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85-586: The Shan State Army ( Burmese : ရှမ်းပြည်တပ်မတော် ; abbreviated SSA ) was one of the largest insurgent groups that fought government forces in Shan State , Myanmar (Burma). The SSA was founded in 1964 after the merging of two existing insurgent groups. The SSA recruited and trained thousands of local Shan people to join their ranks. Although their initial purpose was to fight for autonomy in Shan State, their battle had extended to fighting against

170-565: 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

255-456: A blouse, a jacket, a longyi that covers the knees, a turban, and two large, conical shaped hair pins. Both men and women pin a Pa'O flag badge on to their jacket. It represents the Zawgyi and dragon from their origin story. Men use a large red sling bag to carry knives, hoes or long choppers. Women use a cane or bamboo sling basket. Those from lower Myanmar wear Burmese style clothing. To initiate

340-561: A democratic government. In addition, SSA cooperated with Adrian Cowell 's film, "The Warlords of the Golden Triangle" & "The Opium War" for its purpose to expose the situation of the opium trade in Shan State and call for end to military government, which SSA believed will also end illegal opium trade. Despite these efforts by SSA, nothing effective had been done. Chao Tzang Yawnghwe deplores in his memoir, "I cannot but feel that very few people are genuinely interested in seeking

425-753: A ethnic minority living in Myanmar , with a population of roughly 1,200,000. Other names of the Pa-O include PaU, PhyaU, Piao, Taungthu, Taungsu, Tongsu and Kula. The Pa'O settled in the Thaton region of present-day Myanmar around 1700 BC. Historically, the Pa'O wore colourful clothing until King Anawratha defeated the Mon King, Makuta of Thaton (also called Mahua). The Pa'O were enslaved and forced to wear indigo-dyed clothing to signify their status. The Pa'O people are

510-922: A faction that broke away formed Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), or Restoration Council of Shan State/ Shan State Army in 1996. However, in 2011 SSA-S signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government. Although the Burmese government accomplished in signing a ceasefire with two of the largest armed rebel forces in the Shan State, there still has been reports of clashes. According to the Shan Human Rights Foundation, in October 2014, shells were fired in villages of Shan State, which caused over 180 villagers to evacuate. Between 1996 and 2001, there have been reports of 173 sexual assaults in Shan state by Burmese troops and between 1996 and 1998, 300,000 villagers had relocated. Burmese language Burmese

595-550: 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

680-556: A marriage, first the young man's parents ask the young woman's parents for the hand of their daughter in marriage on behalf or their son. Her parents can take four or five days to discuss their daughter's wishes. According to custom, guests at the marriage ceremony tie cotton threads around the wrists of both the bridegroom and bride, joining them together while blessing the couple with their best wishes. Common presents include money, farmland, houses, buffaloes, male cows and household items. Villagers take care of funeral arrangements. The body

765-466: A new organization to fight against communism. Communist Party of Burma (CPB) have been active along the borders of Kachin and Shan with China since 1967. They became a threat to the SSA from the early 1970s, as they operated exclusively in the lowlands and delta regions and by the mid-1970s, it had occupied the town on Shan-Chinese border, Kiu-khok or Wanting, and other places, in total 15,000 square miles of

850-412: A solution especially when governments and international agencies have shown very little willingness to tackle the problem at its source, that is, in Shan State." He also explains the situation as "a goose that lays golden eggs-- enriching, on the one hand, the drug syndicates and traffickers and on the other providing multi-national and international bureaucracies with more jobs, funds and good living." As

935-466: 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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1020-721: A tax-paying sub-province of Burma. In 1941, Aung San left Burma for Japan with his colleagues, and received military training by the Imperial Japanese Army to fight against the British. He returned in 1942 with the Japanese Army and successfully pushed the British away to India. In 1945, he went against the Japanese under the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). After the war ended,

1105-524: 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: Pa-O The Pa'O ( Burmese : ပအိုဝ်းလူမျိုး , IPA: [pəo̰ lùmjóʊ] , or တောင်သူ ; Shan : ပဢူဝ်း ; Eastern Poe Karen: တံင်သူ; S'gaw Karen : တီသူ ; also spelt Pa-O or Paoh ) are

1190-643: 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

1275-666: Is celebrated on the full moon day of Tabaung , which falls in March. The National Day is a day to remember ancestors and past leaders, such as King Suriya Janthar , whose birthday is also celebrated on National Day. There is a grand parade through Taunggyi followed by a festival. The majority of Pa'O people follow Buddhism , which means that most of their festivals are based on Buddhist festival days. Some Pa'O are Christian , and some maintain Animist beliefs. Poy Sang Long ( Burmese : ရှင်ပြုပွဲ ; Pa'O: ပွယ်ꩻသျင်ႏလောင်ꩻ ) celebrates

1360-413: Is kept for a couple of nights at home. Food is cooked to offer to the monks and people play card games as a way of giving constant companionship to the departed. After two or three days, the family give praise to the person who died. Common people are buried, while monks are cremated. Khun Thar Doon (1940–1978) was one of the early recording stars of Pa'O music. He set up the first Pa'O modern band in

1445-442: 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

1530-759: 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

1615-549: Is the number two opium producer in the world. Armed forces, such as the Burma Army and Shan resistance groups, as well as local villagers, are engaged in production and trafficking of narcotics. Shan State has a vast share of opium production and in 1974, it produced a third of illegal opium in the world. With concerns towards the growing opium in the black market and increasing addiction among local villagers, SSA announced proposals to tackle opium trade in Shan State. The first

1700-584: 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

1785-638: 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/

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1870-491: 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

1955-588: 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

2040-527: 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

2125-640: The Communist Party of Burma (CPB), Kuomintang soldiers sponsored by the CIA in Myanmar, and opium smugglers in Shan State. The SSA however, could not fulfill its goals, and in 1976 it dissolved. It would later become the basis for the Shan State Army - North and the Shan State Army - South , but the SSA was not directly linked to either group. Resistance by the Shan State can be traced back to

2210-618: 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

2295-723: 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

2380-534: 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

2465-614: 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

2550-566: 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

2635-725: The Union of Burma . Until the late 1950s, the signatories of the Panglong Agreement - Shan, Kachin, Karenni and Chin- cooperated with U Nu. However, uprisings among ethnic groups continued. Within Shan State, there was the Pa-O of southern Shan state who began as a group supporting the Karen, but later by early 1950s became a movement against the Shan princes. Meanwhile, Chinese Nationalists (KMT) forces encamped on eastern Shan after being retreated from China. They built up strong forces with

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2720-413: 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

2805-457: 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

2890-470: 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

2975-560: The Army’s political wing, Shan State Progress Party (SSPP) was formed to tackle the problems the SSA faced. The Shan Unity Preparatory Committee (SUPC) was also formed to unite other Shan rebel groups. It planned to merge SSA with SSA/East, which TNA renamed itself, and the Shan National Independence Army (SNIA), which Noom Suk Harn renamed itself. However, it did not work out, as SNIA collapsed, and its leader set up

3060-471: 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

3145-557: 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

3230-439: The Burma Army was in 1959, when Shan resistance groups captured the town Tangyan , and after a week of fierce battle, the rebels scattered into small armed bands all over Shan State. Former university students broke away from Noom Suk Harn and established Shan State Independence Army (SSIA) in 1961, together with Shan National United Front (SNUF). Elections were held in 1960 and Prime Minister U Nu came back in power. However, this

3315-464: The Burma Army, CPB, other rebels and drug trade. As a result, SSA collapsed in the mid-1976. About 4,000 soldiers switched loyalty to the CPB and others joined other rebel forces. Later, SSPP reformed a pro-communist army known as Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) and continued its fight, until the fall of CPB in 1989, when it signed the ceasefire agreement with the Burmese government. In opposition to ceasefire,

3400-513: The Burmese insisted on the amalgamation of the ethnic groups and independence, and engaged on strikes. Devastated by the war themselves, the British signed an agreement in 1947, promising its independence within a year. Shan State's political status was further degraded from a sub-province to a “tribal area under direct bureaucratic rule”. Burma's independence was accepted by the London Agreement, which Aung San signed in 1947. In terms of

3485-688: 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

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3570-469: 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

3655-857: The CPB and adopted communist ideologies. After Mao Zedong took power in 1949, KMT troops fled to northern Burma and started to establish bases in Shan state with the support of the United States , without permission by the Burmese government. These bases served various purposes, such as “listening posts for Taiwanese and American intelligence from which agents were sent into China; opium storage and refining centres; opium buying stations; storage and distribution points for contraband goods; and private fiefdoms of local commanders”. They occupied about one-third or around 20,000 square miles of Shan state. Many Shan rebels worked with them, and in return obtained arms and ammunition and funds. The business by ex-KMT merchants has still left its legacy in Shan State, as Burma

3740-658: 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

3825-552: 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

3910-654: The Lowland Pa'O, based in Thaton , and the Highland Pa'O, based in Taunggyi . It is believed that there are as many as twenty-four Pa'O subgroups. The Pa'O subgroups are Htee Ree, Jamzam, Jauk Pa'O, Khrai, Khunlon, Khonlontanyar, Kon jam, Loi Ai, Padaung, Pahtom, Pa nae, Pan Nanm, Nan kay, Mickon, Miclan, Ta Kyor, Taret, Tahtwe, Tatauk, Taungthar, Tayam, Ta Noe, Warphrarei and Yin Tai. The Pa'O predominantly cultivate

3995-518: 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

4080-479: 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

4165-610: The Shan State. As holding a position of anti-communist and pro-West, SSA leaders saw the expanding forces of CPB as a problem. As the Burma Army was also fighting against CPB, it came up with a policy in 1963 to combat them by using forces of the ethnic groups on the borders, which was called Ka-kew-ye (KKY) policy. This was to call local rebels to join the KKY forces to fight off CPB, and in return, would be permitted to engage in cross-border trade with Thailand and Laos. Many units of SSA defected to this policy, which led to an internal division in

4250-752: The Shan state rulers in 1963. However, opposition groups did not agree with the military rule which had no plurality in politics and united all groups under Burmese government, therefore, the fight continued. By 1964, there were four major Shan State rebel groups: Following the arrest of Sao Shwe Thaik of Yawnghwe in the Burmese coup d'état in March 1962 by the Revolutionary Council headed by General Ne Win , his wife, Sao Nang Hearn Kham (Mahadevi of Yawnghwe) fled with her family to Thailand in April 1962. Sao Shwe Thaik died in prison in November

4335-549: The Thai border. It aimed to expand its forces to a statewide organization by incorporating other rebel groups. Since its formation, SSA had attracted widespread intellectual and rural support. In 1961, there were no more than 1,500 Shan rebels in total, which by 1969 grew to 7,000 to 9,000. The battles were so fierce that in 1978 20 to 30 casualties were suffered daily by the group in Shan State alone. SSA eventually established four large base areas across Shan state, north to south and on

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4420-491: 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

4505-557: The agreement trusted in Aung San, they were not satisfied with it. The trust did not last long, as Aung San was assassinated on 19 July, the same year. On 4 January 1948, Burma became independent and was ruled by a civilian government led by U Nu . After almost 60 years of British rule, however, it was not in peace, as uprisings by ethnic groups as well as communists erupted. Ethnic groups demanded for succession and independence, as well as autonomy, equal rights and federal democracy within

4590-533: The assistance of the United States , which alerted the Burma Army units to be sent into the Shan State. AFPFL was breaking up internally in the late 1950s and the military started to show its growing power. In 1958, the head of Burma Army, General Ne Win , took power and started a military rule to restore order to the continuous uprisings. During this time, the first Shan resistance organization, Noom Suk Harn, attracted several Shan student activists from Rangoon University . The first fight between these Shan rebels and

4675-417: The beginning of the 1970s. By August 1968, 1,500 insurgents shifted to KKY forces and eventually over 20 KKY units were formed. As the policy boosted drug trade along the borders and increased international criticism against it, KKY policy was abandoned in 1973. Although most Shan rebels were anti-communists, smaller rebel groups, such as Shan Nationalities People's Liberation Organisation (SNPLO), trained with

4760-495: The borderland states, clause 8 was provided for the “early unification of the Frontier Areas with Ministerial Burma” and a Frontier Areas Commission of Enquiry (FACE) was to be set up to hear the wishes of the non-Burmese ethnic groups. On 12 February, Aung San invited the ethnic groups and held a Panglong Conference to agree on their equal rights, which was only signed by Shan, Kachin , Chin and Karenni . The agreement

4845-525: 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

4930-547: The early 1970s. One of his famous songs is "Tee Ree Ree", a song about Pa'O solidarity. This song is still sung at traditional festivals today. He is on the cover of Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma), Vol. 2 . Some of the artists appearing on the compilation cover songs he wrote. Some other artists may include Lashio Thein Aung, Saing Saing Maw, and Khun Paw Yann. Aung Kham Hti

5015-669: 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

5100-598: 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

5185-569: The initiation of young boys as novice monks. On reaching adulthood, being ordained a monk is considered a family celebration. During Buddhist Lent, from August to October, Pa'O youth participate in the Pwe Lip May Bo ( Pa'O: ပွယ်ꩻလေပ်လူႏမေႏဗို; Burmese : မီးကြာလှည့်ပွဲ ) ceremony. On the monthly full-moon nights, new-moon nights, and both half-moon nights, they surround their local temple with lanterns suspended on strings raised by supporting bamboo stands. The bamboo stands are used to carry

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5270-522: 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

5355-481: The lanterns around the temple three times, the candles being lit as they are carried, as a show of respect to Buddha . The Pa'O origin myth states that they are descended from a shaman ( weizza ), and a female dragon. The Pa'O people of upper Myanmar commonly wear black or navy blue. The traditional outfit of the Pa'O consists of a turban, a white shirt, black or navy jacket and long black trousers for men. The women's traditional Pa'O outfit consists of five pieces:

5440-419: The leaves of the thanapet tree , onions, garlic, chili, potatoes, rice, peanuts, beans, sesame seeds, mustard leaves , and green tea. The pwe lu-phaing (Fire Rocket Festival), is celebrated from April to July. The purpose of the festival is to bring ample rain to the villages during the planting season. According to Pa'O tradition, rockets are fired to help the clouds make rain. The village headman determines

5525-515: 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

5610-556: The military regime. Another proposal was "The 1975 Proposals by the Shan State Army jointly with the Shan United Army (SUA) and Shan State Army (East)". It showed concerns to the widespread addiction among Shan people as well as throughout the world. It stressed that opium trade flourishes under anarchism, which explained the situation in Shan State during the time, and proposes that illegal opium trade will end under

5695-599: The period of British rule as “Golden Age”. However, when the Government of Burma Act 1921 was passed, the question of to where Shan principalities and other peripheral areas would belong arose. The British decided to transfer these areas to the Governor of Burma and grouped the principalities together to form the Federated Shan States in 1922. Their status was largely degraded from an almost sovereignty to

5780-668: 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

5865-649: 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

5950-496: The pre-colonial period, when the Shan kingdoms , once largely independent, fell under the power of a Burmese conqueror, Bayinnaung in 1555. Since then, Shan had tributary relations with Burman rulers; however, was never directly ruled by them. Since the British rule in 1886, Shan rulers were placed under the direct rule of the Governor of India as separate sovereignty. As Shan rulers had full control of its internal matters, many recall

6035-425: 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

6120-416: The same year and while in exile his wife participated in the independence struggle of the Shan State. In 1964, Sao Nang Hearn Kham became the leader of SSIA and tried to unify the four rebel factions. However, she could not make Noom Suk Harn and TNA agree for unification, therefore, SNUF merged with SSIA and formed Shan State Army (SSA). The formation took place at the headquarters of SSIA in the mountains near

6205-527: The second largest ethnic group in Shan State . They also reside in Kayin State , Kayah State , Mon State , and Bago Division . Many of the modern day Pa'O have fled to Mae Hong Son Province , in northern Thailand , due to ongoing military conflicts in Myanmar. They are believed to be of Tibeto-Burman lineage, and share the language and culture of the Karen people . They consist of two distinct groups:

6290-524: The size of the rockets. The largest rockets can contain up to 20 kilograms of gunpowder and have a range of 5–6 miles. The rockets, originally made from bamboo, are currently made from iron. Prior to firing, the rocket is carried once around the local temple on someone's shoulder. The festival also demonstrates the unity and friendship among different villages as they gather together for one week. "Pwe" means festival, "Lue" means donation and "Phaing" means to remove sins. Pa'O National Day, or Den See Lar Bway ,

6375-764: 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

6460-574: The struggle became fierce in the Shan State, SSA units in the north approached CPB for support, which CPB responded with military training and arms provision. On the other hand, the SSA in southern Shan opposed to the alliance with CPB, therefore, led to an internal split in SSA- the north and the south. There were further internal divisions, such as in 1966 two units breaking away and setting up their own nationalist front, and external pressures for not being able to unite Shan rebels as more fights intensified with

6545-448: 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

6630-425: 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,

6715-547: 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

6800-531: The west to the bank of Salween River. The highest organ of SSA was the Shan State War Council (SSWC), which composed of: As fighters, local Shan people were recruited. A leadership school was set up in 1969 and taught basic geography and history, basic government, the fundamentals of military organization and operations, intelligence gathering and reporting, political system and theories, and an introduction to international politics. In 1971,

6885-466: 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,

6970-410: 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

7055-483: Was "The 1973 Proposals by the Shan State Army (SSA) with Lo Hsing Han ". Here, it proposed that illegal opium trade should be terminated under international supervision, for example inviting the United States Narcotics Bureau . Shan State sought to find different agro-economic methods to replace opium production under democracy, therefore, asked international support for its resistance against

7140-475: Was short-lived, as on 2 March 1962, General Ne Win came back in power by a coup d’état and continued his military rule. Before the coup d’état, U Nu called ethnic leaders for a meeting to discuss federalism and ethnic rights; however, the next day of the coup, U Nu and other ethnic leaders, including Shan leaders, were arrested. Ne Win thought that federalism would break the union, therefore, did not allow it to happen. Nevertheless, Ne Win called for peace talks with

7225-469: Was that the right of self-government and full autonomy was recognized for Shan and Karenni and autonomous status for Kachin and Chin area. Regarding this conference, Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, a former SSA soldier, writes in his memoir that “it was a rubber-stamp providing Britain with an opportunity to abdicate all responsibilities with respect to the Frontier Areas”. Although the ethnic groups that signed

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