To the FutureHarry Shorto
From http://sealang.net/archives/shorto/:Harry Leonard Shorto (1919-1995) was the world's acknowledged expert on the development of the Mon language over the last two millennia, and a leading scholar on Mon-Khmer and Austroasiatic linguistics in general. This site is devoted to presenting Shorto's published and unpublished work, as well as photographs taken by him in Burma in the mid-1950's.
See here for Harry Shorto's pictures taken in Burma in the mid fifties.
Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary
The following is from Amazon:
A Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary (MKCD) is the magnum opus of Professor Harry L. Shorto (1919-1995), formerly Professor of Mon-Khmer Studies in the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, until his retirement in 1984. He is the author of two standard reference works, A Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon (1962) and the highly respected author of the standard reference to epigraphic Mon: A Dictionary of the Mon Inscriptions (1971) as well as the classic dictionary. Shorto held the Chair in Mon-Khmer Studies. The MKCD is Shorto's grand synthesis of seventy years of historical and comparative research on the Mon-Khmer languages. Meant to be published in the early 1980s, Shorto's manuscript was rediscovered by his daughter Anna, and has been carefully edited in line with the author's intentions. The MKCD presents 2,246 etymologies with almost 30,000 lexical citations; even today, it is the most extensive analysis of Mon-Khmer to appear since Wilhelm Schmidt laid the foundations of comparative Mon-Khmer exactly 100 years ago with the Grundzüge einer Lautlehre der Mon-Khmer-Sprachen (1905) and Die Mon-Khmer-Völker (1906). A Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary includes numerous Munda, Austronesian, Thai, Burmese and Chinese lexical comparisons. It is an incomparable resource for studying Southeast Asia's rich legacy of language contact, and for investigating distant genetic relations with its largest, oldest language family. Clearly establishing the terms of reference for future discussion of Mon-Khmer etymology, Shorto's MKCD joins such defining works as Emeneau and Burrow's A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary (1961) and Turner's A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages (1966-85) in the canon of 20th century comparative linguistics.
Burmese unicode converter
I thought I would share this Perl script I have written to convert Burmese unicode from version 4.1 to 5.1. If any of you find it useful, please feel free to use it with GPL license. If you find any bugs, please let me know.
Download it here.
Burmese-English dictionary
I have been busy working with the visual input system for our dictionaries. Check out the beta version for Burmese.
Go to http://burmese.sealang.net
Click on the keyboard icon (on your left panel) as shown in the following picture.
Click on the input characters so you can see the prediction. Please wait for a fraction of a second (because of the server delay) after you click on the characters. You will see the predicted Burmese words based on the dictionary order as in the following picture.
Warning about fonts
- If you use Zawgyi font, you won't see the correct rendering of some characters, especially subscript forms. Zawgyi is incompatible with the Unicode standard.
- Our dictionary uses the old Unicode standard with UTN #11 (the documentations are listed below)
- Representing Myanmar In Unicode, Details and Examples by Martin Hosken and Maung Tun Tun Lwin
- Myanmar Unicode Standard
- The old unicode standard was implemented in some fonts, such as Padauk, Myanmar1 and MyMyanmar. Get MyMyanmar here.
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]George Orwell's 1984
I have been reading George Orwell's 1984. I am half way now. I want to share some quotes I like.
One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.
Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.
Orwell, in my opinions, probably wrote this fiction based on his experiences about the British colonial rule in Burma. Orwell used to live in Katha and Moulmein (Mawlamyine) while he was serving in the Indian Imperial Police. He hated imperialism and quit the job. He later pursued his writing career.
The book vividly describes the danger of being watched and brain-washed by a government. The main character, Winston Smith, works at the Records Department of a fictional country called Oceania. The department is responsible for producing records that are in line with the Party's agenda and deleting those that are not.
Here is the link to Wikipedia's article about the novel.
The following is the link to full text for "1984", "Animal Farm" and "Down and Out in Paris and London."
All of Orwell's work can be read free here.
More about George Orwell at Wikipedia.
I think 1984 is a good read, especially for the people under an authoritative government. I hope somebody translates this into Burmese.
