Re: Scans of the original Burmese Chattha Sangayana Tipitaka

Dear Susi,

If I may make a quick response – no doubt your friend is quite right and thanks for translating the German. What I meant to say in an earlier post was that there is no universally accepted method for romanizing Burmese, however it seems that the transliteration systems are reasonably consistent. If we use the transliteration system of the Library of Congress we get charāto' (I hope the diacritic appears). However this does not reflect the pronunciation of the word at all and is really only useful for Burmese scholars (who know, for example, that rā in fact represents a low tone "ya" and that in this context to' represents a low tone "daw"). Transcription, which tries to represent the sound rather than the script, would yield something like sayadaw, hsayadaw or, following the system in John Okell's books, s'ăyadaw (again, I hope the diacritic appears). Speaking of John Okell, an interesting resource critically reviewing the major competing systems for representing Burmese in roman letters is his book "A Guide to the Romanization of Burmese". We should be grateful that Pali is so straightforward to romanize!

Regards,
Chris


-----Original Message-----
From: jimanderson_on@...
Sent: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 11:09:50 -0400
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Scans of the original Burmese Chattha Sangayana Tipitaka
Dear Susi,
  You wrote:
  << PS: To everybody: It's quite an odd feeling to post something
  without any reaction to it (I'm grateful for any), but I guess that's
  just the nature of mailing lists, and I will just observe my "odd
  feelings" with awareness :-). >>
  I'm sorry for not having responded to the additional information on
  the title "Sayadaw" from your friend Georg along with your translation
  from the German. It is much appreciated and I had intended to respond
  to it. The problem I'm having is that ever since the visit from the
  Sayadaws last Thursday I've been overwehelmed by what's been happening
  and in situations like this I have to wait until things get a bit
  calmer for me. There are other posts I want to respond to as well in
  addition to some offlist emails.
  Last December, you also posted something relating to your dissertation
  research and I don't recall anyone responding to it. These things do
  happen here and you're not alone. Anyway, everything you've posted to
  the group are very good, appreciated, and worthy of a response.
  Best wishes,
  Jim