Old Burmese
Old Burmese was an early form of the Burmese language, as attested in the stone inscriptions of Pagan, and is the oldest phase of Burmese linguistic history. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middle Burmese included phonological changes as well as accompanying changes in the underlying orthography. Word order, grammatical structure and vocabulary have remained markedly comparable, well into Modern Burmese, with the exception of lexical content.
Phonology
Unlike most Tibeto-Burman languages, Burmese has a phonological system with two-way aspiration: preaspiration and postaspiration. In Burmese, this distinction serves to differentiate causative and non-causative verbs of Sino-Tibetan etymology.In Old Burmese, postaspiration can be reconstructed to the proto-Burmese language, whereas preaspiration is comparatively newer, having derived from proto-prefixes. The merging of proto-prefixes to preaspirated consonants was nearly complete by the 12th century.
Orthography
Old Burmese maintains a number of distinctions which are no longer present in the orthography of standard Burmese.Diacritics
Whereas Modern Standard Burmese uses 3 written medials, Old Burmese had a fourth written medial, which was typically written as a stacked consonant underneath the letter being modified.Old Burmese orthography treated the preaspirated consonant as a separate segment, since a special diacritic had not yet been innovated. As such, the letter ha was stacked above the consonant being modified.
Gloss
Examples of such differences include the consonant yh- and the lateral clusters kl- and khl-. The earliest Old Burmese documents, in particular the Myazedi and Lokatheikpan inscriptions frequently have -o- where later Burmese has -wa. Old Burmese also had a final -at and -an distinct from -ac and -any as shown by Nishi.| Old Burmese | Written Burmese | Example for Old Burmese | Example for Written Burmese |
| yh- | rh- | ||
| pl- | pr- | ||
| kl- | ky- | ||
| -uy | -we | ||
| -iy | -e | ||
| -o | -wa | ||
| ိယ် | ေ | ပိယ် | ပေး |
| ုယ် | ေွ | ထုယ် | ထွေး |
| ိုဝ် | ို့ | သိုဝ် | သို့ |
| ္လ | ျ/ ြ | က္လောင်း | ကျောင်း/ကြောင်း |
| -ဟ် | ား | သာဟ် | သား |
| -တ် | -စ် | ဟေတ် | ရှစ် |
| ာ | ွ | ကျောန် | ကျွန် |
| ော | ူ | ဆော | ဆူ |
| -ည် | ေး | စည်ဝည် | စည်းဝေး |
| ဲ | -ယ် | ငဲ | ငယ် |
| -န် | -ဉ် | အစန် | အစဉ် |
| -ဝ် | ော | စဝ် | စော |
Vocabulary
Aside from Pali, the Mon language had significant influence on Old Burmese orthography and vocabulary, as Old Burmese borrowed many lexical items, although grammatical influence was minimal. Many Mon loan words are present in Old Burmese inscriptions, including words that were absent in the Burmese vocabulary and those that substituted original Burmese words. Examples include:- "widow" - Mon > Burmese
- "excrement" - Mon > Burmese
- "sun" - Mon > Burmese
- use of -E- instead of -Y-
- use of RH- instead of HR- as done with other preaspirated consonants - attributed to the fact that Old Mon did not have preaspirated consonants
Grammar
- - finite predicate
- - nonfinite predicate
Pali also had an influence in the construction of written Old Burmese verbal modifiers. Whereas in Modern Burmese, the verb + construction can only modify the succeeding noun and can only modify the preceding verb, in Old Burmese, both constructions, verb + and verb + were interchangeable. This was a consequence of Pali grammar, which dictates that participles can be used in noun functions.
Pali grammar also influenced negation in written Old Burmese, as many Old Burmese inscriptions adopt the Pali method of negation. In Burmese, negation is accomplished by prefixing a negative particle to the verb being negated. In Pali, is used instead.
Such grammatical influences from Pali on written Old Burmese had disappeared by the 15th century.