Burmese Resources?

[kanewai]

The stars aligned (i.e. airfare was insanely cheap), and a group of friends are heading to Myanmar for two weeks in November. I would love to have some basic Burmese under my belt - and I am at a loss as to where to start.

This will definitely be a side project for me, so I don't want to invest too much time or resources into it. At the same time, if I want to make an honest effort to reach A1-ish in the next eight months.

I have no game plan, and this is where I could use some help!

The resources I'm looking at are Burmese by Ear (a free course) and Burmese for Beginners (Gene Mesher).

Burmese by Ear is already frustrating me, and I've read mixed reviews about Burmese for Beginners. Before I really dive in, or start spending money on books, I'm wondering if people have any other recommendations?

One of my buddies is a heritage speaker (his family fled after the military coup, and this will be the first time any of them have been back), so at least I'll have a motivated study partner this round.

[Speakeasy]

The So You Want To Learn A Language website contains a list of materials for studying Burmese.
LINK: https://sites.google.com/site/soyouwanttolearnalanguage/burmese.

I assume that you are familiar with the Routledge Colloquial series of language guides, for which the scope is often deliberately limited to meeting the basic communication needs of a traveller. The audio files are now freely available.
LINK1: http://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Burmese-Complete-Course-Beginners/dp/0415517265/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
LINK2: http://www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/colloquial/default.php#languages

Also, you might wish to amuse yourself with the lessons on the following free online courses ...

Free Online Colloquial Burmese
LINK: http://www.asiapearltravels.com/language/intro_burmese.php

Learn101
LINK: http://learn101.org/burmese.php

Learn Burmese Online
LINK: http://burmeselesson.com/

CAVEAT: I have not studied Burmese!

[Hanuman]

I have used Thai textbooks from the same publisher of Burmese for Beginners (although not with that author) and they tend to be one of the best resource for beginners in SE Asia languages. If for no other reason than that they are usually the only resource!!

Will you be looking to pick up the alphabet as part of your studies?

seasite.niu.edu has a good number of free lessons, I think you just need to install the Burmese Unicode Font to use it.

[Speakeasy]

As many of us are already aware, there are several "resellers" of the FSI and DLI courses to be found on the Internet. I am often left with the impression that many these vendors simply download the materials from the FSI-Language-Courses and the JLU-WBTrain websites. However, occasionally, some of them offer materials that are not yet hosted on the afore-mentioned sites. One such reseller offers his wares on EBay under the vendor name "filmsdocs" who, as it happens, offers a DVD for about 13 $US that contains the 298-page PDF text and MP3 audio files for the Special Forces BURMESE 200-Hour Familiarization Course Language course. The product description includes:

Table of Contents
Introduction
Lesson 1 People and Geography
Lesson 2 Living and Working
Lesson 3 Days of the Week, Numbers, Ages of People
Lesson 4 Daily Activities
Lesson 5 Meeting the Family
Lesson 6 Around Town
Lesson 7 Shopping
Lesson 8 Eating Out
Lesson 9 Holidays, Customs, and Cultural Traditions
Lesson 10 Around the House
Lesson 11 Weather and Seasons
Lesson 12 Personal Appearance
Lesson 13 Transportation
Lesson 14 Travel
Lesson 15 At School
Lesson 16 Recreation and Leisure
Lesson 17 Health and the Human Body
Lesson 18 Political and International Events
Lesson 19 The Military
Lesson 20 In the Hospital

While this course was designed for the military quite possibly during the period 1970-1980, given the civilian-oriented nature of the contents above, the low price, and the paucity of materials for this language, I surmise that it is worth purchasing.

Addendum:
Having nothing better to do than update my own posts, I just Googled the title above "Special Forces BURMESE 200-Hour Familiarization Course" and discovered that it is available on iTunes, as well: https://www.google.ca/search?q=Special+Forces+BURMESE+200-Hour+Familiarization+Course+Language+course&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-ContextMenu&ie=&oe=&gfe_rd=cr&ei=HDfWVpWEI6vd8geM2amQDQ

Update to Addendum
Please refer to kanewai's comments (on page 2 of this discussion thread) concerning the copy of the Special Forces Burmese Course that is available for sale on iTunes, viz.

... I bought the Special Forces Burmese book on iTunes. It's a nice find! Though there are major formatting issues. The audio is one continuous file, so it's hard to find the right spot in the book. In addition, the book is formatted as one continuous chapter, so it's impossible to jump back and forth unless you place your own bookmarks on the pages, and keep track of what they are...

I replied to kanewai's comments (on page 2 of this discussion thread) confirming that, the FILMDOCS' version of the course, MP3 audio files and the PDF course book files have been appropriately segmented for easy use. Sorry about that!

EDITED:
Update to Addendum.

[kanewai]

This is going to be a tough road.

I don't even know what you would call Burmese writing. There are consonants represented by a single letter, which is easy enough. Then there are all these other things they do to the consonants. There are vocal shift symbols, consonant modification symbols, tonal change symbols, double stacked words, and stand alone characters. So what sounds to me like one vowel is represented by what looks like five letters. Just trying to copy out simple words from the first lesson took hours.

I can't tell the difference between a lot of the sounds and tones when I hear them, so I'll need to learn some of the script.

After clicking through on the links, here's my first take ... I'll update this as I go along.


Cornell has a nice site for Burmese Script Animations, but they only cover the consonants. If it were only this easy.

This omniglot chart shows the vowels and tones, but is still missing a lot of the other things.

Asia Pearl Travels - Free online colloquial Burmese lessons. It was written by an engineer, not a language teacher, so it's both comprehensive and overwhelming. Lesson 33 deals with the script, and includes all those other markings and swirls and things.

I bought the Special Forces Burmese book on iTunes. It's a nice find! Though there are major formatting issues. The audio is one continuous file, so it's hard to find the right spot in the book. In addition, the book is formatted as one continuous chapter, so it's impossible to jump back and forth unless you place your own bookmarks on the pages, and keep track of what they are.

I checked out the Routledge book, but went with the less expensive Burmese for Beginners.

I was hoping I could do this in my spare time, but there's not a chance of that. It's going to take a lot of hard hours just to get to a decent starting point.

[kanewai]

Update: It took an intense weekend to get used to the writing system, but Burmese got somewhat easier after that. I've settled on using the Burmese by Ear audio course. There's a Memrise "Burmese by Ear" course on Memrise that is a nice complement to the audio.

[eido]

Update: It took an intense weekend to get used to the writing system, ...

What did you use to learn it? I'm having trouble with all the similar sounding consonants and the way this website sets it up isn't helping.

How far did you get in your Burmese language-learning journey?

[kanewai]

I used the Burmese by Ear audio and pdf files, and supplemented them with Memrise. I used the Pearl book enough to understand how the script worked, and would copy out sentences. I never learned to read - that was far too complicated.

Eight months of study, and I was able to engage in very, very basic conversations. I probably still ranked a big zero on the CEFR scale.

A few months after the trip, and I had forgotten almost everything. I look at my notes and think: I wrote that? And understood it?

It was still worth it. When I exchanged greetings with people I knew what I was saying. This is as opposed to what you learn from a phrasebook, where you learn to parrot certain combinations of sounds that you don't understand. And, in a Buddhist society, I think that knowing how to properly exchange all the social niceties goes a very long way.

[eido]

I used the Burmese by Ear audio and pdf files, and supplemented them with Memrise. I used the Pearl book enough to understand how the script worked, and would copy out sentences. I never learned to read - that was far too complicated.

Eight months of study, and I was able to engage in very, very basic conversations. I probably still ranked a big zero on the CEFR scale.

A few months after the trip, and I had forgotten almost everything. I look at my notes and think: I wrote that? And understood it?

It was still worth it. When I exchanged greetings with people I knew what I was saying. This is as opposed to what you learn from a phrasebook, where you learn to parrot certain combinations of sounds that you don't understand. And, in a Buddhist society, I think that knowing how to properly exchange all the social niceties goes a very long way.

Thank you, thank you. Now I have an idea of what to do.

Were the tones hard for you? I've never learned a language with tones before, and Burmese has five, including something called a "creaky". All I want to be able to do is have like a two minute conversation with the husband and wife team that work at the sushi bar at my local grocery store, but I'm afraid it will take me forever to learn the tones - maybe I won't even learn them. These two are Christian, by the way.

Any advice is appreciated.

[kanewai]

Were the tones hard for you? I've never learned a language with tones before, and Burmese has five, including something called a "creaky". All I want to be able to do is have like a two minute conversation with the husband and wife team that work at the sushi bar at my local grocery store, but I'm afraid it will take me forever to learn the tones - maybe I won't even learn them. These two are Christian, by the way.

Any advice is appreciated.

You have to learn the tones from day one. It's just part of the word, the same way that vowels, consonants, and stress are. Getting the tone wrong would be like getting all the consonants wrong ... it won't make any sense at all.

For me it was really hard. I never did learn to hear the tones in isolation. That is, I can't tell you which of the syllables in mingalaba (hello) were high, low, creaky, or whatever. But I did learn to mimic the correct sounds so that I sounded correct.