ABSTRACT
Burmese (Myan-ma) belongs to the Burmic branch of the Tibeto-Burmese family. From south-west China, where its close congener, Yi, is still spoken, Burmese was carried southwards, to reach its present habitat by the ninth century AD. Here, it came into contact with the Mon language, and the Pali scriptures of Buddhism. The result was an amalgam: Tibeto- Burman stock with a Mon-Khmer substratum and writing system, plus a Pali-Buddhist ideological superstructure. The earliest written records in Burmese date from the eleventh century. By the twelfth century, Burmese had replaced Mon as the literary language of the Mon court.
