Burmese numerals

Main numbers

Zero to ten

The Burmese numerals from 1 to 10 are all etymologically traced back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, with shared cognates in related languages like Tibetan and Chinese.

1 Burmese for zero comes from Sanskrit śūnya.

2 Can be abbreviated to 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.

• For one, two, and seven (all of which end in the rhyme ), when combined, shift to an open vowel, namely the schwa ()
• 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 , not ). Other suffixes such as ထောင် (; thousand), သောင်း (; ten thousand), သိန်း (; hundred thousand), and သန်း (; million) all shift to (; thousand), (; ten thousand), (; hundred thousand), and ; 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.

Ten to a million

While the Burmese numbers from 'hundred' to 'ten thousand' are etymologically traced back to the Proto-Sino-Tibetan language, the numbers for 'hundred thousand' may be an areal word. The numbers beyond 'million' are derived from Pali.

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.

• 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 (, low tone) to ဆယ့် (, creaky tone), except in numbers divisible by ten (10, 20, 30, etc.) In typical speech, the shift goes farther to ( or ).
• Numbers in the hundreds place: shift from ရာ (, low tone) to ရာ့ (, creaky tone), except for numbers divisible by 100.
• Numbers in the thousands place: shift from ထောင် (, low tone) to ထောင့် (, creaky tone), except for numbers divisible by 1000. Hence, a number like 301 is pronounced (သုံးရာ့တစ်), while 300 is pronounced (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:

1 When combined with the numeral place, the pronunciations for 1 and 2 shift from a checked tone (glottal stop) to an open vowel ().

Round number rule

When a number is used as an adjective, the standard word order is number + measure word:

|၅ ခွက် |five CL |'5 cups'

In spoken Burmese, for round numbers (numbers ending in zeroes), the word order is flipped to measure word + number:

|ခွက် ၂၀ |CL twenty |'20 cups'

The exception to this rule is the number 10, which follows the standard word order. |၁၀ ခွက် |ten CL |'10 cups'

Ordinal numbers

Ordinal numbers, from first to tenth, are Burmese pronunciations of their Pali equivalents. They are prefixed to the noun. Beyond that, cardinal numbers can be raised to the ordinal by suffixing the particle မြောက် (, ) to the number in the following order: number + measure word + မြောက်.

Decimal and fractional numbers

Colloquially, decimal numbers are formed by saying ဒသမ (, Pali for 'tenth') where the decimal separator is located:

|ဆယ် ဒသမ တစ် |ten decimal one |'10.1'

Half (1/2) is expressed primarily by တစ်ဝက် (), although ထက်ဝက်, အခွဲ and အခြမ်း are also used. Quarter (1/4) is expressed with အစိတ် () or တစ်စိတ်. Other fractional numbers are verbally expressed as follows: denominator + ပုံ () + numerator + ပုံ ():

|လေး ပုံ သုံး ပုံ |four portions three portions |'3/4'

Alternate numbers

Other numbers, not of Tibeto-Burman origin, are also found in the Burmese language, usually from Pali or Sanskrit. They are exceedingly rare in modern usage.

Abbreviations

To indicate prices of merchandise, a circle is placed above the final zero of the price and a slash is added to indicate currency:

:'2,500': ၂၅၀၀ိ/ = $၂၅၀၀

References

References

1. Okell, John. (2002). "Burmese By Ear". The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
2. San San Hnin Tun. (2014). "Colloquial Burmese: The Complete Course for Beginners". Routledge.
3. Hla Pe. (1985). "Burma: Literature, Historiography, Scholarship, Language, Life, and Buddhism". Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
4. (1993). "Myanmar-English Dictionary". Myanmar Language Commission.
5. Jenny, Mathias. (2016). "Burmese: a comprehensive grammar". Routledge.