406 Some account of the Wars between Burmah and China. [June, 



Pekin by the late and present kings of Ava. But before giving these 

 translations it may be proper to explain the system which I have 

 adopted, for writing Burmese and Chinese names in the Roman 

 character. 



I have followed, as far as I was able, Sir Wm. Jones's system, ex- 

 cepting that I have used the prosodial long and short signs, instead 

 of the acute and grave accents, for denoting long and short vowels* ; 

 The Burmese have a very bad ear for discriminating new sounds, and, 

 unfortunately, their written character will not admit of their writing 

 or pronouncing many foreign words. They can write ing only as 1, in, 

 en or eng ; ang as en or eng ; ong as oiin, and f as ph, or bh. R, 

 they seldom sound but as y, and they use a soft ih for s. A final 

 kg, or t, is often scarcely sounded, if not entirely mute, and I denote 

 this by underlining such letter. The Burmese also change the sound 

 of the initial letter of the second or third syllables of compound and 

 derivative words, sounding b as p ; k and k,h as g ; t and t,h as d ; 

 and ts and tsh, as z. But in copying Chinese names from the Bur- 

 mese; I have always given the legitimate sound of all such letters in 

 the Roman character. The Chinese, according to Du Halde, have 

 an h, so strong, that it is entirely guttural, and the Burmese envoys 

 apparently attempt to express this Chinese sound of h, by the double 

 consonant sh or shy of their own alphabet. The Burmese do not 

 sound the two letters which they have derived from the Devanagari 

 ^, ^, as cha and ch-ha, which the Siamese and Shans do, but as a 

 very hard s, and its aspirate, pronounced with the tip of the tongue 

 turned up against the roof of the mouth, and best expressed, in my 

 opinion, by ts and tsh. The Chinese appear to have the same sounds, 

 expressed by Du Halde by the same Roman letters ts, and tsh ; the 

 first of which, he observes, is pronounced as the Italians pronounce the 

 word gratia. For the Burmese heavy accent, marked something like 

 our colon (8), and used to close a syllable, when ending in a vowel or 

 nasal consonant, with a very heavy aspirated sound, I have used two 

 points in the middle of a word, and the letter h, usually, at the close. 

 Our prosodial short mark will best express the Burmese accent mark- 

 ed as a point under a letter, and intended to give a syllable a very 

 short sound. All the Burmese envoys write the names of the Chinese 



* Those accentual marks being best adapted for describing the peculiar high 

 and grave tones, in which the same letters are sounded in the Siamese and Shan 

 languages. [We have, however, for want of type been obliged to adhere to the 

 accented system — the absence of an accent denoting the short and its presence 

 the long sound. — Ed.] 



