One of the difficulties to a foreigner in picking up the spoken language is the Burmese custom of dropping the sound of the final consonants of syllables. This is not, as it is with some English people, a bad habit, but is sanctioned by the usage of the language. In the grammar of the language some interesting features appear. Thus in many verbs the intransitive is changed into the transitive by the mere aspiration of an initial consonant: as kya-thee, to fall; khya-thee, to throw down, or cause to fall; loht-thee, to be free; hloht-thee, to set free. The adjective does not precede but follows the noun it qualifies. The accusative is followed by the verb that governs it.
Burmese abounds with honorific expressions. First of all is the ever-recurring ordinary honorific form daw, placed after nouns and verbs, to indicate that the thing or action named has to do with some person out of the common order. The first personal pronoun has three distinct forms, so that a speaker is able, by choosing one or other of these three, in a word, as it were, to place himself on an eminence above, on an equality with, or in a position beneath the person he is addressing; a great convenience, surely. What could the framers of our own poor language have been thinking about, to neglect to secure for us such an obvious advantage as that?
The second personal pronoun is even richer, for it counts no less than six well-defined gradations of expression, not to mention several more supernumerary forms, that may be employed if the regular forms of the pronoun are not enough. By means of these the person addressed may be treated with veneration, gently flattered, addressed with easy familiarity, made to feel his relative littleness, scolded, or abused, as occasion may require. And all this variety of expression in the mere choice of the pronoun in the second person! What a language it must be in the mouth of a competent person!
Again, with regard to “Yes,” our affirmative of assent, the Burmese can vary its form, by means of well-sanctioned idioms in constant use, from something equivalent to the American “That’s so,” through several more and more polite affirmatives, up to “What you say is appropriate, my Lord,” an expression reserved of course for the king, the monks, some respectable European, or Burman of distinction. Where such various expressions would sound very stilted in English, the Burmese idiom can give them as ordinary forms of politeness. Thus again, the ordinary man is said to “eat”; the monk “nourishes his body with the alms of the pious”; but the king tops them all, for he “ascends to the lordly board.” It is asserted of a man when he dies merely that he has “changed the bawâ,” i.e., left one state of existence and gone into another; but in the case of a monk we may safely go further and say, as the idiom does, that he has “returned to the blissful seats”; the king, when he dies, is politely said to have “ascended to the village of the nats” (beings superior to men). These Oriental peculiarities of language and idiom are interesting and amusing, and the frequent discovery of them, in the course of his studies, does much to compensate the foreigner for the drudgery involved in learning the language thoroughly, provided he is not devoid of the sense of humour, and can appreciate them when he finds them.
But perhaps the chief oddity of the Burmese language to the foreigner is the use of numeral auxiliaries. In using numbers you make quite a business of it, by adding in the case of each of the things mentioned, a special term descriptive of the class of things to which they belong. It is on this wise: first, you name the things spoken of, then the number, and finally the appropriate numeral auxiliary. Thus if you wish to say “six dogs” you must put it in this form to be idiomatic, “dogs six living creatures.”
| Five horses | = | “horses five beasts of burden.” |
| Four men | = | “men four rational beings.” |
| Three monks | = | “monks three highly respectable characters.” |
| Two rupees | = | “rupees two flat things.” |
Always to have to supply, on the spur of the moment, whilst speaking, the correct classification of the objects named in making use of numbers, seems to the foreigner a very needless and arbitrary demand, and so new to him that, until he gets accustomed to it, he is constantly liable to overlook it. The classification of things made in this way does not extend, however, beyond some twenty-one categories. In addition to those named there are things in a line, things in a circle, things long and straight, things nearly round or cubical, things which are used as tools, trees and plants (which class includes hair!), and some others. But the classification of things provided for by the use of these numeral auxiliaries is neither very scientific nor very complete, for the list is soon exhausted; and when you come to such things as chairs, bedsteads and a multitude of other things which come under none of the recognised classes of things, they are all slumped under the head of “individual things,” which is disappointing after the hopes raised of a complete classification of all things.
Burmese literature is largely devoted to Buddhism. Of popular works the most common are the Zats, stories of embryo Buddhas, and what they did in their different births, before they arrived at that state. Here is obviously much scope for fancy in tracing the buddings of their wisdom and glory, and all their miraculous adventures and deliverances, together with much about the nats or spirits supposed to haunt the universe. Christian literature is miserably meagre as yet, and there is much scope and need for more. All Christian workers, and indeed all foreigners who aim at learning Burmese, are deeply indebted to Dr. Judson, the first missionary of the American Baptist Mission, for his excellent translation of the whole Bible, and for his English-Burmese and Burmese-English dictionaries, his Burmese grammar, and other minor works. To multitudes in England and America Dr. Judson is famous for what he suffered; but amongst those who know and can appreciate his literary work, that alone is sufficient to entitle him to an imperishable fame.