Jon,

I really have no problem with anyone who wants to learn Burmese script and quote
Burmese sources in it. But I hope you realize that rather few non-Burmese will be able to
use your work.

> That would be great. Burmese is one of the legitimate
> scripts used to write Pali. Probably even more gets
> written in it than roman script, I would guess.

There is no objective scale of 'legitimacy' for Pali scripts. Any orthography which
represents all of the contrastive sounds of Pali is as legitimated as any other. In particular,
roman script is perfectly good.

> When I quote from such a source,
> I like to use the original script
> rather than converting into roman script.
> One of the beauty aspects of the current age of
> computers that we live in is that we can use the
> original scripts. Colonial era scholars working
> through
> inscriptions (almost all relating to Buddhism) used
> this almost indecipherable roman transliteration
> which scholars nowadays rather strangely perpetuate
> when they don't really have to.

'Decipherability' is a very subjective thing. I, and I suspect most other Western students of
Pali, find roman script much more easily decipherable than Burmese. Of course one can
learn Burmese script, but that takes time and effort that might be better spent on
something else. And Burmese script is just as much an adaptation to write Pali as roman
script is, whatever the original Pali orthography was (or if in fact there was one).

> Writing in Burmese
> script allows Burmese to read and understand
> ancient religious inscriptions written in a mixture of
> Pali and Burmese.

Use of Burmese script may be of some help to Burmese who want to read ancient
inscriptions, but it is by no means sufficient. Knowledge of Pali and archaic Burmese is
required.

> > 1) Can the Burmese characters all be represented
> > with 2 character
> > codes?
>
> Burmese is part of unicode.
> I will send details, but
> right now burned out from eight hour meeting.
>
> Thanks,
> With metta,
>
> Jon Fernquest

George Bedell