Click on characters below to create text in the box below that, then copy & paste to your content.
Phoneme bank:
Font list:
Custom font:
Size:
Rows:
Add codepoint:
Search for:
Normalise: NFC
Autofocus: On
Notes:
You must have JavaScript enabled. Choose a view from the list just below the page title. To produce text in the output area, click on character shapes, or use your keyboard for Latin characters, delete, etc. Then cut & paste the result to your document, or use the buttons to get further information about the characters.
You can also add codepoints and escapes via the "Add codepoint" field (hit return to add to the output field). You can also paste text into the output field to get information about it. Use the yellow boxes to set preferences or search. Regular expressions are allowed when searching – for example, to find characters with the word KA in their name, enter \bka\b, or the short form :ka:.
About the chart
Includes characters in the Unicode 5.1 Myanmar block used for writing Burmese. Note: There are important changes to the Myanmar block in version 5.1 that will require changes to all existing Unicode text currently in Myanmar. Seven new characters have been added to the picker to accomodate this. You can find appropriate fonts in the links below.
All text is output in Unicode normalisation form NFC by default. You can change to NFD or no normalisation by clicking on the buttons in the yellow area. Note that normalization only takes place when you click on a character - text pasted into the box won't be normalised until you click on another character above, or click on a button in the yellow area. (Note: normalization is turned off for Han characters in this application.)
Alternative views
The following alternative views are available by clicking just below the page title. You can start up directly in one of the views by appending the following to your URI: ?view=, followed by one of, respectively, default, shape, transcript, phones or fontgrid.
Default This view is likely to be more useful to people who are somewhat familiar with the alphabet and characters of Myanmar.
Characters have been arranged so that is easy to input them, and especially to ensure that multiple combining characters are input in the right normalised order. Independent vowels are at the far left. To their right are the consonants, in a modified Indian articulatory arrangement, followed by some characters (in the vertical boxes) that are always input immediately after a consonant if there are multiple combining characters. To their right are all the other characters: In the upper part are the vowel signs and other combining characters. In the right half, characters on the upper lines are input before the combining characters below them. The line below the combining characters contains punctuation. The bottom lines contain numbers 0-9.
Some character combinations have been added, for ease of typing. These include some vowels and the kinzi.
Click on the Advanced arrow top right for less often used characters.
Shape This view is purely based around shape, and is therefore good when you don't know the script well at all, or for shapes you don't know. In addition to single characters, it includes groups of characters that interact to form new shapes. This is not an exhaustive list of shapes in Myanmar writing, but covers most common shapes and may help locate many ligatures and conjuncts you don't recognise.
Characters are grouped and ordered by visual similarity. The orange shapes typically indicate the left-most or top-most part of a character shape; characters and combinations that start with that shape are arranged together. Within a group I attempted to put easily confusable characters close to each other. The 'misc' section at the bottom lists a mixed bag of characters that didn't fit elsewhere.
Where the shape of the characters involved in a cluster doesn't really change, eg. when subscripts are used, I don't usually list the combination here. You should search for the two shapes and add a virama between them.
Characters that are listed after a plus sign typically contain shared components that may cause confusion.
Transcription I use this for typing in text for which I have a transcription, or for creating phonemic transcriptions.
The large characters on an orange background represent characters used by Mesher in Burmese for Beginners. To type Myanmar text starting from a transcription, click on these characters. If there is only one Myanmar character corresponding to the transcription letter, it is inserted directly into the output field. If there are multiple alternatives, these are presented to you in a selection list: click on the Myanmar character you need in the selection list and it is added to the output.
Each Myanmar character is associated with a phonetic symbol (a Latin/IPA symbol on white background to its left in the selection lists). If there is more than one possible phonic representation you will see the selection list divided appropriately. In some cases a Myanmar character is repeated within the same selection list because it has more than one possible phonetic equivalent - in such cases, choose the right one if you want to generate this phonetic transcription. As you select characters, the phonetic symbol to its left is added to the Phoneme bank field, below the output area. It is quite basic (for example, it doesn't take into account vowel reduction), but is offered as a way of speeding up text entry where you want to type both the Myanmar characters and the phonemic transcription. You can edit the text in the phoneme bank, if you wish, and you can move it into the main output area at the current cursor position by clicking on Add.
When the transcription includes non-written inherent vowels, you can ignore these if you are only interested in the Myanmar output. If, however, you also want to obtain a phonetic transcription you have two choices: click on the appropriate Latin letter and select the hyphen from the selection list, or click on one of the Inherent vowel boxes to get the same result more quickly. In either case, nothing will be added to the Myanmar text, but a phoneme will be added to the phoneme bank.
For less common characters, switch to the Default view.
As you mouse over the Latin characters on the grey background, the corresponding Myanmar characters are also displayed near the top of the page. This is to aid in searching.
Transcription > Latin This represents the union of all transcription and phonetic characters, and is provided in case you wish to just type in a transcription directly.
Font grid Shows characters in Unicode order, using whatever font is specified in the Font list or Custom font input fields. The size too can be set. This allows comparison of fonts (especially useful in IE, which shows if a glyph is missing from a font).
Other features
For further information about features of the tool or user interface, see How to use..
Useful URIs
Myanmar lite, a cut-down version of this picker for handheld devices.
