To the FutureSep 07, 2008
Dictionaries
August went past so fast working with four dictionaries. Sigh..... Finally, here they are:
Burmese dictionary
Burmese dictionary is mainly based on the Myanmar-English dictionary published in 1993 by the Myanmar Language Commission and republished in 1996 by Dunwoody Press (ISBN 1-881265-47-1)
Mon dictionary
Mon dictionary is based on the Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon by H.L. Shorto (1962, Oxford University Press)
Shan dictionary
Shan dictionary is based on the Shan-English dictionary by Sao Tern Moeng (ISBN 0-931745-92-6)
Karen dictionary
Karen dictionary is based on the Drum Karen-English Student dictionary published by the Drum Publication Group in 2008.
If you do use them and find any errors or mistakes, please let me know.
Apr 30, 2008
A voter's experience in the Burma's constitution referendum
A funny account of a voter's experience in the police state of Singapore. [a first-hand account in Burmese]Apr 25, 2008
Testing Burmese typing
I tried to type out the following text using Padauk Unicode font. It was from http://www.planet.com.mm forum. I thought it was a nice irony about Bagan for banning gtalk/gmail.
ဆိုဒ်တစ်ခု ကြိုက်လို့ငါ၀င် ရတ်ဂျစ်စတာ လုပ်ဖို့ငါပြင် တော့ ပေးစရာ မေးလ်မရှိ ဒီဒုက္ခ တော့ ပြေးစရာ နတ္ထိ ပါတကား။ စော်မကြည် ကျုပ်ဘ၀ ဆိုင်ဘာဂဲများနဲ့ စကောပြား စကားများပြောရအောင် အော် ဆရာသမား ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ အနေဝေးကာနေ သူဇာပျို နိုင်ငံခြားမှာ တခြားသူလုမှာစိုးလို့ စကားများ ပြောရအောင် အော် ဆရာသမား ဘန်းတာ တွေ ဖွင့်ပေးပါ ခင်ညား။ သားတစ်ကောင် နိုင်ငံခြားက တစ်ပတ်ခြားတစ်ခါ ဂျီတော့မှာတွေ့ ရာက အခုတော့ ငါ့မှာလွမ်းရ အမယ်မင်း ငါ့သားတို့ရယ် အမေ့ကိုစာနာကြပါလား။ အများနာတကာနာကြားဖို့ တရားစာအုပ်များလဲတောင်းရအောင် ဟဲ့ ဒကာ ဒကာမများ ဂျီမေးလ်တော့ဖွင့်ကြပါလား။ အင်တာနက်သုံးနိုင်သော်ငြား ကောင်းတာမှန်ရင် ပိတ်ကာထားမှတော့ အို............ ဂေါတမဘုရား တပည့်တော်ခင်မျာ လူဖြစ် ရှူံးလူလုံးမလှ ခွေးလုံးလုံးဖြစ်နေရပါပြီလား။
Unicode Notes
Zawgyi, although widely used by many Burmese web sites, is sadly not compliant with the Unicode standard. Let's hope they will support Unicode 5.1 in their future version. This page from zawgyi.org describes which fonts are compatible with Unicode 5.1 standard.
The Burmese text above can be viewed by any of the standard-compliant Unicode fonts: Padauk, Parabaik, ParabaikSans, and Myanmar3. I have the download link for Padauk in the following list.
Here is the list of tools/software, which I used.
- Keyman 6.0.15 from Tavultesoft: Keyman Desktop is a keyboard mapping solution, designed with the user in mind.
- myWinE keyboard [Right click and "Save link as"] from thanlwinsoft.org and the layout: MyWinE is an extended keyboard implementing Myanmar and Sgaw Karen support in Unicode.
- Padauk: download
Apr 19, 2008
A boom at the border By William Sparrow
I went to a "mom and pop" store for cigarettes. A very young woman was handling the transaction; thin, long hair, long legs, pretty face with no makeup. I wondered if she was 18.
As she turned and descended into the dark shop, an elderly women, presumably a relative, emerged from the shadows. She lunged from her seat, sensing opportunity. "You want she?" the woman asked, meaning "her" - the young woman.
I was shocked and caught off-guard and couldn't respond. In the silence, the elder woman continued "You want daughter? You take," she said, pointing. "Have hotel. Fifteen dollar."
"No," I said firmly. With that, the old woman scowled and slunk back to her seat.
The shop girl never met my eyes as she handed over the cigarettes. Still, I perceived a small smile.
A sex slave working as a shop girl; a young woman being sold by her own mother. It was a sad situation that I won't soon forget. Sadly, scenes like this will likely continue until the Myanmar government can improve the lives of its 55 million people. I was overcome by this realization as I settled the bill in that tiny shop on the Myanmar-Thai border.
As I turned to leave, I heard the shop girl whisper "thank you".
Read more at Asia Times
