Burma or Myanmar - Bertil Lintner chimes in

If you don't know who Bertil Lintner is, you should.

An East Asia hand from sometime back before the invention of the wheel Bertil's forte is repressive secretive regimes. Ya I know, that would include a lot of countries, Bertil concentrates on Burma, the country he has written about and traveled extensively in since four decades ago. His name stuck in my mind during one of those reflexive reactions that the Lao PDR sometimes goes through and Bertil seemingly knew the why and the wherefore when everyone else was uninformed. Where he gets his info one can only guess.

But this post is about the Burma/Myanmar argument about which I knew nothing except that those who disliked the repressive regime there and were in favor of boycotting the place used Burma, those who looked more kindly on the regime called it Myanmar. Officially it is and was Myanmar because that's what they call themselves. The same as we call Laos the Lao PDR.

The following is the expanded version of a letter Bertil sent to the Financial Times and goes into depth and detail regarding the linguistic origins of both words and how language is used politically within, ehem, Burma.

This is just a blatant cut and paste from a great web site called Mizzima which is one of the best independent news sources for goings in within Burma.

You claim that you (the "you" he is talking to here is the Financial Times) have adopted the name “Myanmar” for Burma “on the grounds of neutrality” and because it “smacks less of domination by a majority ethnic group.” (January 5, 2012). This is linguistically and historically incorrect. It is correct that today’s Burmese rulers claim that Burma, or bama, is a colonial name while Myanmar is more indigenous and encompasses all the many nationalities of the country. But it was not the British who “named Myanmar Burma.” The once British colony has always been called Burma in English and bama or myanma in Burmese. The best explanation of the difference between the two names is found in the old Hobson-Jobson Dictionaryof “Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases,” which despite its rather unorthodox name remains a very useful source of information: 
“The name (Burma) is taken from Mran-ma, the national name of the Burmese people, which they themselves generally pronounce Bam-ma, unless speaking formally and empathically.” (Col. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell, New Edition Edited by William Crooke, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical Discursive. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1979, originally published in 1903, p. 131.) Both names have been used interchangeably throughout history, with Burma being the more colloquial name and Myanmar a more formal designation.
If Burma meant only the central plains and Myanmar the Burmans and all the other nationalities, how could there be, according the Myanmar Language Commission, a “Myanmar language”? Its official Myanmar-English Dictionary also mentions a “Myanmar alphabet.” Clearly, Burma and Myanmar, and Burmese and Myanmar, mean exactly the same thing, and it cannot be argued that the term “Myanmar” includes any more people within the present union than the name “Burma” does.
But the confusion is an old one and when the Burmese independence movement was established in the 1930s, there was a debate among the young nationalists as to what name should be used for the country:bama or myanma. The nationalists decided to call their movement the Dohbama Asiayone instead of the Dohmyanma Asiayone. The reason, they said, was that:
“Since the dohbama was set up, the nationalists always paid attention to the unity of all the nationalities of the country...and the thakins (Burmese nationalists) noted that myanma meant only the part of the country where the myanma people lived. This was the name given by the Burmese kings to their country. Bama naing-ngan is not the country where only the myanma people live. Many different nationalities live in this country, such as the Kachins, Karens, Kayahs, Chins, P-Os, Palaungs, Mons, Myanmars, Rakhines and Shans. Therefore, the nationalists did not use the term myanma naing-ngan but bama naing-ngan. That would be the correct term...all nationalities who live in bama naing-nganare called bama.” (A Brief History of the Dohbama Asiayone (in Burmese). Rangoon: Sarpay Beikman, 1976, p. 215)
Thus, the movement became the Dohbama Asiayone and not the Dohmyanma Asiayone .The Burmese edition of The Guardian monthly, another official publication, also concluded in February 1971: “The word myanma signifies only the myanmars whereas bama embraces all indigenous nationalities.”
In May 1989, however, the present government decided that the opposite was true and changed the name in English to Myanmar — although it had been myanma naing-ngan, “the State of Burma,” in formal Burmese since independence in 1948. The bitter truth is that there is no term in Burmese or in any other language that covers both the bama/myanma and the ethnic minorities since no such entity existed before the arrival of the British. Burma with its present boundaries is a colonial creation, and successive governments of independent Burma have inherited a chaotic entity which is still struggling to find a common identity. But “changing” the name of the country to what it has always been called in formal Burmese is unlikely to make any difference. Burma has been in a state of revolt since independence in 1948, with no lasting solution to its ethnic and political problems in sight.
Rangoon or Yangon is another reflection of the same kind of misunderstanding. Rangoon begins with the consonant “ra gaut”, or “r”, not “ya palait” or “y”. In English texts, Rangoon is therefore an etymologically more correct spelling. The problem is that the old r-sound has died out in most modern Burmese dialects and softened to a “y” — but not in Arakanese and Tavoyan, which both have a very distinct r-sound. Further, there is another dimension to the recent “name changes” in Burma. It was not only the names of the country and the capital which were “changed”; in the minority areas new names were also introduced as well, and here it was a real change. A few examples from Shan State: Hsipaw became Thibaw, Hsenwi became Theinli or Thinli, Kengtung became Kyaingtong, Mong Hsu became Maing Shu, Lai-Hka became Laycha, Pangtara became Pindaya and so on. 
The problem here is that the original names all have a meaning in the Shan language; the “new” names are just Burmanised versions of the same names, with no meaning in any language. This undermines the argument that the changes were done in order to make them “more indigenous” and not only reflecting the majority Burmans. This has prompted Gustaaf Houtman, a Dutch Burma scholar, to coin the term “Myanmafication” to refer to the top-down programme of replacing “unity in diversity” — which had been Aung San’s vision of an independent Burma  — with a more ethnically streamlined nation state. (Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 1999, pp. 15ff.) Others would claim it is just a concerted drive to Burmanise the whole country and wipe out the separate identities of the ethnic minorities.
Bertil LintnerChiang Mai, Thailand

Learning Pasa Lao on You Tube

I saw these videos via a link from WSC, and just couldn't get enough of them. A kaen plays in the background, the setting is Laos, they're speaking Vientiane Lao, even the clothes are very Lao.

My kids and I had fun trying to say the Lao word before they said it. Some of the foods had us guessing. Fish noodle soup? Kao poon. True that, don't know what else to call it. Laap, is, well, laap.

To see more go to you tube itself and look for more stuff from FindinLaos

Of Laos and Laotians

Some Lao people in Laos. Left to right, baby Namphone, her mom Aunt Kien, Sengthian, Aunt Hong, Creag.

A great post follows about a controversial subject from a Lao American young woman whom I just happen to agree with, or else why quote it, right?

The quote within a quote, is from her blog lao-ocean girl I think the quoted article within the quoted blog is by Grant Evans the preeminent Lao scholar. (correction it's by both Grant Evans and Nick Enfield published in the Vientiane Times in 1998)

This part by LA-ocean girl

I’m Laotian-American, but currently live in Korea. I’ve travelled around SE Asia and have met other backpackers who have travelled to Laos. There always seemed to be a discrepancy as to what the country was called. There was one group, including myself, who called it Laos. Then there was the other group, who thought they were "in" with the locals, and called it Lao. Sometimes I would correct people, but most of the time people mentioned the country in passing, so I let it slide. In addition, who was I, to correct foreigners that I didn’t even know. This may seem like a trivial point, but it’s always irritated me. Sure, the local people called their country Lao, but it was in the context of "Prathet Lao" or "Muang Lao". Literally translated, they both mean "Lao land" and "Lao country". Whenever I talked to my parents about Laos, I always refer to it as "Muang Lao," but that’s because I actually speak Lao. It just seemed pretentious of foreigners to call the country Lao. Aarrrgghh! But that’s just me… I don’t tell my friends that my trip to "Italia" was wonderful, I say "Italy."

Below is an article I found about this topic. It has some insightful linguistic information.

This part by Grant Evans and Nick Enfield. Grant Evans needs no introduction to those who read about Laos. Nick Enfield I hadn't heard of as I don't really speak Laotian, (I fake it and smile a lot) People who are into it would probably call him an ethno linguist or something.publications of Nick Enfield

There appears to be confusion among some foreigners in Laos about how to spell the name of the country known today by its official name, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. In particular there is confusion about whether to refer to the country as ‘Lao’ or ‘Laos’ when writing or speaking in English. Historically it has been common for English writers to refer to the country as Laos when not using the country’s official title, and this is the standard form outside of the LPDR today. So why confusion inside the country? One source of the confusion for some foreigners appears to be that when they come to the country they discover that in the Lao language, the country’s name has no final ’s’. Indeed, there are no words at all in Lao which have a final ’s’. Some people therefore seem to think that it is more correct to say, for example, that Vientiane is the capital of ‘Lao’ rather than ‘Laos’. But where does this logic come from? There are a great many country names that are pronounced quite differently in English, or indeed are completely different words in the home language. An outstanding example is the country name ‘China’ which actually does not exist in any variety of Chinese. In Mandarin, the official language of China, the country is referred to as ‘Zhong Guo’. In Lao, China is referred to as ‘Jiin’. Another example is India, whose name in Hindi is ‘Bharat’, a completely different word to the English. Further away from the Asian context, inhabitants of the country called ‘Finland’ call their homeland ‘Soumi’. A better known European example is Germany, which is known as ‘Allemagne’ in French, and ‘Deutschland’ in the native German. All these examples show that it is quite common not only for the name of a country to be pronounced quite differently in various languages, but indeed may be a completely different word. We have heard reports where foreign experts have been instructed by some Lao officials not to use the term ‘Laos’ in their reports, but to call the country ‘Lao’ instead. "Laos does not exist", they have been told by officials. So, for example, we can find the following sentences in a recent UN document: "Reduction of rural poverty is a main motivating factor for rural development in Lao. At its stage of development, rural poverty reduction in Lao will come by increasing rural employment possibilities…" The uses of ‘Lao’ in both cases could have been ‘Laos’, and we would suggest that it is more desirable to use ‘Laos’ in these contexts. Only if the document had used Lao PDR’ in both cases would it have been correct to use ‘Lao’. It is a puzzle to us why some officials would issue such instructions to foreign experts. Despite that fact that the Lao themselves have their own distinctive ways of pronouncing the names of other countries, we can only think that this instruction is some kind of zealous nationalism which insists that foreigners use the name ‘Lao’ in the same way the Lao do in their own language. Such officials may be unaware that the Lao also force the names of other countries to conform to their own pronunciation conventions.

Consider the ways in which the Lao language renders the names of various foreign countries. While in the cases of Vietnam and Cambodia, Lao pronounces the names of these countries quite like the natives do, there are others that are extremely different in terms of pronunciation. Two good examples from Europe are Austria and Belgium. These are pronounced in Lao as something like ‘Ottalik’ and ‘Bensik’ respectively (from French Autteriche and Belgique). It so happens that English has a huge range of possible sounds that can appear at the end of a word. In English, the rounding-off of the word ‘Laos’ with an ’s’ is a very typical thing to do, as any Lao who struggles with an ’s’ on the end of every second word will attest. In Lao, however, and many other languages of Southeast Asia, it is impossible to finish a word with sounds like ’s’,'f’,'th’, and so on. In Cantonese, for example, there is a tendency to add an ‘ee’ sound to the end of words that end with ’s’. ‘Price’, for example, is pronounced ‘pricey’, or ‘tips’ becomes ‘tipsy’, and so on. Cantonese does not have a word-final ’s’ sound, and so it has to add a vowel so that the ’s’ can be colloquially pronounced. This process of changing the pronunciation of a borrowed word to conform to the conventions of the borrowing language is called indigenisation. Laos with an ’s’ was one solution in English for the country’s name. It could have been ‘Lao’, but it may well have been ‘Lao-land’, by literal translation from the Lao. This of course happened with Thailand when ‘Prathet Thai’ was translated as ‘Thai-land’. But, for reasons which are obscure to us, ‘Pathet Lao’ is not ‘Lao-land’ and nor is it a country called ‘Lao’. Indeed, the latter usage is quite marked in English, and when used by foreigners seems almost pretentious. Of course ‘Lao’ is perfectly correct in English when used as an adjective. For example: a Lao person, the Lao language, a Lao poem, etc. One other possibility that has tended to fall into-use is ‘Laotian’. So one can say: a Laotian person, the Laotian language, Laotian poem. This, however, seems to be losing out to the more economical ‘Lao’.

The old saying (in English) goes: "When in Rome do as the Romans do", but only if you are speaking Italian should you say ‘Italia’. Similarly in Laos, only if you are speaking Lao do you need to say ‘Lao’ when referring to the country.

On Language and Transliteration

Looking at this wall hanging should give you some idea of the issues involved. Across the top are the consonants with accompanying pictures of typical words that begin with the sound. The next two thirds is a complicated series of columns representing vowels and their length of pronunciation as well as tones and god knows what else. Now which do you think might be the most easy to understand.

Recently I got a message asking about the way I turn Lao, sorry I mean Laotian, into written English.
Most especially with the name that I spell as Tdooee, but could also be spelled Twee, Doee, Tui, and so forth, all of these examples are approximately right. I often mangle the language in other ways that I’m sure drive Lao speakers nuts. My apologies.
Spoken Lao, has no official way to put it into English. Complicating things, there are also sounds we don’t have in English, and also different phonetic alphabet to use.
I first ran into this problem when I started trying to speak Thai. I wanted to take the bus to get back to where I was living, and the woman selling tickets didn’t speak English. I lived in Lampang and so I said “I go Lampang”, she said “where?” I repeated myself and so on. Eventually I got out my guidebook, pointed, and she pronounced something close to Lambang. The B being close to the B in bong. Often this P/B sound is spelled with a ph. I think it’s called an aspirated P.
When I write words in my notebook to learn vocabulary often I just write the two consonants on top of each other. I also do this with T and D,
My wife has a buddy named Gow. Spelled with the same letter that begins the word for chicken, gai. My wife spells her friend’s nam Keo. Now the K and the G sounds in Lao are different and you would think they would be hard to confuse. I think the problem lies in our G being too soft, the Lao pronounce it harder or with more carry through.
Adding further complications your way to put Lao sounds into the Roman Alphabet might well depend on which school of learning Lao you come from. In Lao they have one way that mostly comes from the sounds as they are spelled in French, and the Thai that most people migrated from use a more English spelling. I began to learn Thai first but try to use Lao spelling because I think it’s more fashionable. Sometimes there is just a problem because the Lao who translate place names can’t speak English and they are just guessing, or they were guessing fifty years ago and now no one dares correct the misspelling because there are issues of face.
I will admit I love misspelling things and being able to get away with it. Without a spell check I’d be lost in the English speaking world.
Besides having tones there are also long and short vowel sounds. My studies have all been, ahem, “informal” so I’ve never learned tones, I just mimic the way Lao people speak and it mostly works. Informal in this case means once a month I might write something down.
Now it’s time for some true apologies. There are a small number of real Laotian Language Scholars out there. If you are reading, sorry. I promise to stop acting as if I know what I’m talking about. I probably fool most others, don’t you think? I’ll also try to stop using Lao words in English when there is a perfectly good English word to use. Except for the flavour enhancer Bang Nua. I do that to protect food Nazis from going completely around the bend. Maybe it’s time for a glossary.