စကား

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Burmese

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Pronunciation

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  • Phonetic respelling: ဇ'ဂါး
  • IPA(key): /zəɡá/
  • Romanization: MLCTS: ca.ka: • ALA-LC: cakāʺ • BGN/PCGN: zăga: • Okell: săkà
  • Homophone: စံကား (camka:)
  • Audio:(file)

Etymology 1

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Spelled in Old Burmese inscriptions alternatively as စာကား (caka:); as in ဤငါစာကာကိုဝ် လိုက်မူကာ (i-ngacakakuiw luikmuka, If one follows these words of mine).[1]

Thus, according to U Phoh Lat, the first syllable (ca.) is often a vowel-weakened version of စာ (ca, word, letter), as can be attested in several inscriptions such as the above.[2]

The second syllable, ကား (ka:), is from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ka (word; speech; language), which may be connected to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *m/s-k(w)a-j (mouth, opening); cognate with Tibetan བཀའ (bka') and Jingpho shăga (speak) (STEDT).[3]

U Phoh Lat also considered the "shrill, chirping" sense of စာ (ca) and further compared it with Tibetan (cha, voice, speech sound), Tibetan ཅལ (cal, noise), Tibetan འཆད ('chad, to speak), Lisu shaq (voice) and Chinese (, word, phrase, speech).[4]

Noun

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စကား (ca.ka:) (classifier ခွန်း)

  1. language (system of communication using words or symbols), speech
  2. word
Synonyms
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Derived terms
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Etymology 2

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See the entry for more.

Noun

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စကား (ca.ka:)

  1. Alternative form of စံကား (camka:, champac)

References

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  1. ^ The Edict of King Kyaswa[1] (in Burmese), 1249
  2. ^ Lord Anantasu Inscription[2] (in Burmese), 1223
  3. ^ Sayadaw U Kosalla (Government Dhammacariya scholar; B.A in London) (1985) ဗြဟ္မနိရုတ္တိနယသင်္ဂဟကျမ်း [Brahmaniruttinayasaṅgaha: On the evolution of Burmese words] (in Burmese), Yangon: Sa Pe Paung" Gu" press, page 289
  4. ^ U Phoh Lat (1962) မြန်မာစကားအဖွင့်ကျမ်း [A Burmese Etymological Dictionary] (in Burmese), volume 1, Yangon: Pyinnya Nanda press, pages 178-179

Further reading

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