1 Burmese for zero comes from Sanskrit śūnya. 2 Can be abbreviated to IPA:[kʰʊ̀ɰ̃] in list contexts, such as telephone numbers.
Spoken Burmese has innate pronunciation rules that govern numbers when they are combined with another word, be it a numerical place (e.g. tens, hundreds, thousands, etc.) or a measure word.[1]
For one, two, and seven (all of which end in the rhyme [-ɪʔ]), when combined, shift to an open vowel, namely the schwa ([ə])
For three, four, five, and nine which all have the long tone (similar to the first tone in Mandarin Chinese), when combined, the word immediately following it, given that it begins with a consonant, shifts to a voiced consonant (e.g., ၄၀, "40" is pronounced [lézɛ̀], not [lésʰɛ̀]). Other suffixes such as ထောင် ([tʰàʊɰ̃]; thousand), သောင်း ([θáʊɰ̃]; ten thousand), သိန်း ([θéɪɰ̃]; hundred thousand), and သန်း ([θáɰ̃]; million) all shift to ([dàʊɰ̃]; thousand), ([ðáʊɰ̃]; ten thousand), ([ðéɪɰ̃]; hundred thousand), and [ðáɰ̃]; million), respectively.
For six and eight, no pronunciation shift occurs.
These pronunciation shifts are exclusively confined to spoken Burmese and are not spelt any differently.
1 Shifts to voiced consonant following three, four, five, and nine.
2 Athinche (အသင်္ချေ) sometimes could mean "too large to be counted".
Ten to nineteen are almost always expressed without including တစ် (one).
Another pronunciation rule shifts numerical place name (the tens, hundreds and thousands place) from the low tone to the creaky tone.[1]
Number places from 10 (တစ်ဆယ်) up to 107 (ကုဋေ) has increment of 101. Beyond those Number places, larger number places have increment of 107. 1014 (ကောဋိ) up to 10140 (အသင်္ချေ) has increment of 107.
There are totally 27 major number places in Burmese numerals from 1×100 to 10140
Numbers in the tens place: shift from ဆယ် ([sʰɛ̀], low tone) to ဆယ့် ([sʰɛ̰], creaky tone), except in numbers divisible by ten (10, 20, 30, etc.) In typical speech, the shift goes farther to ([sʰɛʔ] or [zɛʔ]).
Numbers in the hundreds place: shift from ရာ ([jà], low tone) to ရာ့ ([ja̰], creaky tone), except for numbers divisible by 100.
Numbers in the thousands place: shift from ထောင် ([tʰàʊɰ̃], low tone) to ထောင့် ([tʰa̰ʊɰ̃], creaky tone), except for numbers divisible by 1000.
Hence, a number like 301 is pronounced [θóʊɰ̃ja̰tɪʔ] (သုံးရာ့တစ်), while 300 is pronounced [θóʊɰ̃jà] (သုံးရာ).
The digits of a number are expressed in order of decreasing digits place. For example, 1,234,567 is expressed as follows (where the highlighted portions represent numbers whose tone has shifted from low → creaky:
Numeral
1,000,000
200,000
30,000
4,000
500
60
7
Burmese
IPA
[təθáɰ̃]1
[n̥əθeɪɰ̃]1
[θóʊɰ̃ðáʊɰ̃]
[léda̰ʊɰ̃]
[ŋája̰]
[tɕʰaʊʔsʰɛ̰]
[kʰʊ̀ɰ̃n̥ɪʔ]
Written
တစ်သန်း
နှစ်သိန်း
သုံးသောင်း
လေးထောင့်
ငါးရာ့
ခြောက်ဆယ့်
ခုနစ်
1 When combined with the numeral place, the pronunciations for 1 and 2 shift from a checked tone (glottal stop) to an open vowel ([ə]).
Round number rule
When a number is used as an adjective, the standard word order is: number + measure word (e.g. ၅ ခွက် for "5 cups"). However, for round numbers (numbers ending in zeroes), the word order is flipped to: measure word + number (e.g. ပုလင်း ၂၀, not ၂၀ ပုလင်း, for "20 bottles").[2] The exception to this rule is the number 10, which follows the standard word order.[1]
Ordinal numbers
Ordinal numbers, from first to tenth, are Burmese pronunciations of their Pali equivalents.[1] They are prefixed to the noun. Beyond that, cardinal numbers can be raised to the ordinal by suffixing the particle မြောက် ([mjaʊʔ], lit. "to raise") to the number in the following order: number + measure word + မြောက်.
Colloquially, decimal numbers are formed by saying ဒသမ ([daʔθəma̰], Pali for 'tenth') where the decimal separator is located. For example, 10.1 is ဆယ် ဒသမ တစ် ([sʰèda̰(daʔ)θəma̰tɪʔ]).
Half (1/2) is expressed primarily by တစ်ဝက် ([təwɛʔ]), although ထက်ဝက်, အခွဲ and အခြမ်း are also used. Quarter (1/4) is expressed with အစိတ် ([ʔəseɪʔ]) or တစ်စိတ်.
Other fractional numbers are verbally expressed as follows: denominator + ပုံ ([pòʊɰ̃]) + numerator + ပုံ. ပုံ literally translates as "portion." For example, 3/4 would be expressed as လေးပုံသုံးပုံ, literally "of four portions, three portions.
Alternate numbers
Other numbers, not of Tibeto-Burman origin, are also found in the Burmese language, usually from Pali or Sanskrit.[3] They are exceedingly rare in modern usage.
^San San Hnin Tun (2014). Colloquial Burmese: The Complete Course for Beginners. Routledge.
^Hla Pe (1985). Burma: Literature, Historiography, Scholarship, Language, Life, and Buddhism. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 64. ISBN9789971988005.
