Royal Burmese Army including:
80-544: Hanthawaddy Army including foreign mercenaries (1534–1539) 1534–1535 vs. Pegu: 4,000 1535–1536 vs. Pegu: 6,000 1536–1537 vs. Pegu: 7,000 1538–1539 vs. Pegu: 7,000 1538–1539 (Pegu): 12,000 The Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War (1534–1541) ( Burmese : တောင်ငူ–ဟံသာဝတီ စစ် (၁၅၃၄–၁၅၄၁) ) was a military conflict between the Toungoo Kingdom , and the Hanthawaddy Kingdom and its allies
160-565: 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
240-645: A second language by another 10 million people, including ethnic minorities in Myanmar like the Mon and also by those in neighboring countries. In 2022, the Burmese-speaking population was 38.8 million. Burmese 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
320-503: A stratagem to create a split in the Hanthawaddy camp. Takayutpi foolishly believed Toungoo's misinformation about the loyalty of the two ministers, who had been his tutors since childhood and were absolutely devoted to him, and executed them. When Toungoo again invaded in late 1538, Takayutpi, now without his best generals, lost heart and fled Pegu for Prome Kingdom (Pyay) where another brother-in-law of his, Narapati of Prome ,
400-562: 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 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
480-517: A complete blockade on the seven Portuguese ships guarding the harbor. The Toungoo command tried to complete the blockade about a month into the siege by sending in 300 war boats to storm the harbor but the venture ended badly, with most boats destroyed by the guns of the Portuguese ships. For the next few months, Toungoo forces continued the siege from afar but the Toungoo command was concerned by
560-731: A decimated force, Takayutpi urged his allies– the king of Prome and the Confederation of Shan States – to restore him to his throne but they refused. Within the year, the king entered the Irrawaddy delta with a small armed band to collect war elephants. At Ingabin near Maubin he suddenly fell ill and died. Takayutpi was the last Hanthawaddy king who had legitimate or nominal claim over the Lower Burma kingdom founded in 1287. After his death, Saw Binnya, who had been de facto independent since 1534, proclaimed himself king at Martaban. He
640-421: A few hundred cavalry, and a few dozen war elephants and did not yet have access to foreign troops or firearms. Unlike his father Binnya Ran II, King Takayutpi of Hanthawaddy could not organize any retaliatory action. His nominal subordinates in the Irrawaddy delta and Martaban did not send any help. Nonetheless, Pegu's defenses led by two leading ministers of the court, Binnya Law and Binnya Kyan , withstood
720-550: 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
800-674: 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 the Mandalay dialect is its use of the first person pronoun ကျွန်တော် , kya.nau [tɕənɔ̀] by both men and women, whereas in Yangon,
880-467: A shot. The most telling part of the state of disarray of the once powerful kingdom was that Takayutpi and his armies chose to retreat to Prome, another kingdom, rather than to their own territory of Martaban whose ruler Takayutpi simply did not trust. The course of retreat was through the Irrawaddy delta. The direct route from Pegu to Prome, though much shorter, involved crossing the Bago Yoma range, and
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#1732776864332960-410: A son of King Binnya Ran II of Hanthawaddy. He was only 15 when he succeeded the throne. He ascended the throne three days after his father's death. The throne was first succeeded by the heir-apparent Prince Yazadipati at mid-morning but he died mysteriously in the same afternoon. Unlike his father, considered one of ablest kings of the coastal kingdom, the young king never took an interest in running
1040-541: A sovereign, had declared himself king of Hanthawaddy since the death of Takayutpi. Tabinshwehti sent an ultimatum to Martaban and its vassals to submit in exchange for amnesty but Saw Binnya refused. He had fortified the wealthy port, and enlisted Portuguese mercenaries and seven warships led by Paulo de Seixas , guarded the harbor. Martaban's vassals wavered. The governor of Moulmein did not submit to Tabinshwehti but agreed not to provide any help to Martaban. In November 1540, 13,000-strong Toungoo land and naval forces attacked
1120-466: 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
1200-425: A vassal of Ava, raided Hanthawaddy's territory, taking advantage of the larger kingdom's succession crisis. But Hanthawaddy's new king Binnya Ran II retaliated by laying siege to Toungoo in 1495–1496. Toungoo barely survived the siege; Mingyi Nyo , viceroy of Toungoo , would not provoke the larger neighbor for the remainder of his life. After he declared independence from Ava in 1510, Mingyi Nyo largely stayed out of
1280-528: 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: Takayutpi Thushin Takayutpi ( သုရှင်တကာရွတ်ပိ , pronounced [θṵʃɪ̀ɰ̃ dəɡàjʊʔpḭ] , or Taka Yut Pi or Taka Rat Pi ; 1511–1539)
1360-762: Is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar , where it is the official language , lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar , the country's principal ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Chittagong Hill Tracts ( Rangamati , Bandarban , Khagrachari , Cox's Bazar ) in Bangladesh, and in Mizoram state in India. The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as
1440-442: 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
1520-584: 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
1600-638: 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/
1680-491: 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
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#17327768643321760-588: 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
1840-527: 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
1920-618: 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
2000-652: The Irrawaddy River Valley, use a number of largely similar dialects, while a minority speak non-standard dialects found in 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
2080-675: 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
2160-534: 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
2240-457: The Myanmar language in English, though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese , after Burma —a name with co-official status that had historically been predominantly used for the country. Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca . In 2007, it was spoken as a first language by 33 million. Burmese is spoken as
2320-487: The Prome Kingdom and the Confederation of Shan States that took place in present-day Lower Burma (Myanmar) between 1534 and 1541. In a series of improbable events, the upstart Burmese -speaking kingdom defeated the Mon -speaking Hanthawaddy, the most prosperous and powerful of all post- Pagan kingdoms before the war. In the following years, Toungoo used the newly acquired kingdom's wealth and manpower to reunify
2400-614: 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
2480-753: 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 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
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2560-413: 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
2640-457: 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
2720-410: 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
2800-526: 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
2880-557: 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
2960-688: 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
3040-469: 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
3120-611: The Confederation. The war began in late 1534 when a landlocked Toungoo led by Tabinshwehti and his deputy Bayinnaung , tried to break out of its increasingly narrow zone by launching a preemptive war against a weakly led Hanthawaddy. In the beginning, Toungoo's maneuvers amounted to mere raids of Hanthawaddy territory, and its initial dry-season raids in 1534–1535, 1535–1536, and 1536–1537 all failed against Pegu's fortified defenses aided by foreign mercenaries and firearms. In each campaign, Toungoo armies had only 6000 to 7000 men,
3200-421: The Hanthawaddy army before they got inside the fortified walls of Prome. They knew that a large body of enemy inside walls with better leadership would pose a major problem for their tenuous hold on Lower Burma. Tabinshwehti sent Bayinnaung with a small army to chase the retreating army while he sailed up to Prome with his flotilla of war boats to chase Takayutpi's flotilla. Bayinnaung's light troops caught up with
3280-497: 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 the Irrawaddy River valley. For instance, for the term ဆွမ်း , "food offering [to
Toungoo–Hanthawaddy War - Misplaced Pages Continue
3360-610: The Irrawaddy river, Toungoo was tucked away behind the Pegu Yoma range and was not connected to Upper Burma by any major water way, presenting a difficult logistical challenge for potential invaders. Meanwhile, refugees continued to flee to Toungoo, still the only kingdom unaffected by war. The little principality now commanded considerably more manpower than its traditional base allowed for, and it would soon punch above its weight. The Toungoo leadership decided that their kingdom "had to act quickly if it wished to avoid being swallowed up" by
3440-479: 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
3520-491: 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
3600-556: The city for himself and his entire family, together with his treasures. It too was rejected by the Burmese king. In desperation, Saw Binnya appealed to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa for assistance, offering to become a vassal of Goa, in addition to an outright gift of half the amount of his treasure. The Portuguese were interested. A Portuguese captain listed the treasure as consisting of two shiploads of gold and silver, and 26 chests of precious stones. In addition, gold to be looted from
3680-420: The city's pagodas would fill 4 ships. But the Portuguese also feared the vengeance of Tabinshwehti, the new power in Lower Burma, and "wavered between greed and prudence". At the same time, Saw Binnya offered a large bribe to Caeiro to help him and his family escape. Caeiro seriously considered the overly generous offer but ultimately declined the offer as his deputies found out the proposal and threatened to report
3760-497: The city, the defenders fought on, with Saw Binnya personally leading the fight on his war elephant. But they were soon overwhelmed. The sack raged for three days. Tabinshwehti ordered the execution of the viceroy, his family, and all the "gallant" defenders for they had refused his prior offer of amnesty. The mass execution had the desired effect. The governors of Moulmein (Mawlaymyaing) and southern territories (present-day Mon State ), abutting then Siamese frontier submitted. The war
3840-486: The city. Although the Confederation was content to keep Prome as a vassal, the Toungoo leadership was concerned that their city east of Prome on the same latitude, separated only by the Pegu Yoma range, was an "obvious next target." Fortunately for Toungoo, the Confederation was distracted by the leadership change after its principal leader Sawlon of Mohnyin was assassinated in 1533. Moreover, Toungoo's remote hard-to-reach location proved an asset. Unlike Prome, which sits on
3920-405: The city. Toungoo forces now included 700 Portuguese mercenaries led by João Caeiro (Joano Cayeyro) who brought light artillery and muskets. However, the wealthy port's strong fortifications backed by Portuguese artillery and musket fire kept besiegers at bay. Toungoo's light Portuguese artillery proved "useless against ramparts backed by earthwork," and its "navy" of small war boats could not impose
4000-525: 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
4080-408: The confederation. Tabinshwehti and his court selected Hanthawaddy as their first target because its king Takayutpi was a weak leader who did not command respect of his vassals. Takayutpi's brother-in-law Saw Binnya practically ruled Martaban region like a sovereign, and scarcely acknowledged the high king at Pegu (Bago). Takayutpi in turned made an alliance with the Prome Kingdom , a vassal of
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#17327768643324160-604: 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
4240-669: 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
4320-453: The fast approaching rainy season. Even though the first naval attack failed, Adm. Smim Payu convinced Tabinshwehti, who was personally leading the siege, that their best chance for a breakthrough still lay in another naval attack. The king accepted the plan. The admiral went up the Salween river with thousands of men, and built two types of rafts. One type contained bamboo towers higher than
4400-452: The fighting raging between Ava and the Confederation of Shan States . When Ava fell to the combined forces of the Confederation and Prome in 1527, many people fled to Toungoo, the only region in Upper Burma at peace. But Toungoo could not stay out of the warfare forever. War arrived uncomfortably close to Toungoo in 1532–1533 when the Confederation of Shan States, already ruling much of Upper Burma, attacked its erstwhile ally Prome, and sacked
4480-598: 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
4560-479: The former Ava Kingdom , finally took notice. When Toungoo's armies later attacked its vassal Prome, the Confederation sent in troops and broke the siege. Toungoo retreated but soon gained the allegiance of many Mon lords, and manpower after Hanthawaddy's king Takayutpi died a few months later. Toungoo now held two out of the three Hanthawaddy provinces (the Irrawaddy delta and Pegu) but Martaban remained independent. The viceroy of Martaban, who had always acted like
4640-421: The history of Southeast Asia. Moreover, Toungoo's success in breaking out of an increasingly narrow dry zone not only saved the only remaining ethnic Burman-led kingdom from extinction but also ensured the continued rise of Burman culture and Burmese language in the Irrawaddy valley. Burmese language Burmese ( Burmese : မြန်မာဘာသာ ; MLCTS : Mranma bhasa ; pronounced [mjəmà bàθà] )
4720-522: 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
4800-884: The kingdom. He "never looked at a book; he gave himself up for sport in the woods with elephants and horses; he searched for shellfish and crabs; he was like one witless". He was not respected by his vassals. His brother-in-law Saw Binnya ruled the province of Martaban (Mottama) like a sovereign. Takayutpi's weak leadership gave an opening to Toungoo's ambitious king Tabinshwehti and his deputy Gen. Bayinnaung . Beginning in 1534, Toungoo began annual dry-season raids into Hanthawaddy territory. Saw Binnya did not send any help to Takayutpi. Toungoo could not make headway against Pegu's fortified defenses led by two experienced ministers ( Binnya Law and Binnya Kyan ) and aided by foreign mercenaries with guns. By 1537, Peguan defenses had successfully repulsed Toungoo's three consecutive annual invasions. Unable to break Peguan defenses, Toungoo finally used
4880-515: 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
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#17327768643324960-496: The main Hanthawaddy armies led by Gen. Binnya Dala and Gen. Minye Aung Naing near Naungyo in the Irrawaddy delta. Bayinnaung nonetheless defeated the numerically superior and better armed force. Only a small portion of the Hanthawaddy forces made it to Prome. A decimated Hanthawaddy was no longer in a position to retake the lost territories from Toungoo. After Pegu's improbable fall, the Shan Confederation, which ruled
5040-409: The matter to Tabinshwehti. While Saw Binnya was exhausting all his options, the Toungoo command was determined to sack the city before the rainy season. In May 1541, seven months into the siege, Smim Payu launched the second attack on the harbor. Several fire-rafts "with flames higher than a toddy tree" came floating down the river toward the Portuguese ships. Three of the seven Portuguese ships fled to
5120-589: 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
5200-500: The raids. Toungoo used a stratagem to create a split in the Hanthawaddy camp, providing misinformation about the loyalty of the ministers. Surprisingly, Takayutpi believed Toungoo's misinformation, and executed the ministers who had been his tutors since childhood and were absolutely devoted to him. Then when Toungoo launched another invasion in late 1538, with 7000 troops, Takayutpi was helpless, and decided to evacuate his capital rather than fight. Toungoo forces took Pegu without firing
5280-425: 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
5360-510: 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 the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties,
5440-402: The sea. The remaining four ships were either burned or captured. Then the rafts with mounted bamboo towers, crammed with troops and musketeers, slipped past the wreckage, and made it to the wall by the harbor. The Toungoo troops, who were exchanging musket fire with the defenders on the wall, then jumped over the wall and soon won a foothold. A section of the wall was mined and brought down. Inside
5520-764: 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
5600-448: 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
5680-425: 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,
5760-725: The various petty states that had existed since the fall of Pagan Empire in 1287. Since its founding in 1279 as an outpost of the Pagan Kingdom , Toungoo, located in a remote, hard-to-reach corner east of the Pegu Yoma (Bago Yoma) range, had always been a troublesome province for its overlord. During the Ava period, its governors and viceroys raised multiple rebellions (1427–1428, 1437–1442, 1451–1458, and 1468–1470), each time with clandestine or open help from Hanthawaddy, which wanted to keep Ava unstable. Ironically, Toungoo would repay by attacking Hanthawaddy itself. Circa 1494, Toungoo, then still
5840-462: 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 the Irrawaddy River valley toward peripheral areas of
5920-456: The walls of the port. The others were fire-rafts. While Toungoo forces prepared for the final assault, the city was starving. Saw Binnya finally offered to surrender provided that he be allowed to remain viceroy in exchange for an annual tribute of 30,000 viss (48,987.9 kg) of silver bullion and other valuable presents. Tabinshwehti rejected the offer, demanding an unconditional surrender instead. Saw Binnya then asked for safe-conduct out of
6000-466: 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,
6080-410: 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
6160-405: Was a crucial turning point in the history of Myanmar as well as in the history of mainland Southeast Asia. Toungoo's victory gave the upstart kingdom complete control of coastal Lower Burma's manpower, access to foreign firearms and maritime wealth to pay for them. Toungoo kings would leverage these newfound assets for further expansions in the remainder of the century, and build the largest empire in
6240-402: Was king of Hanthawaddy Pegu from 1526 to 1539. At his accession, the 15-year-old inherited the most prosperous and powerful kingdom of all post- Pagan kingdoms. But he never had control of his vassals who scarcely acknowledged him. A dozen years later, due to the young king's inexperience and mismanagement, the Mon -speaking kingdom founded in 1287 fell to a smaller Toungoo . Taka Yut Pi was
6320-460: Was king. (He did not retreat to Martaban, which was nominally still part of Hanthawaddy because he did not trust its governor Saw Binnya.) Toungoo took the capital city of Pegu without firing a shot. On their flight to Prome, his demoralized forces, though far superior in numbers, were defeated by Bayinnaung's smaller but better disciplined forces at the Battle of Naungyo . Having reached Prome with
6400-420: Was not practical for large armies. Takayutpi divided the retreating Hanthawaddy forces into two. Five divisions of the army marched by land. Takayutpi and the remaining troops sailed by river in 700 boats. At Pegu, Tabinshwehti and his deputy Bayinnaung well understood that they had gained Pegu only through a ruse, and that Hanthawaddy's military had not been defeated yet. Their top priority was to meet and defeat
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