Category: Burma

Terms

• SS — Starting Salary
• AI — Annual Increment
• MS — Maximum Salary (aka Bar Sone)
• CLA — Cost of Living Allowance

Tutor (for non-Science Departments)

• Pay scale : 200 – 10 – 300
• With CLA, starting pay is 200 + 97 = 297 kyats
• Lecturing Tutor gets an additional 100 kyats
• Ad hoc Tutor gets 100 kyats

Demonstrator (for Science Departments)

• Same pay scale as Tutor

Assistant Lecturer (AL)

• Pay scale : 350 – 25 – 700
• With CLA, starting pay is 350 + 89 = 439 kyats
• Is a Gazetted Officer

Lecturer

• Old pay scale : 800 – 50 – 1200
• No CLA, but has access to staff shop
• Can spend 10% of salary at the staff shop

Professor

• Pay scale : 1300
• No CLA, but has access to “staff shop”
• May be eligible for a house in the Campus

Rector

• Pay scale : 1500

Gazetted Officer

• Assistant Lecturers and above are Gazetted Officers.
• Details (promotions, transfers, vacation) are recorded in the Gazette.

Changes

CLA was abolished.

New positions and scales were introduced.

• A hybrid system (Professor, Associate Professor and Lecturer) was adopted instead of the more common system (Professor, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor)
• Engineering Instructor: 450 – 25 – 700 [“new” position]
• Assistant Lecturer: 450 – 25 – 700 [“new” scale]
• Lecturer: 800 – 40 – 1000 [“new” scale]
• Associate Professor: 1000 – 50 – 1200 [“new” position]

Miscellaneous

Gazetted officer : 450 scale & above

The pay raises could not keep up with the rising cost of living.

Promotions take considerably longer.

• In the early days, engineering graduates joined the Faculty of Engineering as Assistant Lecturers.
  In the later days, engineering graduates have to serve as Instructors before they become Assistant Lecturers.
• In the early days, a Lecturer can get promoted to Professorship. In the later days, a Lecturer gets promoted to Associate Professor.

The Public Services Commission (PSC) took charge of the appointments of government employees.

Observation

In the old days, a University is a collection of Colleges. Most departments have a Professor, who also served as Head of the Department. Some departments were headed by Lecturers and even Assistant Lecturers.

There are now some Universities in Myanmar that do not have multiple Colleges. Some departments have several Professors.

There are some private Universities.

Language

There are two forms of Myanmar / Burmese language.

• Myanmar Sagar (Oral / spoken)
• Myanmar Sar (Written)

Alphabet

The Alphabet has 33 Eik Khaya (loosely rendered as letter or character).

Grouping

There are several groups (Wagga) of five letters.

Linguists and phonologists refer to the groups as

• Gutturals (Ka group)
• Palatels (Sa group)
• Cerebrals (Ta-ta-lin-chaik group)
• Dentals (Ta group)
• Labials (Pa group)
• The first group (known as “Ka” wag [or wagga]) consists of
  Ka (Ka gyi), Kha (Kha Gway), Ga (Ga Nge), Ga (Ga Gyi) and Nga.
  Note that the 3rd and 4th members have the same sound.

Basic Rules

• There are some basic rules for “Pa Sint” (where one letter is placed on top of the other).
• One rule says “Eik Khaya Tu, Wag Tu Sint”. It means the two letters forming a “Pa Sint” must be the same, or from the same group.
  So, it is a “No No” to have a Ka on top of Sa.
• Another rule says, “Even for letters within a group, the ordering must be preserved”.
  So, Ka can be put on top of Kha, but not the other way.
  Also, Ga Nge can be put on top of Ga Gyi, but not the other way.

Byee and Thara

• Ah is used as a Byee (Consonant) and sometimes as a Thara (Vowel).
• A Burmese word can be formed with a Byee and one or more Thara.

Typewriter Keyboard

When the Burmese Keyboard was implemented for a typewriter (e.g. Olympia), the keys are labeled Red (keys that prevent the shifting of the carriage to type Thara) and Black (keys that signal the completion of the word and allows the carriage to advance).

Word Processing

The early Burmese word processing systems use

• transliteration (e.g. on Apple Macintosh computers)
• Thara before Byee (as in the typewriter)
• Byee followed by Thara (which requires processing to delimit the words and to have a canonical ordering for representation).

Issues

• The Myanmar Sar Ah Phwe published two major revisions for spelling. It forced publishers to use “Tit” instead of “Ta” (without exception) with a fine of ten pyas for each “violation”.
  Scholars pointed out the ancient pagoda had “Bo Ta Htaung” and not “Bo Tit Htaung” in its inscriptions, but the group who wanted to please Number One prevailed.
• There was a rush to implement Burmese type faces and type fonts.
  The implementations did not have consensus and did not address compliance (e.g. with Unicode).
  They led to the incompatibility issues in the current computer systems, smart phones and devices.
• Short Messaging Systems inadvertently degraded the spelling prowess.

Language

There are two forms of Myanmar / Burmese language.

• Myanmar Sagar (Oral / spoken)
• Myanmar Sar (Written)

Alphabet

The Alphabet has 33 Eik Khaya (loosely rendered as letter or character).

Grouping

There are several groups (Wagga) of five letters.

Linguists and phonologists refer to the groups as

• Gutturals (Ka group)
• Palatels (Sa group)
• Cerebrals (Ta-ta-lin-chaik group)
• Dentals (Ta group)
• Labials (Pa group)
• The first group (known as “Ka” wag [or wagga]) consists of
  Ka (Ka gyi), Kha (Kha Gway), Ga (Ga Nge), Ga (Ga Gyi) and Nga.
  Note that the 3rd and 4th members have the same sound.

Basic Rules

• There are some basic rules for “Pa Sint” (where one letter is placed on top of the other).
• One rule says “Eik Khaya Tu, Wag Tu Sint”. It means the two letters forming a “Pa Sint” must be the same, or from the same group.
  So, it is a “No No” to have a Ka on top of Sa.
• Another rule says, “Even for letters within a group, the ordering must be preserved”.
  So, Ka can be put on top of Kha, but not the other way.
  Also, Ga Nge can be put on top of Ga Gyi, but not the other way.

Byee and Thara

• Ah is used as a Byee (Consonant) and sometimes as a Thara (Vowel).
• A Burmese word can be formed with a Byee and one or more Thara.

Typewriter Keyboard

When the Burmese Keyboard was implemented for a typewriter (e.g. Olympia), the keys are labeled Red (keys that prevent the shifting of the carriage to type Thara) and Black (keys that signal the completion of the word and allows the carriage to advance).

Word Processing

The early Burmese word processing systems use

• transliteration (e.g. on Apple Macintosh computers)
• Thara before Byee (as in the typewriter)
• Byee followed by Thara (which requires processing to delimit the words and to have a canonical ordering for representation).

Issues

• The Myanmar Sar Ah Phwe published two major revisions for spelling. It forced publishers to use “Tit” instead of “Ta” (without exception) with a fine of ten pyas for each “violation”.
  Scholars pointed out the ancient pagoda had “Bo Ta Htaung” and not “Bo Tit Htaung” in its inscriptions, but the group who wanted to please Number One prevailed.
• There was a rush to implement Burmese type faces and type fonts.
  The implementations did not have consensus and did not address compliance (e.g. with Unicode).
  They led to the incompatibility issues in the current computer systems, smart phones and devices.
• Short Messaging Systems inadvertently degraded the spelling prowess.

• Soft coup in 1958
  In the guise of “Ain Saunt Ah Soe Ya” (Caretaker Taker Government)
  Initially requested 6 months to hold free and fair elections
  Actually, took 18 months (first of many broken promises by the Armed Forces)
  
• First hard coup on March 2, 1962
  By the 17-man Revolutionary Council (headed by Bo Ne Win)
  Arrested President, Prime Minister & Cabinet Ministers
  Later arrested Chief Justice, Senior Police Officers, Politicians
  
• Second coup on September 18, 1988
  By SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) headed by Bo Saw Maung
  Crushed the 8-8-88 movement

ဧည့် — နိုင်ငံခြား ခေါင်းဆောင် (တချို့)

ဟိုချီမင်း Ho Chi Minh

နေရူး Nehru

ချူအင်လိုင်း Chou En Lai

နာဆာ Nasser

အထွေထွေ

• သင်္ကြန် Thingyan”
  Water Throwing Festival
  
• Non-aligned Movement
  Bandung Conference
  
• Indira Gandhi (နောက် — ဝန်ကြီးချုပ်)
  Accompanied her father Nehru