Burmese alphabet

Burmese မြန်မာအက္ခရာ
Script type	Abugida
Time period	c. 984 or 1035–present
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Burmese, Rakhine, Pali and Sanskrit
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi script Kadamba[1] or Pallava script[2] Pyu or Old Mon[2] Mon–Burmese script Burmese
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Mymr (350), ​Myanmar (Burmese)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Myanmar
Unicode range	U+1000–U+104F
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.

The Burmese alphabet (Burmese: မြန်မာအက္ခရာ, MLCTS: mranma akkha.ya, pronounced [mjəmà ʔɛʔkʰəjà]) is an abugida used for writing Burmese, based on the Mon–Burmese script. It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Burmese alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit. In recent decades, other, related alphabets, such as Shan and modern Mon, have been restructured according to the standard of the Burmese alphabet (see Mon–Burmese script). Burmese orthography is deep, with an indirect spelling-sound correspondence between graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds), due to its long and conservative written history and voicing rules.

Burmese is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability and to avoid grammatical complications. There are several systems of transliteration into the Latin alphabet; for this article, the MLC Transcription System is used.