# Rakhine language

Rakhine (/rəˈkaɪn/; Burmese: ရခိုင်ဘာသာ, MLCTS: ra.hkuing bhasa Burmese pronunciation:), also known as Arakanese, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in western Myanmar, primarily in the Rakhine State, and parts of south-eastern Bangladesh. Closely related to Burmese, the language is spoken by the Rakhine and Marma peoples; it is estimated to have around one million native speakers and it is spoken as a second language by a further million.
Though Arakanese has some similarity with standard Burmese, Burmese speakers find it difficult to communicate with Arakanese speakers. Thus, it is often considered to be a dialect or variety of Burmese. As there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Arakanese. There are three dialects of Arakanese: Sittwe–Marma (about two thirds of speakers), Ramree, and Thandwe.

## Vocabulary

While Arakanese and Standard Burmese share the majority of lexicon, Arakanese has numerous vocabulary differences. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like 'sarong' (လုံခြည် in Standard Burmese, ဒယော in Arakanese). Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is 'hospital', which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သိပ်လှိုင် (pronounced [θeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]/[ʃeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]) in Arakanese, from English sick lines. Other words simply have different meanings (e.g., 'afternoon', ညစ in Arakanese and ညနေ in Standard Burmese). Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese (not ကျွန်တော်, as in Standard Burmese). A more unique difference is the 'Hra' sound which is not found in Burmese: only in Arakanese. eg. ဟြာ(Hra/Seek) and Hraa(ဟြား/very good/smart).

### Comparison

A gloss of vocabulary differences between Standard Burmese and Arakanese is below:
| English | Standard Burmese | Arakanese | Notes |
| thirsty | ရေဆာ | ရီမွတ် | |
| go | သွား | လား | Arakanese for 'go' was historically used in Standard Burmese. |
| kick a ball | ဘောလုံးကန် | ဘောလုံးကျောက် | |
| stomach ache | ဗိုက်နာ | ဝမ်းနာ | Arakanese prefers ဝမ်း to Standard Burmese ဗိုက် for 'stomach'. |
| guava | မာလကာသီး | ဂိုယံသီး | Standard Burmese for 'guava' is derived from the word Malacca, whereas Arakanese for 'guava' is from Spanish guayaba, from Taino: guayaba. |
| papaya | သင်္ဘောသီး | ပဒကာသီး | Standard Burmese for 'papaya' literally means 'boat'. |
| soap | ဆပ်ပြာ | သူပုန် | From Portuguese "sabão". In Standard Burmese, 'သူပုန်' means 'rebel' or 'insurgent'. |
| superficial | အပေါ်ယံ | အထက်ပေါ်ရီ | |
| blanket | စောင် | ပုဆိုး | ပုဆိုး in Standard Burmese refers to the men's longyi (sarong). |
| dark | မှောင် | မိုက် | The compound word မှောင်မိုက် ('pitch dark') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |
| pick a flower | ပန်းခူး | ပန်းဆွတ် | The compound word ဆွတ်ခူး ('pick') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |
| wash [clothes] | လျှော် | ဖွပ် | The compound word လျှော်ဖွပ် ('wash') is used in both Standard Burmese and Arakanese. |

## Phonology

The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

### Consonants

The consonants of Arakanese are:
Consonant phonemes :
| | | Bilabial | Dental/Alveolar | Dental/Alveolar | Post-al./ Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
| | | Bilabial | central | sibilant | Post-al./ Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
| Nasal | voiced | m | n | | ɲ | ŋ | |
| Nasal | voiceless | m̥ | n̥ | | ɲ̊ | ŋ̊ | |
| Plosive | voiced | b | d | | dʒ | ɡ | |
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | | tʃ | k | ʔ |
| Plosive | aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | | tʃʰ | kʰ | |
| Fricative | voiced | | | z | | | |
| Fricative | voiceless | | θ | s | ʃ | | h |
| Fricative | aspirated | | | sʰ | | | h |
| Lateral | voiced | | l | | | | |
| Lateral | voiceless | | l̥ | | | | |
| Approximant | voiced | | ɹ | | j | w | |
| Approximant | voiceless | | ɹ̥ | | | ʍ | |
Arakanese largely shares the same set of consonant phonemes as standard Burmese, though Arakanese more prominently uses /ɹ/, which has largely merged to /j/ in standard Burmese (with some exceptions). Because Arakanese has preserved the /ɹ/ sound, the /-ɹ-/ medial (which is preserved in writing in Standard Burmese with the diacritic ြ) is still distinguished in the following Arakanese consonant clusters: /ɡɹ- kɹ- kʰɹ- ŋɹ- pɹ- pʰɹ- bɹ- mɹ- m̥ɹ- hɹ-/. For example, the word "blue," spelt ပြာ, is pronounced /pjà/ in standard Burmese, but pronounced /pɹà/ in Arakanese. Moreover, there is less voicing in Arakanese than in Standard Burmese, occurring only when the consonant is unaspirated. Unlike in Burmese, voicing never shifts from [θ] to [ð].

### Vowels

The vowels of Arakanese are:
| | Monophthongs | Monophthongs | Monophthongs | Diphthongs | Diphthongs |
| | Front | Central | Back | Front offglide | Back offglide |
| Close | i | | u | | |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o | ei | ou |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ə | ɔ | | |
| Open | | a | | ai | au |
While Arakanese shares the same set of vowels as Burmese, Arakanese rhymes also diverge from Standard Burmese for a number of open syllables and closed syllables. For instance, Arakanese has also merged various vowel sounds, such as ဧ ([e]) to ဣ ([i]). Hence, a word like 'blood', which is spelt သွေး, pronounced ([θwé]) in standard Burmese, is pronounced [θwí] in Arakanese. Similarly, Arakanese has a number of closed syllable rhymes that do not exist in Standard Burmese, including /-ɛɴ -ɔɴ -ɛʔ -ɔʔ/.
The Arakanese dialect also has a higher frequency of open vowels weakening to /ə/ than Standard Burmese. An example is the word for 'salary', (လခ), which is [la̰ɡa̰] in standard Burmese, but [ləkha̰] in Arakanese.

## Differences from standard Burmese

The following is a summary of consonantal, vowel and rhyme differences from Standard Burmese found in the Arakanese dialect:
| Written Burmese | Standard Burmese | Arakanese | Notes |
| -စ် | /-ɪʔ/ | /-aɪʔ/ | e.g. စစ် 'genuine' and စိုက် 'plant' are both pronounced [saɪʔ] in Arakanese |
| ိုက် | /-aɪʔ/ | /-aɪʔ/ | |
| -က် | -ɛʔ | -ɔʔ | |
| -ဉ် | /-ɪɴ/ | /-aɪɴ/ | e.g. ဥယျာဉ် 'garden', from Standard Burmese [ṵ jɪ̀ɴ] → [wəjàɪɴ]. Irregular rhyme, with various pronunciations. In some words, it is /-ɛɴ/ (e.g. ဝိညာဉ် 'soul', from Standard Burmese [wèɪɴ ɲɪ̀ɴ] → [wḭ ɲɛ̀ɴ]). In a few words, it is /-i -e/ (e.g. ညှဉ်း 'to oppress', from Standard Burmese [ɲ̥ɪ́ɴ] → [ɲ̥í, ɲ̥é]). |
| ိုင် | /-aɪɴ/ | /-aɪɴ/ | |
| -င် | /-ɪɴ/ | /-ɔɴ/ | |
| -န် ွန် | /-aɴ -ʊɴ/ | /-ɔɴ/ | ွန် is /-wɔɴ/ |
| -ည် | /-i, -e, -ɛ/ | /-e/ | A few exceptions are pronounced /-aɪɴ/, like ကြည် 'clear', pronounced [kɹàɪɴ] |
| -ေ | /-e/ | /-i/ | e.g. ချီ 'carry' and ချေ 'cancel' are pronounced [tɕʰì] and [tɕʰè] respectively in Standard Burmese, but merged to [tɕʰì] in Arakanese |
| -တ် ွတ် | /-aʔ -ʊʔ/ | /-aʔ/ | |
| ိန် | /-eɪɴ/ | /-ɪɴ/ | |
| -ုန် | /-oʊɴ/ | /-ʊɴ/ | |
| Nasal initial + -ီ Nasal initial + -ေ | /-i/ | /-eɪɴ/ | e.g. နီ 'red' is [nì] in Standard Burmese, but [nèɪɴ] in Arakanese In some words, the rhyme is unchanged from the standard rhyme (e.g. မြေ 'land', usually pronounced [mɹì], not [mɹèɪɴ], or အမိ 'mother', usually pronounced [əmḭ], not [əmḛɪɴ] There are few exceptions where the nasal rhyme is /-eɪɴ-/ even without a nasal initial (e.g. သီ 'thread', from Standard Burmese [θì] → [θèɪɴ]). |
| Nasal initial + -ု -ူ -ူး | /-u/ | /-oʊɴ/ | e.g. နု 'tender' is [nṵ] in Standard Burmese, but [no̰ʊɴ] in Arakanese |
| ွား | /-wá/ | /-ɔ́/ | e.g. ဝါး 'bamboo' is [wá] in Standard Burmese, but [wɔ́] in Arakanese |
| ြွ | /-w-/ | /-ɹw-/ | Occurs in some words (e.g. မြွေ 'snake' is [mwè] in Standard Burmese, but [mɹwèɪɴ] in Arakanese) |
| ရှ- | /ʃ-/ | /hɹ-/ | |
| ချ- | /tɕʰ-/ | /ʃ-/ | Occasionally occurs (e.g. ချင် 'to want' is [tɕʰɪ̀ɴ] in Standard Burmese, but [ʃɔ̀ɴ]~[tɕʰɔ̀ɴ] in Arakanese) |
| တ- → ရ- | /t- d-/ | /ɹ-/ | e.g. The present tense particle တယ် ([dɛ̀]) corresponds with ရယ် ([ɹɛ̀]) in Arakanese e.g. The plural particle တို့ ([do̰]) corresponds with ရို့ ([ɹo̰]) in Arakanese |
| ရှ- ယှ- ယျှ- | /ʃ-/ | /h-/ | Found in some words only |
| -ယ် ဲ | -ɛ | -e | |
| Written | အမေက | သင်္ကြန်ပွဲတွင် | ဝတ်ရန် | ထဘီ | ရှစ်ထည် | ပေးလိုက်ပါ | ဆိုသည်။ |
| Standard Burmese | ʔəmè ɡa̰ | ðədʒàɴ pwɛ́ dwɪ̀ɴ | wʊʔ jàɴ | tʰəmèɪɴ | ʃɪʔ tʰɛ̀ | pé laɪʔ pà | sʰò dɛ̀ |
| Arakanese | ʔəmì ɡa̰ | θɔ́ɴkràɴ pwé hmà | waʔ pʰo̰ | dəjɔ̀ | ʃaɪʔ tʰè | pí laʔ pà | sʰò ɹì |
| Arakanese (written) | အမိက | သင်္ကြန်ပွဲမှာ | ဝတ်ဖို့ | ဒယော | ရှစ်ထည် | ပီးလတ်ပါ | ဆိုရယ်။ |
| Gloss |
| English | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." | Mother says "Give me eight pasos for wearing during the Thingyan festival." |

## Writing system

Arakanese is written using the Burmese script, which descends from Southern Brahmi. Rakhine speakers are taught Rakhine pronunciations using written Burmese, while most Marma speakers are only literate in Bengali.
The first extant Arakanese inscriptions, the Launggrak Taung Maw inscription and the Mahathi Crocodile Rock inscription (1356), date to the 1300s, and the epigraphic record of Arakanese inscriptions is unevenly distributed between the 1400s to 1800s. In the early 1400s, Arakanese inscriptions began to transition from the square letters associated with stone inscriptions (kyauksa), to rounder letters that is now standard for the Burmese script. This coincided with developments in Arakanese literature, which was stimulated by the rise of Mrauk U during the 1400s.
What is now Rakhine State is home to Sanskrit inscriptions that date from the first millennium to the 1000s. These inscriptions were written in Northern Brahmic scripts (namely Siddham or Gaudi), which are ancestral to the Bengali script. However, these inscriptions are not ancestral to Arakanese epigraphy, which uses the Mon–Burmese script. While some Arakanese have coined the term "Rakkhawunna" (Rakkhavaṇṇa) to describe a script that predates the usage of written Burmese, there is no contemporary lithic evidence to support the existence of such a script.