Is Burmese Hard To Learn? (Helpful Content!)

Learning Burmese is certainly challenging for English speakers. It’s a very different language with a lot of different conventions that make learning it more of an uphill battle. Learning any language is hard, but that challenge will be ramped up with Burmese. That said, the rewards are more than worth the effort of learning.

Burmese is a tough language, then, and if you’re committed to learning it you can expect a long road of difficulties ahead.

At the same time, if you have the will and the patience, then learning Burmese is well within your grasp—many have done so before you, and you are just as capable as they were.

Let’s find out more.

Understanding the Burmese Script and Pronunciation

The Burmese script, characterized by its distinctive characters, has historical origins in the ancient Brahmi script of India.

Established since the 11th century, it serves as the writing system for the Burmese language and several other languages in Myanmar.

Intriguingly, each consonant in this script inherently carries a vowel, which can be modified with specific markers.

An interesting aspect of the Burmese script is its close relationship with the Mon script.

Both scripts are members of the broader Mon-Burmese script family.

Historically, the Mon people, known for their significant influence in Southeast Asia, contributed to the early development of the Burmese script.

The Mon script, parallel to the Burmese, also originates from the Brahmi script and boasts a usage spanning over a millennium.

Pronunciation in Burmese presents its own set of challenges due to its tonal nature.

For instance, the pronunciation of the word “ma” can vary in meaning from mother to horse or chick, contingent on the tone employed.

Burmese incorporates three primary tones: low, high, and creaky, each adding a distinct nuance to the spoken word.

With its unique script and tonal pronunciation, the Burmese language offers learners an opportunity to immerse themselves in a linguistically rich and historically profound language.

As one delves deeper into its intricacies, the language reveals layers of cultural and historical significance.

How difficult is Burmese to learn?

For English speakers, Burmese is regarded as a relatively difficult language to learn.

You’ll have an uphill battle in many ways to get to the point that you can conduct yourself well in the language, and being an English speaker will not give you any particular leg up or head start in being able to speak Burmese.

It’s always important to realize that learning languages is never easy—some, of course, are far easier than others for English speakers, but they are never outright easy.

It will take time and you’ll have to be fully committed to your studies.

The difficulty of learning Burmese can be put into some perspective by an exploration of language families.

English is in the Indo-European language family, which is a broad enough category to include all but a handful of the languages spoken in Europe and in parts of India and Asia.

English more specifically is a Germanic language, closely related to things like Dutch or Swedish.

Burmese, on the other hand, is not even Indo-European.

It is instead Sino-Tibetan, and part of the Burmish language group within that family.

The two languages, then, are very distant from one another and for practical purposes are not related at all.

Whereas you would notice many similarities in, say, Dutch or Danish that would help you in learning the language, you’ll have no such help in Burmese.

The reality of learning any language is always more complicated than this, of course, but nonetheless it helps put into perspective the relative difficulty of learning Burmese.

Because language learning is almost always difficult in relative terms.

With all this said, learning Burmese is well worth the time and effort and will reward you for your perseverance.

How long can you expect to persevere in learning, then?

How long does it take to learn Burmese?

It will naturally vary somewhat from person to person, but there are again good rules of thumb that you can look at to help understand how long it might take you to master a language.

There are, also, different levels of mastery that will take different amounts of time to learn.

The FSI categorizes languages based on how difficult they are to learn, and the categories go from one to five, with five being the hardest to learn for an English speaker.

Burmese is a category four language, meaning that it is among the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn and will take a long time.

Only a handful of languages are going to be harder for you to learn.

Languages of category four generally take around 44 weeks of continuous study to be at the point that you are able to conduct yourself in the language on a day-to-day basis.

But this study is not the only part of learning the language.

Ideally, once your studies are complete, or at least this initial period, you would then spend some years living in an area where it is spoken, absorbing and using the language every day.

After around 3-5 years of continuous use of the language, you can expect to be at the point that you are more or less fluent if you continue to be diligent in learning and studying.

So, for full fluency, you can expect a long time to get to grips with the language.

Is Burmese the hardest language to learn?

Burmese is not the hardest language to learn by any stretch, though it’s also certainly up there with the hardest.

The hardest languages to learn are generally accepted to be things like Mandarin or Japanese, but again, this does not mean learning Burmese is easy!

Is Burmese a good language to learn?

Burmese is a great language to learn for many reasons.

There are an estimated 33 million speakers in places like Myanmar and Bangladesh, with a further 10 million estimated to speak it as a second language.

It contains a rich and storied culture which is so far removed from our own that learning it may represent a real ability to expanding your thinking outside of your own comfort zone and cultural norms.

The answer to this question always depends on what exactly you want out of a language, but the general answer is that this is certainly a great language to learn.

Learning Burmese is going to take time, patience, and commitment, then.

You won’t have an easy time, but then again, few things that are worth doing are easy!

You’ll have to commit yourself not only to months of study, but if you’re really serious about fluency, then potentially to years of living in the country.

Once you’ve gotten to the point of acquisition you wanted, though, the rewards and benefits will be more than worth the effort.