ပန်းမြိုင်လည်
(Pan-Myaing-Le) or at the middle of the flowering
woods is the name of one Myanmar
classical song I loved. It is a type of classical song known as
Yodaya, or Thai song. As
U Thaw Kaung had recounted about the Yodaya genre in his The
Ramayana Drama in Myanmar:
… Prince
Pyinsi and the young U Sa, only 23 at the time, wrote some of
the songs set to adapted Thai music, as these songs called Yodaya
(or Ayutthaya = Thai) have come down to us in the Maha Gita,
collections of Myanmar classical songs and music where their names
are appended under the songs they wrote. ..
U
Myint Kyi, Myanmar scholar and researcher of Myanmar music, wrote
that though Thai songs and music of the Ramayana were at
first directly translated into Myanmar, “later new lyrics were
composed in our own language with melodic adaptations of the original
Thai style in the same manner as western pop music has been adapted
to our own lyrics now”.
But
လည်
could
be a clipping of မျက်စိလည်
(getting lost) and
getting lost in the flowering woods was the helpless feeling I
have when I came across these words (Should
Burmese language develop a new writing script?,
by
weetigerer on Reddit, accessed December 3, 2016):
I
understand this will be an unpopular opinion because most people are
already comfortable with your current script. But I've been studying
about it for a while. And the current writing script was not catered
for the spoken burmese language at all.
It
does represents the consonants and the appropriate vowel sounds. But
words representing a meaning are very phonetically poor. And there's
no reason to why စ
or
ဆ
is
used. Or even different combinations representing the same pitch.
And
it's really odd now that I found out Burmese is Sino-Tibetan, to be
using a script made for the indian language family, which explains
alot of the imperfections.
My
question is, should Burmese invent a new script for themselves?
I
wasn't feeling helpless because the logic of the arguments and the
killer insights they intend to convey weighed heavy on me. Rather it
was the helpless feeling of pity for such a pathetic lack of
appreciation for other lives and other cultures in the guise of
science. Writing my dumb posts, time to time, I remember reading
Aldus Huxley muttering about some guy standing in front of the
Dolomites: “Who does he think he is?”. Meant to pull myself back
when I tried to overreach myself.
… "What
pretensions!" I kept repeating. "Who on earth does he think
he is?" The question was not addressed to Cézanne in
particular, but to the human species at large. Who did they all think
they were?
"It's
like Arnold Bennett in the Dolomites," I said, suddenly
remembering a scene, happily
immortalized in a snapshot, of A.B., some four or five years before
his death, toddling
along a wintry road at Cortina d'Ampezzo. Around him lay the virgin
snow; in the
background was a more than gothic aspiration of red crags. And there
was dear, kind,
unhappy A.B., consciously overacting the role of his favorite
character in fiction, himself,
…
Even
with my zero knowledge of language studies, I am convinced that
learning Chinese involves memorizing much much more than learning
Myanmar language. But the OP (weetigerer)
seemed to be obsessed with insisting the opposite!
And
even my Burmese friend agree that they also do find it confusing, her
words: "For an phonetic writing system, it demands a lot of
plain memorizing because of there are a lot of ways to spell out one
sound". Me being chinese, who has a lot of memorizing to do as
well, tried learning the language to prove her wrong, she's right...
Even chinese has very little "plain memorizing", we still
have patterns and formulas on how this particular word came to be or
why.
Most
astonishing is his (her?) implied claim that we could leapfrog to
prominence and prosperity (from “being a forgotten race”!)
through this simple mantra: “develop a new writing script”.
I'm
not asking it to be romanized like vietnamese, I'm requesting so that
Burma's culture become stronger and united. With Burmese people
becoming culturally identifiable around the world. Aren't you all
tired of being a forgotten race? Even your own people frequently
struggles to get the correct spelling of each word. Even though they
sound the same. Its inefficient. Don't romaize it, change it so that
it represents Burma. Thats my point.
It must have been a remarkable leap of
faith for weetigerer to tie up some loose pieces like, (i)
same sounds with different spellings led to an inefficient language,
(ii) even we Myanmars struggles to get the correct spelling of each
word, (iii) changing the script would lead to a language that
represents Myanmar, (iv) that will make our culture stronger and
united, and (v) will give us a cultural identity and will not be a
forgotten race anymore.
Actually, the all the 11 comments
mostly consisted of OP weetigerer insisting to developing a
new writing script for Myanmar language and keyilan, a
linguist, refuting it. Additionally, miserablesomiserable
says:
I'm
very surprised our chinese writing didn't reach burma, which is
DIRECTLY below china. Since I'm chinese I doubt I have any say in
this.
...
It's never too late to change and reunite, especially Burma, you're a
forgotten country. Everyone thinks of Indonesia or Philippines
whenever Burma is mentioned. You were stripped of your cultural
identities. ...
My
point is, you can start rebuilding Burma by changing your writing
system to something that represents our ancestral race. …
And he/she proves to be no less
imaginative than the OP!
Then I realize that it was not me, but
guys like weetigerer and miserablesomiserable were the
ones destined forever to be lost in the flowering woods.
P. S. We noticed that the question
by the OP quoted under the second paragraph in this post as accessed
on December 3 has been deleted as of the above screen shot of reddit
accessed just before this post has been published.
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