Arakanese language

The Arakanese language (also known as Rakhine /rəˈkaɪn/; Burmese: ရခိုင်ဘာသာ [ɹəkʰàɪɴ bàθà], MLCTS: rakhuin bhasa) is often considered a dialect of Burmese. Sometimes it is considered a separate language. "Arakan" is the former name for the Rakhine region. Arakanese can be divided into three dialects: Sittwe–Marma (about two thirds of speakers), Ramree, and Thandwe.^[3]

Vocabulary

There are significant vocabulary differences from Standard Burmese. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like "sarong" (လုံခြည် in Standard Burmese, ဒယော in Arakanese). Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is "hospital," which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သေပ်လှိုင် (pronounced [θeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]/[ʃeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]) in Arakanese, from English "sick lines." Other words simply have different meanings (e.g., "afternoon", ညစ in Arakanese and ညနေ in Standard Burmese). Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese (not ကျွန်တော်, as in Standard Burmese).

Comparison

A gloss of vocabulary differences between Standard Burmese and Arakanese is below:^[4]

Phonology

Arakanese prominently uses the /r/ sound, which has merged to the /j/ sound in standard Burmese. Also, Arakanese has merged various vowel sounds like ဧ ([e]) vowel to ဣ ([i]). Hence, a word like "blood" is သွေး ([θwé]) in standard Burmese while it pronounced [θwí] in Arakanese. According to speakers of standard Burmese, Arakanese only has an intelligibility of seventy-five percent with Burmese.^[6] Moreover, there is less voicing in Arakanese than in Standard Burmese, occurring only when the consonant is unaspirated.^[7] Unlike in Burmese, voicing never shifts from [θ] to [ð].^[8]

Because Arakanese has preserved the /r/ sound, the /-r-/ medial (preserved only in writing in Standard Burmese with the diacritic ြ) is still distinguished in the following consonant clusters: /ɡr- kr- kʰr- ŋr- pr- pʰr- br- mr- m̥r- hr-/.

The Arakanese dialect has a higher frequency of open vowels weakening to /ə/. An example is the word for "salary," (လခ) which is [la̰ɡa̰] in standard Burmese, but [ləkha̰] in Arakanese.

The following are consonantal, vowel and rhyme changes found in the Arakanese dialect:^[9][10]

References

Bibliography

• Houghton, Bernard (1897). "The Arakanese Dialect of the Burman Language". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 453–461. JSTOR 25207880. 
• Okell, John (1995). "Three Burmese Dialects" (PDF). Papers in Southeast Asian Linguistics. 13. 

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