Middle Burmese

Middle Burmese
Region	Present-dayBurma
Era	16th century–18th century
Language family	Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Lolo–Burmese Burmish Middle Burmese
Early form	Old Burmese
Writing system	Burmese script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None

Middle Burmesewas a form of theBurmese languagespoken from the 16th century to the 18th century. Its beginning roughly corresponds with the rise of theTaungoo Dynastyand its transition to Modern Burmese with the beginning of theKonbaung Dynasty.Its transition toModern Burmeseoccurred in the 18th century.Middle Burmese is characterized by stabilization of Burmese orthography and steady evolution of the Burmese phonology, which accelerated during the transition from Middle Burmese to Modern Burmese.

The transition fromOld Burmeseto Middle Burmese included phonological changes (e.g., mergers ofsound pairsthat were distinct in Old Burmese) as well as accompanying changes in the underlyingorthography.

The transition between Middle Burmese and Modern Burmese was dominated by substantial changes in pronunciation, more so than that between Old Burmese and Middle Burmese.However, many features of Middle Burmese have been preserved in the literary tradition (high register) of written Modern Burmese, including grammatical markers and lexical particles.Word order,grammatical structure and vocabulary have remained markedly comparable, well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content (e.g.,function words).