Burmese phonology

The phonology of Burmese is fairly typical of a Southeast Asian language, involving phonemic tone or register, a contrast between major and minor syllables, and strict limitations on consonant clusters.

Consonants

Burmese has 34 consonant phonemes. Stops and affricates make a three-way contrast with voiced, voiceless, and voiceless aspirated. A two-way voicing contrast is also present with nasals and all approximants except for /j/.

Consonant phonemes

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-al. /Palatal	Velar	Laryngeal
Nasal	voiced	m		n	ɲ	ŋ
	voiceless	m̥		n̥	ɲ̊	ŋ̊
Stop	Voiced	b		d	dʒ	ɡ
	plain	p		t	tʃ	k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ	tʃʰ	kʰ
Fricative	voiced		ð	z
	voiceless		θ	s	ʃ
	aspirated			sʰ			h
Approximant	voiced			l	j	w
	voiceless			l̥		ʍ

Vowels

The vowels of Burmese are:

Vowel phonemes

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal	oral	nasal	oral	nasal
Close	i	ĩ			u	ũ
Close-mid	e		(ə)		(o)
Open-mid	(ɛ)				ɔ
Open			a	ã

External links

• Burmese language