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A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire
Francis Buchanan, M. D.
SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 1, No., 1, Spring 2003, ISSN 1479-8484
Early Article Reprint 1
Francis Buchanan published his “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken in the Burma Empire” in 1799, in the fifth volume of Asiatic Researches. This piece provides one of the first major Western surveys of the languages of Burma. But the article goes beyond this and provides important data on the ethno-cultural identities and identifications of the various population groups in the first half of Bò-daw-hpayà’s reign (1782-1819). For these reasons, the article is republished here. The article is reproduced in its entirety, with slight modifications as follows. letter S used for the contemporary “S” in such words as “Chinese” follows contemporary usage (thus “Chinese”). At several points in the article, the original publisher did not usage (thus, “Chinese”) include all the necessary characters (and sometimes lopped off the ends of sentences).
In such cases, the lost letter or likely word has been included within brackets. Split words, using a dash at the end of a sentence have been reunified (hence, “wo-man”, is now “woman”). Finally, the article has been repaginated to fit within the overall scheme of this issue of the SBBR. Beyond these points, no changes have been made and all footnotes are derived from the original article. The original citation for the article is as follows: Francis Buchanan. “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages Spoken inthe Burma Empire.” Asiatic Researches 5 (1799): 219-240.
