Burmese language

Burmese
Myanmar language
မြန်မာဘာသာ, Mranma bhasa
Pronunciation	[mjəmà bàθà]
Native to	Myanmar Thailand China (Dehong) India (Mizoram, Manipur and Tripura) Bangladesh (Chittagong)
Speakers	L1: 33 million (2007)[1] L2: 10 million (no date)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Lolo-Burmese Burmish Burmese
Early forms	Old Burmese Middle Burmese
Writing system	Myanmar Mon–Burmese script Burmese Braille
Official status
Official language in	Myanmar
Regulated by	Myanmar Language Commission
Language codes
ISO 639-1	my
ISO 639-2	bur (B) mya (T)
ISO 639-3	mya – inclusive code Individual codes: mya – Myanmar int – Intha tco – Taungyo rki – Rakhine rmz – Marma Tay – Tavoyan dialects
Glottolog	mran1234
Linguasphere	77-AAA-a
Areas where Burmese is spoken (dark blue signifies areas where it is more widely spoken). This map does not indicate whether the language is a majority or minority.

This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.

Burmese (Burmese: မြန်မာဘာသာ; MLCTS: Mranma bhasa; pronounced [mjəmà bàθà]) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Myanmar,^[2] where it is the official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Bamar, the country's largest ethnic group. Burmese is also spoken by the indigenous tribes in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts, India's Mizoram state, and the Burmese diaspora. The Constitution of Myanmar officially refers to it as the Myanmar language in English,^[3] though most English speakers continue to refer to the language as Burmese, after Burma—a name with co-official status until 1989 (see Names of Myanmar). Burmese is the most widely-spoken language in the country, where it serves as the lingua franca.^[4] In 2019, Burmese was spoken by 42.9 million people globally, including by 32.9 million speakers as a first language, and an additional 10 million speakers as a second language.^[5][2] A 2023 World Bank survey found that 80% of the country's population speaks Burmese.^[6]

Burmese is a tonal, pitch-register, and syllable-timed language,^[7] largely monosyllabic and agglutinative with a subject–object–verb word order. Burmese is distinguished from other major Southeast Asian languages by its extensive case marking system and rich morphological inventory.^[8][9] 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.