The Story of Pan-Myaing-Le IV: Ramblings

I've heard that one of our most powerful men one time condemned attempts to study Myanmar-sar abroad as he had conceived of such initiatives. Though that was many decades ago, I'm sure he would have known that the science of linguistics existed a long time before his patriotic gesture.

With a plenty of free time to kill (in terms of day to day assessment; it will be silly to think in terms of weeks and months, let alone years for a guy of my age) I tried reading a bit about linguistics. I'm perfectly aware that my day to day time frame would not allow me to become a linguist of any sort. Well I came across concepts like scripts, phones, phonemes, philology, phonology and phonetics, lexicography, epigraphy, and those other unfamiliar terms. I thought I could grasp what they intend to mean and, that much, I am happy. On the other hand I am aware that I am losing control of my STM (short term memory) and as I ramble with readings of such new ideas, I often go into dreams.

One of my dreams was the coming of age of a Myanmar Language Department at the University of Yangon (and other Universities) where whatever science, art or other discipline will be used by all lovers of this language to come together to study and, simply, enjoy. And I also dream of an institute of linguistics with all its modern trappings to learn and do research on past and present languages of South East Asia, including the languages of our own minorities and decipher a lost language like Pyu.

Quite a while ago one of my younger friends said people graduated out of medical and engineering schools here in Myanmar consider themselves a class apart from others. While we have seen our engineering graduates toiling away in Singapore (and may be in other places) we also have seen medical graduates choosing to work as businessmen in different areas locally. Currently we see a significant number of medical graduates happily working in national politics or as various pundits in NGOs or INGOs. Well, if you don't see such examples as careers misplaced you would be grateful that the cream of our society choose to work in those areas where any other ones among our lesser beings would certainly fail. Nevertheless, what I overheard recently from the conversation of a mother with her friend was baffling. It seemed that one of her daughter is attending medical school and the mother was bitterly against her daughter's boyfriend. The climax of the story is that this boy asked his girlfriend to convince her mother that though he would be graduated as a medical doctor he would be going into business as he is perfectly aware that he wouldn't become rich with medical practice! Has this to do with children's or parents' (common?) mindsets of these times?

Weeks ago I've read a newspaper article lamenting that no one has enrolled for the undergraduate COE programme for History at the main campus of the revitalized Yangon University. I tried looking for more information at YU website. I tried to find the enrollment information. There was none. May be I didn't look hard enough. Anyway, I suppose I found more information on the Wiki page than on the University's own sites. Then I was looking for more information about the Myanmar Language programme and the participants and professors and their research. There isn't much either. I'm a somewhat old fashioned guy. But I am not as old fashioned as my godgrandpa who utterly refused to believe that man reaches the moon. I am illiterate in linguistics but wish to pick up scraps of knowledge so as to be proud of our people and our languages without being completely blind about what I am to be proud of.

Then there was this controversy between the Tagaung and Kyaukse theories of the origin of the Bamar people. I don't know if this controversy is still current and remain unresolved. If so, I wonder if DNA analysis would not resolve the controversy once and for all. DNA analysis may also offer the clues for solving the mystery of how the Pyu people vanished. Isn't it high time to do away with politically loaded pseudo-science from our lives?

As I browsed the web content on Myanmar script I was led to believe that the rounded form of the script evolved when we started writing (inscribing) on the palm-leaves with the stylus. It was argued that the scribes could not use the preexisting form of squarish scripts as we see with stone inscriptions. It is easy to see that squarish forms would tend to tear the palm-leaves more than the roundish form of the script. For ordinary people in those days it is hard for me to believe that their need for day-to-day writing could only be served by the stone slabs as the medium. Also, wouldn't it be hard for inscribers to compose the inscriptions in their heads or asked others to dictate as they work? Alternatively, could they not be using the drafts inscribed on palm-leaves? If so, rounded form of script wouldn't be the primary ones?

On the other hand imagine that a painted form of palm-leaf manuscripts where text had been written with a (reed) pen existed where squarish form of Burmese (Myanmar) script and that they were found to be predating the rounded scripts inscribed by stylus. Then certainly the square script came first. Or was it?

The above is an example of the earliest surviving Indian painting in existence and date from the late Pala period (1000-1200 AD) according to Sacred Leaves: The Conservation and Exhibition of Early Buddhist Manuscripts on Palm Leaves by Yana Van Dyke. And “Palm leaves have traditionally been written upon in two ways: either the text has been incised into the surface or written on the surface. ...The other technique of writing on the surface is with a pen, most likely made of reed, utilizing an ink composed of flame carbon with a binder. The smooth, slick, oiled, flat, and dense epidermal layer allows for the reed pen to flow smoothly and distribute the ink fluidly and uniformly on its surface.”

Do we have such a tradition of painting and writing on palm-leaves? I don't know, but I felt there is no reason that we shouldn't have any.

The following observation from Lammerts strengthen this view that writing with some kind of pen or painting with brushes existed in the Bagan period:

10 The Burmese epigraph cited in note 7 mentions the donation of 55 kam kū chān, which in later Burmese, refers to steatite or soapstone, most commonly associated with writing on black parabaik, but also used on metal, lacquered, or gilded manuscripts. It is not entirely certain that the term has the same meaning here, but it is evident that this is an implement used for writing on parabaik held by a cartridge (kam kū tam 1 kleññ), as were soapstone crayons in later eras. The inscription further mentions a number of minerals such as copper, sulfite and minium, which were used to make colored ink or paint, although no pen- or brush-like implements are named.

Note 7 mentioned that the medium for writing “parabaik” was found at least in one stone inscription but wasn't clear what the material was:

Note that there is only one epigraph from 1223 documenting the use of purabuit and from the context, it is not entirely clear that the material is paper. In later eras, the appellation “parabaik” was also applied to supports such as metal, wood, or leather.

Thinking of the stone inscriptions, wouldn't had some king or abbot or noble man asked for a scaled down version or a full sized clay-slab model before giving the green light? If none of the half-finished rejected stone inscription could be found, that could mean that draft text on palm leaf or clay slab models had probably been used. Nevertheless, linguists and historians may find these musings idiotic and easily refutable and then I would be more than happy to learn of these.

Looking for the clue for introduction of linguistics science into our land, I found that (the first ever or just an early?) seminar on linguistics was held on March 1-3, 1954 by the Burma Research Society in Rangoon. Anna Allot in “Professor U Pe Maung Tin (1888—1973): The Life and Work of an Outstanding Burmese Scholar” noted that:

I was myself taking part in this seminar and have a record of it in my diary, where I have noted, “This lecture was chiefly about the topics U Pe Maung Tin and I had talked about when reading together his Burmese Syntax: about subject, object, noun-verbs, and submerged subjects. He did start by saying that Burmese consists basically of nouns, verbs, and particles.”

Also, Allot's paper contained the details on this seminar that appeared in an article in The Nation newspaper of March 6, 1954.

I wonder if our linguists have come a long way since this groundbreaking seminar.

The Story of Pan-Myaing-Le - III: Burmese inadequate for the modern world?

“YANGON, Myanmar — It’s the dawn of democracy in Myanmar. If only the Burmese had their own word for it.

As this former dictatorship opens to the world, language is a stumbling block.”

The opening sentence from the article “Those Who Would Remake Myanmar Find That Words Fail Them” that appeared in The New York Times on July 19, 2015 could have meant for bigger things than to simply irritate us. Surely the author Thomas Fuller couldn't have forgotten that neither the word “democracy” was their own nor ours, for that matter, at least originally.

Yet I was somewhat disheartened by this one from the Fuller quotes:

“Burmese has a far poorer political vocabulary than English,” said U Thant Myint-U, a historian who also serves as an adviser to the president. “At a time when everything is about the country’s political future, it’s a liability and a constraining factor.”

Still, I want to question whose liability it was and whose liability will be for now. The past was all so clear and hardly need pointing fingers. Then for now and the future there's no choice. The responsibility to convert liabilities, if any, to assets is ours.

But I wasn't at all troubled by this application developer's lament.

"When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can't explain it in Burmese," said Daw Ei Myat Noe Khin, a software and app developer in Yangon. …

“When I talk about my work to my mother and her friends, I can’t explain it in Burmese,” she said.

Does she need to explain to her mom and her friends about the complexities of her work as if to her co-workers and her peers?

“There is no word in Burmese for developer, so I used the English word programmer,” she said. “If they don’t understand programmer, I say, ‘It’s what is inside your phone and makes it work.’”

But this may be exactly what they need to know and would like to know.

“They say, ‘Oh, it’s something to do with computers!’”

And Fuller didn't spare us the freedom of calling computer as “ကွန်ပျူတာ” in our language:

And they say it using the English word.

There is no Burmese word for computer. Or phone, for that matter.

Highlighting the follies of being lost in translation, Fuller could have been inherently pessimistic, or quite amusing at times, according to your taste:

Mr. Thant Myint-U, … , says he has been in meetings between the president and foreigners where translation is done by some of the country’s top interpreters. “Ten percent is still lost in translation,” he said.

Vicky Bowman, a former British ambassador to Myanmar, says 10 percent is optimistic. “I would say it’s more like 30 percent to 50 percent,” she said.

Ms. Bowman is director of an organization called the Myanmar Center for Responsible Business. When she and her colleagues wanted to translate the name of her organization for Burmese speakers, it took hours. They came up with a Burmese name that in English sounds like a bad Internet robo-translation: “Myanmar economic sector having and assuming the responsibility, support-help department.”

Enter linguischtick:

To me this is as effective as a word by word, complete refutation of Thomas Fuller by a linguist. It seems like you may choose to read only this article and still would not be loosing or distorting any of Fuller's observations or arguments. Here are some samples.

On the Fuller article:

The article is full of fallacies, bad arguments, and misinformation that leaves us with the impression that Burmese is linguistically impoverished, and that the speakers of the language have no chance of making it in the modern world.

…

Thomas Fuller, would rather you walk away with the idea that Burmese is uniquely weird and its speakers are linguistically disabled. He seems to have little idea how translation or linguistics works, and he presents mundane issues in language variation as insurmountable obstacles for Burmese speakers. There’s also some good old fashioned linguistic relativity thrown in too, letting us know that if the Burmese don’t have a word for something, they probably can’t think about it properly. I love that pseudoscience from the 1930s is still having some influence on journalists today.

On the allegation that Myanmar language is stunted (highlighted text by Fuller): Not to worry. Myanmar certainly is not crippled. We could crawl, walk, and then run.

“Limited access to global media and creaking connections to the Internet stunted the evolution of the Burmese language, leaving it without many words that are elsewhere deemed essential parts of the modern political and technical vocabulary”

... It’s not a “stunted” language because it isn’t yet common for speakers to acquire Western technology. This is sort of like saying that Congolese languages of Central Africa are stunted for their lack of words referring to snow and ice. How will people speaking those languages ever be able take part in the discussion on global warming without words for “glacier”, “sea ice”, or “permafrost”?

This article has a very alarmist tone to it, like “oh my god what are those Burmese going to do? How will they survive?”. They’ll do the same thing everyone else did when they started to use computers: they’ll just make new words. ...

On the linguistics of the Myanmar language:

“The structure of the Burmese language, part of the Sino-Tibetan language family, varies considerably from English. Written Burmese has no spaces between words and is generally wordier than English.”

This is literally the only hard linguistic data provided in the entire article, and it’s totally useless.

Burmese has no spaces in writing. Why do we care? How is this relevant? How does this prevent them from understanding what a democracy is, or how to translate the word ‘privacy’? Written Chinese has no spaces either, and that country is an economic and technological powerhouse. The fact is only here to further that author’s attempt to paint Burmese as a primitive language.

On the loanwords in Myanmar language:

““They [Burmese speakers] say, ‘Oh, it’s something to do with computers!’ ”

And they say it using the English word.

There is no Burmese word for computer. Or phone, for that matter.”

This is the concluding paragraph of the article, and it really shows how the author fails to understand what a loanword is. This is really too bad, since the concept is central to whole article. Saying that Burmese has no word for ‘phone’ or ‘computer’ is a bit like saying that English has no word for ‘kangaroo’, ‘igloo’ or ‘kindergarten’ because these are borrowed from other languages. If we really wanted to push it, we could even say that English has no word for ‘phone’ either, because that’s a borrowing from Greek (the prefix ‘tele-‘ is also Greek). At some point, after a word gets borrowed, it becomes a native word, and it is silly to treat it like a borrowing anymore. The pronunciation of the words has shifted to match the borrowing languages, and it becomes integrated into the grammar.

Then there were the refutations on Fuller which my selection gives but a subjective glimpse. You shouldn't miss reading the article, think, and decide for yourselves.

Back to the story of our software developer cited by Fuller. In real life I imagine that most of us would have been in a situation like her. Once or twice my mom and my step-father, long dead and gone, asked me about the Government job I held, when I was freshly recruited. They didn't really care for the answer. They were just immensely proud.

But if she really want to explain about her work to common folks who seriously want to know, I've just been thinking about tipping her with the story of what the famous mathematician Henri Poincare said about making a scientific discovery and rushing out to the street to explain to the first person he met. Or a more recent idea of explaining to a potential donor about your project during an elevator ride (the elevator test). But then I couldn't get the right quotes from the Web in time.

So I turned to my old trick of Googling and searched for “explaining science to layman”. Even with the first page of results I know I was on the right track:

• 40 Key Computer Science Concepts Explained In Layman's Terms

• 40 Key Computer Science Concepts Explained In Layman's ... - Lifehack

• What are some interesting analogies when explaining computer ...

• Can you explain any complex-science in simple terms, in a way that ...

• 18 Complicated Scientific Ideas Explained Simply | Mental Floss

• How scientists lose the average layman « Hot Air

• How scientists should communicate with laymen - SCI-ART LAB

• Explaining Science to the Layman - hopefully - AFA Forums ...

• 36 Computer and Data Science Concepts Explained In Layman's Terms

• Why don't scientists publish a "layman's version" of their findings ...

As I went on looking I found this: “Explain it to me like I'm a kid: scientists try to make sense of gravitational waves” on theguardian website, February 12, 2016. It was about the “blockbuster announcement that scientists had detected gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that were first anticipated by Albert Einstein a century ago” that was made just a day before.

And I said to myself: Forget what all those guys said about “Burmese”. I'm sure some Myanmar would be able to present in our own language the contents of this article about gravitational waves which the experts have tried to “really break it down in its simplest terms – as though we were children”. And I'm sure the translation could be done admirably.

After that if anyone is still skeptical about any Myanmar capable of communicating or grasping the essence of such phenomena and advanced concepts, let's see.

The Story of Pan-Myaing-Le - II

Continuing from my last post, the exchange between weetigerer and keyilan revealed that the OP weetigerer was basically grumbling about learning Myanmar language despite the fancy wording he/she'd used like stronger and united culture ... becoming culturally identifiable around the world ... being a forgotten race … etc.

weetigerer: Let me be clear that I'm not against the script, I just find unsuitable and confusing from time to time as someone learning Burmese.

keyilan: Sure. And for someone learning Mandarin or English they're going to run into the same issues. As I said, scripts are simply not made for the sake of the learner.

Here the gloomy rally for script reform sharply contrasted with the cheerful attitude of a different kind of visitor to Pan-Myaing-Le. It was all about Hacking Burmese. “I define hacking a language as attempting to acquire enough vocabulary and sentence structures so you can get through your first conversation in a foreign tongue. Complete mastery is not the goal of the initial language learning sprint but many of the techniques are the same whether it is short- or long-term language learning.” (Hacking Burmese: Learning Burmese Essentials Fast, Mark Koester, December 2013, available here).

I decided to learn as much Burmese as I could in the two weeks ...

While I cannot claim to have become fluent in Burmese in such a short amount of time, I think Burmese presents a good example of a foreign language that is hackable.

Mark's recipe for learning Burmese Essentials Fast was nothing new and could have been described as common sense, if you like, and then what really mattered seemed to be his commitment to learn.

For me, learning a foreign language is best started with a few initial “meta” steps:

1. meta-research: what kind of language is it? what are the characteristics? related languages? pronunciations pitfalls?
2. meta-research: what learning materials exist for this language? books? websites? apps?
3. resource gathering, i.e. picking up various books, audio files on that language.

What is positive with Mark is that he didn't complain, for example, “why စ or ဆ is used” and quietly went on “hacking Burmese”.

The meta-research gave me a chance to scan some of the learning resources I’d found and select one or two to focus on initially. Compared to languages like Chinese or even Vietnamese or Thai, learning Burmese resources are pretty scarce. Even googling “learn Burmese” turned up pretty slim pickings.

In some ways this is a good thing since it allowed me to avoid wasting too much time selecting which resources to use or not and then get on with the actual content creation and learning process.

Fortunately, after checking out some quite old books on Burmese, I found a great and free resource by one of the best scholars and teachers of Burmese, John Okell, an audiobook called Burmese By Ear - Essential Myanmar.

With a happy marriage of “Memrise” and Okell's Burmese By Ear he has created the course “Burmese by Ear: Unit 1 and 2 on Memrise.”

Now you may wonder why weetigerer chose to advise us on changing our script rather than creating something with his/her own hands on Memrise, for example. According to Mark:

Memrise is a pretty interesting learning and course creation platform. While Memrise already includes tons of courses on a wide-range of languages, it’s much more open than most other language sites or software. Some courses are created by the site admin but many more are user created.

The Story of Pan-Myaing-Le - I

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.

Statistics Bill 2016 – III

Today one of my friends told me that she had recently read an article in the newspaper that said that the term တရားဝင်စာရင်းအင်း in the Statistics Bill indeed stands for "official statistics". If so, how would we say "non-official statistics" in Myanmar language? Clearly တရားမဝင်စာရင်းအင်း would be unacceptable.

That was obvious at once from the title of the document by the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities we cited in our post "Statistics Bill 2016 - I", namely, "Development of guidelines/best practices on the use of non‐official data" (my emphasis here).

This reminds me of a parallel situation in the education area. They have "formal education" and "non-formal education". Using the same English-Myanmar dictionary by Myanmar Language Commission that I have mentioned before and looking up for the word "formal", we find:

Here we see that the Myanmar word "တရားဝင်" appears again now for the English word "formal". Last time the same Myanmar word was used for "official". Happily people in education called formal education "ကျောင်းသင် ပညာရေး" so that non-formal education (not informal education) effortlessly becomes "ကျောင်းပြင်ပ ပညာရေး”. 

Statistics Bill 2016 - II

Before I began posting about Statistics Bill here on my blog, I had mailed some notes on the same theme to some friends and to one of my gurus. They comprised a couple of senior statisticians in two major statistical institutions in Myanmar, another one from a recently formed statistical association, a few of my former co-workers, and lastly my guru, a retired academic. All of them have been retirees for some time, but they are still active and, happily, in good health.

Still, a week or so has gone by and I don't get any responses. I won't say they are not interested or they don't care because I know they all are dead serious about these matters. The truth is that I had made no specific comments on the content of the Bill other then the wording I've mentioned in my last post. Then what I did was to go on suggesting that the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and Handbook of Statistical Organization published by the United Nations are the two key documents by which the provisions of the Bill may be examined and its embodied concepts understood.

It was that way because I neither have the competence nor the ambition to comment on the entire Bill. But I have a feeling that anyone wishing to do so would need to consult in depth the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the Handbook of Statistical Organization cited earlier, among others.

But certainly there were those people and institutions highly competent precisely in this area. Here is one instance from OECD reviewing the statistical system of Russia (as of January 2013):

Chapter 1 provides a summary assessment of the legal and institutional framework for statistics.

Chapters 2 to 13 provide reviews of Russian economic, labour and trade statistical domains covering: National Accounts, Population, Business Register, Business Statistics, Financial Statistics, International Trade in Goods and Services, Balance of Payments, Prices and Purchasing Power Parities , Labour and Labour Compensation, Indexes of Production and Demand, Short-term Financial Statistics and Business Tendency and Consumer Opinion Surveys.

OECD Assessment of the Statistical System and Key Statistics of the Russian Federation

Available here.

What is most relevant for our purpose with this document is that the legal and institutional framework for statistics has been assessed in the light of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. The introduction says:

Introduction

1. This chapter provides a summary review of the legal and institutional framework (LIF) for

statistics in the Russian Federation, and their conformity with the principles and practices applied in OECD countries. A review of the evolution of the legal basis for Russia’s national statistical system precedes an assessment of the country’s adherence to certain fundamental principles for official statistics. A list of key references cited throughout the chapter is included on at the end of this chapter.

2. A strong and comprehensive legal basis for statistics and solid administrative arrangements

to ensure the proper functioning of the statistical system provide the necessary framework for

development of official statistics not only at a national, but also at an international level.

3. The basis for the assessment of Russia’s legal and institutional framework for statistics is

adherence to the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics developed by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 19941.

4. The Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics contain basic universal standards that

inspire the development and harmonisation of official statistics at national and global levels. They provide a framework for passing laws and regulations on statistics. The Fundamental Principles can also play a useful role in clarifying the role and strengthening the position of the National Statistics Office (NSO) within the overall structure of government. The UN Fundamental Principles are formulated in a flexible way in order to leave countries free to decide on the most suitable way to implement each of them within any particular national system. However, the implementation approach chosen by a country should cover the whole system of official statistics and not be limited to the status and activities of the NSO or other selected institutions.

…

It then went on and “examines each of the ten fundamental principles for official statistics to determine whether Russia complies with the principle. While it concludes that partial or full compliance exists in all cases there are nevertheless areas where further improvements could be made. These are identified and recommendations are offered.”

The following is an excerpt for the first principle from the document:

Principle 1

Official statistics that meet the test of practical utility are to be compiled and made available on an impartial basis by official statistical agencies to honour citizens' entitlement to public information.

10. This is perhaps the most fundamental of the fundamental principles. It comprises several important elements or sub-principles including the basic existence of “official statistics”, impartiality (independence), relevance (practical utility), availability (dissemination) and equal access. However, while important, these elements are often difficult to assess directly. For example, impartiality cannot be established by legislation alone. Laws may establish the fundamental basis for impartiality but numerous other factors will determine the ability of statistical authorities to act in accordance with the principle. …

It then went on to examine (i) Legal and regulatory basis for statistics, (ii) Independence of the Statistical Authorities, (ii) Relevance (Practical utility), (iii) Equal access to statistics, and (iv) Data dissemination strategy.

As a firm believer in people's right to know I am very much impressed with Rosstat's data dissemination practice:

Data dissemination strategy

44. The Statistics Law clearly mandates Rosstat with the obligation and the authority to disseminate statistical information widely. In turn, Rosstat has taken many steps to implement this mandate. Publications and flash releases are available on paper and in electronic form on the Rosstat’s website.

…

46. Rosstat has extensive programmes and services to ensure that information is disseminated widely and free. The Statistics Law (article 5.11 and 5.12) and the Statute of Rosstat (article 5.1.) clearly stipulate that official statistical information be distributed free to the President, the Federal Assembly and the Government of the Russian Federation. Furthermore, the Statistics Law also prescribes free distribution to other federal authorities, state authorities, local self-government bodies, courts, prosecutor's offices, Bank of Russia, public non-budgetary funds, trade unions and employers' unions on their written request or in compliance with concluded agreements on information cooperation.

And particularly for this:

47. However, Rosstat has gone beyond the legal requirements and, since March 2008, all official statistical information and publications on the Rosstat’s website are available free of charge. Users can access the Central Statistical Database (currently available only in Russian), which contains more than 2500 annual, quarterly and monthly indicators for Russia as a whole, for its regions, sectors of the economy, by kinds of economic activities, ownership, etc8. The English-language version of the UniSIS system, to be available by the end of 2012, will extend this easy free access to non-Russian speakers as well.

It would be most interesting to see the results if any one with interest in the Statistics Bill were to follow this OECD example and go on to examine the contents of the Bill. Pardon me, I would just content to be the half-blind by-stander sitting beside the cross-road to point out directions to would be adventurers! (Please read my “Blind leading the 20/20” post on my Bayanathi Technology blog if you haven't done so.)

Then there is also the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, Implementation guidelines (Final draft, subject to editing) (January 2015), available here. Allow me to remark (without reading the document myself) that it will nicely blend in with the OECD document for examining the contents of the present Bill. Here is the excerpt from the UN Implementation guidelines for the first principle:

Principle 1 – Relevance, Impartiality and Equal Access

Official statistics provide an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society, serving the Government, the economy and the public with data about the economic, demographic, social and environmental situation. To this end, official statistics that meet the test of practical utility are to be compiled and made available on an impartial basis by official statistical agencies to honour citizens' entitlement to public information.

In the context of the components of principle-1, namely, relevance, impartiality, and equal access the Guidelines went on to elaborate their features with extensive links provided for key documents. For example, the relevance dimension of principle-1 has been presented under the headings (I) Objective, (II) Scope of application, (II-1) Legal framework, (II-2) Consultation of users, (II-3) Work programme, (II-4) Informing users, and (III) Risks.

All in all, we don't need much imagination to see that by following the guidelines, we would practically exhaust the ways by which we could logically analyze the Statistics Bill. Therefore if we were to examine the Statistics Bill in the light of these two resources in addition to the Fundamental Principles and the Handbook of Statistical Organization, we couldn't go wrong.

In addition to the implementation guidelines for 10 Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, the Guidelines contains as its part-II the “recommendations on how to ensure a high level of independence of national statistical systems. These guidelines differentiate between various forms of independence (such as institutional, professional and scientific independence) and recommend good practices in order to ensure independence. A collection of statistical laws reflecting the experiences of the national statistical offices complement and concretize the recommendations in the guidelines.”

Nevertheless, let me add this as a postscript: I couldn't help noticing a considerable amount of space being allotted in the Bill for provisions relating to the constitution, responsibilities, and powers of the Central Committee for Statistics. This body is I think the equivalence of National Statistical Council for which a separate chapter is devoted in the Handbook. Lately, I came across a paper from someone with first-hand experience in such a council: The Case for Communication between National Statistical Councils, 59th World Statistics Congress of the International Statistical Institute, Hong Kong, 25-30 August 2013, by Richard Alldritt, UK Statistics Authority. The abstract says:

Abstract

The number, variety and importance of statistical council bodies has continued to grow over the ten years since this trend was recognised in the UN Handbook of Statistical Organization in 2003. Whilst their precise role and status will necessarily vary depending on the national context, we can ask if there is some essential core, some set of fundamental characteristics that a national statistical council needs to have in order to be credible and relevant internationally.

This paper offers some tentative suggestions about those core characteristics. But more than that, it invites debate in the international statistical community, including among all those groups and organisations that have in interest in maintaining the highest standards of statistical practice. And within that framework, it proposes that statistical council bodies should exchange information about their roles and practices so as to inform and stimulate this discussion, and ultimately so as to help support and guide the work of such bodies. With these considerations in mind, the paper asks whether the United Nations or another international body might take on the challenge of stimulating and facilitating the exchange of information between national statistical councils

Hence, it may be worthwhile to compare the provisions given in the Bill for the Central Committee for Statistics with the suggestions of the Handbook and Alldritt paper for National Statistical Councils so that we may gain insight and arrive at suggestions if any.

As for the little band of friends and my guru to whom I've communicated my ideas, they may have similar or different ideas and may even have started working or have already been working on their own on the Bill. And this is good. 

Statistics Bill 2016 - I

The Statistics Bill for Myanmar appeared in Kye-Mon (The Mirror) daily in three parts on November 19-21, 2016. As a statistician of sorts in a government agency (actually we dealt mostly with administrative records) a long time ago, I was interested in statistical systems and had read a bit of works in the Journal of Official Statistics and absorbed some knowledge about official statistics and its organization through the earlier version of the Handbook of Statistical Organization by the United Nations. By the time I had left my job as a government employee and became a dabbler in statistics in the Pacific and then in Jakarta after that, Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics by the United Nations Statistical Commission had came out and by the nature of my work I got a bit familiar with it.

With this background, when I started reading the Statistics Bill, I've taken for granted that the subject matter of the Bill will be the domain of “Official Statistics” and its organization as envisaged in those two UN documents and those which grown out of them. After-all, has not the opening paragraphs of the Handbook stated its conviction as:

The two main intended audiences for the Handbook of Statistical Organization, Third Edition: The Operation and Organization of a Statistical Agency are: (a) the chief statistician (or soon to be chief statistician of a statistical agency) and his or her colleagues; and (b) those charged with oversight of the official statistics function.

As the heads of agencies, those who hold these positions are both formally and emotionally committed to continuity of a tradition embodied by the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.

Nevertheless I was puzzled by the choice of wording used in the Statistics Bill:

Within the context of that paragraph, I felt that the marked text above would stand for “official statistics”. In Myanmar language the wording "တရားဝင်" is taken to mean lawful or legal or legitimate in common usage. For example this is from English-Myanmar Dictionary (Third Printing) by Myanmar Language Commission:

So it looks as if the Bill has adopted a common usage translation of “official” with a connotation very different from “official statistics” taken as a whole. Unfortunately, the dictionary doesn't include “Official Statistics” which is a technical term having a specific meaning and as such could be overlooked even in such a big volume of 1,621 pages or other standard dictionaries. However we could find Wikipedia defining Official Statistics as:

Official statistics are statistics published by government agencies or other public bodies such as international organizations as a public good. ... This bulk of data is usually called official statistics.

Anyway, to please those who are skeptical of any citation involving Wikipedia, here is the definition from an authoritative source (Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities SA/2012/3, Nineteenth Session 21 February 2012):

What is official statistics?

Official statistics is defined in the SDMX Content‐oriented Guidelines as “any statistical activity

carried out within a national statistical system, or under the statistical programme of an

intergovernmental organization”. However, this is a rather circular definition and it is not widely

recognized outside the statistical community. Different interpretations may occur for statistics

produced by governmental and public agencies outside national statistical systems (which may or

may not follow standard statistical practices and principles), or for statistics produced as

collaborative efforts between statistical offices and other institutes (NGOs, research institutes,

public sector).

The key question is what makes statistics as “official”. The label “official” can be based on the

characteristics of the actors and institutions (the source) or on the characteristics of the process.

Few countries clearly define official statistics by law. For example the UK Statistics and Registration

Service Act (2007) defines official statistics as “all those statistical outputs produced by the UK

Statistics Authority’s executive office (the Office for National Statistics), by central Government

departments and agencies, by the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and

Wales, and by other Crown bodies (over 200 bodies in total)”1. At international level, there is not

an universally accepted definition of official statistics. Outside of the statistical system, agencies

which focus on thematic areas, may have a different connotation of official statistics from the one

included in the SDMX Guidelines identifying official statistics as any data provided by

representatives of member states (which may not have a close relationship with national statistical

systems1).

Another key question is "do available official statistics exhaust the domain of relevant economic

and social information, or does it exist additional sources of good quality data that complement

official ones, or provide information not produced by national statistical offices? In modern

societies, an increasing amount of information is produced by non‐official organizations, which

may even include in their routine activities the production of specialized statistics, produced by

professional statisticians or derived from their own administrative registers.

Very often the paradigm to elevate official statistics at a higher level is based on the assumption

that official statistics is most solid, complete, and independent. This can be true for many countries

and several areas, but it is not universally true. In countries where the statistical process is not

transparent, statistics on areas that are highly politically sensitive and relatively “young” in terms

of existing statistical standards (for example environment, food security, poverty, crime, drug

trafficking, ….) official or government statistics may not always meet the highest quality standards.

Development of guidelines/best practices on the use of non‐official data

Follow up note

from the Task Team composed by: UNODC (chair), Eurostat, IMF, ITU, The World Bank,UNECE1, UNESCAP, UNHabitat, UNIDO, WTO

Available here.

Then a drastically simplified definition of official statistics may be given as: “statistics produced by government and related bodies”. So shall we not call it simply “ အစိုးရစာရင်းအင်း” or “အစိုးရနှင့်၊အစိုးရမိတ်ဖက် စာရင်းအင်း” or anything to that effect? I don't know if the wording “တရားဝင်” is meant to be value laden as the law/legal/legitimate qualifier for the word “statistics”. If so the third and fourth paragraphs of the preceding excerpt legitimately questions this notion. Then shouldn't we go non-committal in the wording and let users and public decide the merits of our work afterwards?

Additionally, here is how a National Statistical Authority defines National Statistics accommodating the needs of changing times:

What are ‘National Statistics’?

‘National Statistics’ are a subset of official statistics which have been certified by the UK Statistics Authority as compliant with its Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The label currently comprise three basic types:

• legacy ‘National Statistics’ – those statistical products which obtained their designation as ‘National Statistics’ before April 2008, in accordance with the arrangements set out in the ‘Framework for National Statistics’ (2000) and which have retained their status, but which have not yet been formally re-assessed by the UK Statistics Authority for compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. The Assessment Programme began in November 2008.
• re-assessed ‘National Statistics’ – any statistical product which has retained its National Statistics status after a formal re-assessment by the Statistics Authority of compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
• new ‘National Statistics’ – any statistical product which has been proposed by ministers as a candidate ‘National Statistics’ which has been subject to its first formal assessment by the UK Statistics Authority and which, as a result, has been granted accreditation by the Statistics Authority.

Source: Types of official statistics – UK Statistics Authority.html (Accessed November 23, 2016).