Nathan W. Hill -- Old Burmese and its pre-history

This lecture was given as part of the class "Chinese historical phonology and Sino-Tibetan comparative linguistics" in the Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics (July 2021).

[@陈飞宇-k3o]

Lai has done some good introduction and explaination of historical linguistics and Sino-Tibetan languages on Chinese internet (like Quora) He is one of the reason that drew me to this field several years ago. From his words I could see he's surely Neogrammarian and he's against the "lexical diffusion" theory (started by Wang Shiyuan if I'm correct) It's nice to have a glance of his academic work here.

[@perguto]

34:30 What is the romanization for the Tibetan word for otter?

[@NathanWHill]

sram

[@michaelsladnick5482]

Why do you represent Burmese သ with an 's' sound, when it is spoken with a 'th' sound?

[@NathanWHill]

Because it used to be a /s/, as its place in the alphabetical order, its cognates with other languages (in North Burma) and in Burmese dialects (e.g. Rakhine) all point to. Compare Sandoway as the collonial word for Thandwe.

[@michaelsladnick5482]

@@NathanWHill Thanks, I was wondering why the Judson Bible includes spellings such as ယောသပ် for Joseph and ဣသရေလ for Israel. But then how was the sound of သ distinguished from စ ?
Also the Tavoyan dialect says သ as 'th', but maybe this was due to influence from this shift in modern Burmese?
Great research.

[@NathanWHill]

@@michaelsladnick5482 The letter စ was originally for ts. I cover this all to some extent in the second chapter of my 2019 book, The Comparative Phonology of Tibetan, Burmse, and Chinese (Cambridge). I don't know much about Tavoyan, and am not sure about the timiing of the s > th and ts > s- changes (although they must have happened in that order to avoid a merger), but my memory is that there is useful material in this article:
Ohno, Toru (1966). 十八世紀末期のビルマ語 -ヨーロッパ人の記録を中心として [The Burmese language at the end of the 18th century - seen in the records of European visitors]. Ōsaka Gaikokugo Daigaku Gakuhō 大阪外国語大学学報 [Journal of the Osaka University of Foreign studies]. 16: 179-228.

[@michaelsladnick5482]

@@NathanWHill Thank you very much for your explanation and recommendations. I am looking forward to reading your book and that article.

[@msnmorningglory1290]

Pyu is also old Burmese . And Mon came Into burma only in 11th century AD when their town dvaravati ( now in thailand ) when their town attacked by Khmer iattack and tai invasion into chaopharavallry .
Are you still following so called historian GH Luce and he made many twisted Burmese history .
Now burma is in war and we need honest historians who can make true history for Burmese people .
Plesase stop mon paradigm : mon who got the name in 19th century can easily accepted by colonial master but they tried so hard to say Pyu is not burman and Luce used tertiary source of Manchu( even Manchu notes didn’t mention that all Pyu gone for one attack from nanzhao .
May true history son appear ; now still most of them reference Luce whose kyauk Se paper not got any credits from other English historians and university , thank u

[@NathanWHill]

Pyu is certainly Tibeto-Burman but it is not particularly close to Old Burmese. i would encourage you to consult the publications of Marc Miyake on this question.

[@msnmorningglory1290]

@@NathanWHill Co Bleden who expert in linguistic (but not know Burmese and Pyu well ) says Burmese and Pyu are cousin language : why u think it is too different . Pyu and Bagan are two different era and language can go evolution : Pyu era languge can’t be identical to Bagan era language and Bagan era language not be Moderna Burmese.
Old Chinese not sound like middle and modern Chinese you says two different people .
Can I please ask you a simple question if you say pyu are not Burmese , where did they all gone , in 9th century AD Pyu also known as Brahma ( recorded in Tang dynasty history ) has 32 towns 9 garrison towns and 298 village : there’s also payar htung burial urn Pyu inscription where pyu kingdom area are inscribed ) where did all they gone ?
British ruled burma for 100 years and not all Burmese can speak English : why 298 villages and 32 towns pyu didnt remember their language soon after Burmese entered ?
If Pyu and Burmese not the same Why is there no history of war between Pyu and Burmese why .?
How many population of burma s entered into Pyu to dominate all Pyu population the whole country to loss the who Pyu population into history ?
9th century is not very far away to trace a population : where is comtemporary records and evidence that says Burmese entered from nanzhao ? And before entering the big population group lived where in nanzhao ? Which group ? There is no evidence : it is all made up story by GH Luce :
And Pyu had another name Brahma recorded in India and Chinese court history since Bc up to Late Bagan era 13th century . Why the Chinese and Indians not say Pyu are not Burmese in their history . These are some logic questions only .
There’s are archeological evidences too : I hope one day the truth history will be revealed
Thank you for your reply .
Btw I’m not a historian but I’m really interested in history and I found there are many illogical history still writing on Burmese like Burmese entered from nanzhao as late comers .
But Mon in Burmese want Mon paradigm because they want upperhand history over Burmese .
During colonial times there r also politics in history writing to implement divide and rule policy between dominant group Burmese and other ethnics and portrayed as Burmese as late comers :
And now it is time to correct that twisted history . Have you ever read mist of ramana by prof micheal Aung thwin ?
Thank you . ( Sorry my english is not good )

[@NathanWHill]

@@msnmorningglory1290 I don't know any Mon and don't feel able to say anything about it. But it's relatively easy to show that Pyu and Burmese are distinct. For example, Pyu changes *s into h- whereas Burmese does not. So Pyu n'hom 'three' versus Old Burmese sumH 'three'. There is a very good survey article on the state of Pyu scholarship by Arlo Griffith, Julien Wheatley and Marc Miyake published in the BEFEO. If you would like me to send it and other research on Pyu to you, please send me an email at my Trinity address. (Let me emphasize that none of us in linguistics are partisan either way on the Aung Thwin controversy.

[@msnmorningglory1290]

@@NathanWHill there’s also silver Buddha relic case base rim (found in sriketra) has inscription says “ Pyu Brama ( bamar) pyi taw “ pyi taw means county it is still Burmese language country are called pyi and taw mean royal and it is clearly saying Pyu Brama / bamar country pointing out Pyu and bamar the same

[@msnmorningglory1290]

@@NathanWHill did you compare Pyu to Bagan Burmese or Pyu to modern Burmese?
Do you speak Burmese language well too and how do you compare Pyu since there are no Pyu now (that’s yr history says ) .
I’m not a linguist but how much differences between Bagan era Burmese language and Pyu era Burmese : can you point out how many .
And also how many different facts between Bagan era Burmese and modern Burmese?
Hanlin Pyu inscription has usage of Bagan era Burmese did you research yet ?
Another thing pyi thu ( country men = people of a country ) is in fast pronounce as Pyu and the Sriketra is also called pyi which is Pyu inscription also called pyi tain pyi and Burmese also called country as ‘tai pyi ‘ Bagan era country is also called ‘tain pyi’ too .