gdbedell wrote:

"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."

"'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."

Thanks. These are good points.
Maybe I wasn't clear about how
how the PTS Pali transliteration
has been used historically
to transliterate Pali.

Pali and Burmese prose are closely connected
and it is a sensitive issue where to make the
separation between the two when transliterating.

Starting in the colonial era PTS Pali transliteration
was used for Pali words found in Burmese (even though
it distorts the Burmese pronunciation of the words
like w for v, for instance, for Pali pronunciation
of Burmese see Myat Kyaw and San Lwin, 2002, ref below).
Using Pali transliteration to transliterate Pali seems fine.

But then PTS Pali transliteration was used to transliterate
native Burmese words also (See Duroiselle, 1916 and Okell, 1971).
This transliteration was used by historians and epigraphists
Luce and Than Tun and is still used by all historians of
the classical Pagan era (an important era for Pali writing
as evidenced by Aggavamsa's Saddaniti, for instance).

Unfortunately, this usage of PTS transliteration
has to be deciphered before you can pronounce it,
because it records the Pali based orthography
that Pagan era epigraphists work with,
not the sound of the words, making it
unintelligible to non-specialists.

Historians like Lieberman, Koenig, Pranke, and Charney
use a sound based transliteration, so you can pronounce
the Burmese words as you read them. But now the Burmese
(or Myanmar) government, always wishing to be different,
has their own new transliteration. In fact colonial
era place names have not only been renamed, they have been
retransliterated, and are officially used for everything from
road signs to books in Burma. In short, transliterating the Burmese
language has become a headache and a political issue.

Finally, what I believe should be standard scholarly practice.

1. Current font/text processing software and unlimited web
publishing space, compared to the old paper based days,
allows texts in multiple scripts to be published
fairly automatically.

2. Words in Burmese script whether in Pali or in
Burmese, should be inserted parenthetically in scholarly
writing on history or Buddhism in Burma or at least be provided
in a glossary.

The German Ming historian (Foon Ming Liew-Herres)
includes the Chinese as well as the Pinyin transliteration
as a matter of course.
http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/5.htm
http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/5.1-2files/LiewTaiLu2007.pdf

Ming scholar Wade at National Univerity of Singapore
provides a glossary and inserts parenthetically.
http://www.epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/standard.html

Burmese scholarship can emulate these more rigorous practices.

Scholarly writing on Burma should include some Burmese script.
This seems like the only way out of the tangle of different practices
It's an open question what will make everyone happy.


References

Duroiselle, Charles. "Literal Transliteration of the Burmese
Alphabet." Journal of the
Burma Research Society 6.2 (August, 1916): 81-90.

Myat Kyaw and San Lwin, 2002, A Pali-Myanmar dictionary of the noble
words of the Buddha, Myancom Services.
[A small Pali-English-Burmese dictionary in Burmese script]

Okell, John. A Guide to the Romanization of Burmese. James G. Forlong
Fund. Vol. 27.
London: Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 1971. 69pp.


With metta,
Jon Fernquest