it was not possible to acquire information as to the topography , soils, and river behaviour before construction started. This information had to be acquired as the road was constructed. General Stilwell had organized a 'Service of Supply' (SOS) under the command of Major General Raymond A. Wheeler , a high-profile US Army engineer and assigned him to look after the construction of

12760-453: Was intended to be the primary supply route to China and was built under the direction of General Stilwell from the railhead at Ledo, Assam , in India, to Mong-Yu road junction where it joined the Burma Road . From there trucks could continue on to Wanting on the Chinese frontier, so that supplies could be delivered to the reception point in Kunming , China. Stilwell's staff estimated that

12876-499: Was liberated, the road gradually fell into disrepair. In 1955 the Oxford-Cambridge Overland Expedition drove from London to Singapore and back. They followed the road from Ledo to Myitkyina and beyond (but not to China). The book First Overland written about this expedition by Tim Slessor (1957) reported that bridges were down in the section between Pangsau Pass and Shingbwiyang. In February 1958

12992-549: Was re-activated on 24 May 1946 at Orlando Army Air Base (later, AFB) , Florida. It was originally assigned to provide air defense over a wide region of the Southeast United States along the border of North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma, including Texas south to the Rio Grande . In addition to the command and control of the active Air Force interceptor and radar units in its region, it also became

13108-434: Was re-designated Aerospace Defense Command (ADCOM) as part of a restructuring of USAF air defense forces. The command was re designated as Fourteenth Aerospace Force on 1 July 1968 and moved to Ent AFB , Colorado, absorbing the resources of the 9th Aerospace Defense Division . As part of ADCOM's new emphasis on defenses against Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and Submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBMs),

13224-818: Was recalled to active duty in the USAAF on 15 April 1942 in the grade of Major General. Chennault was told that he would have to be satisfied with command of a China Air Task Force of fighters and bombers as part of the Tenth Air Force . Its mission was to defend the aerial supply operation over the Himalayan mountains between India and China – nicknamed the Hump – and to provide air support for Chinese ground forces. Bissell had been promoted to brigadier general with one day's seniority to Chennault in order to command all American air units in China as Stillwell's Air Commander (in August 1942 he became commanding general of

13340-495: Was to control and exploit space for global and theater operations, thereby ensuring U.S. warfighters were supported by the best space capabilities available. In 2005, 14 AF officially opened up its newly renovated operations center. The new command and control capabilities of the Joint Space Operations Center ensured unity of effort for all space capabilities supporting joint military operations around

13456-748: Was very wide and well used but unpaved. In China, he found World War II trenches in Songshan in Yunnan province which was a site of fierce battles between Japanese defenders and Chinese attackers in June 1944, and a brass relief honoring Chinese and American soldiers in Tengchong in Yunnan. A post went viral in Philippines in 2019 which showed the current picture of 24-zigzag hairpin turns of Stilwell road on

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