St. Paul’s High School, Rangoon was founded by De La Salle Brothers in 1860. After nationalization in 1965, most non-native Brothers left Burma. The school was renamed as No. (6) Botathaung State High School.
SPHS used to have a “Roll of Honor” for outstanding Matriculates from 1951 to 1963.
SPHS59SPHS60
Collegiate Scholarship Winners in 1963
SPHS had five students in the Top Five, seven students in the Top Ten and ten students in the Top Twenty.
Six (KMU,. FBS, VNW, TW, JMM, FG) chose to become Medical Doctor (Professor, Researcher, Registrar …) Three (HM, MMK, ATY) chose to become Engineer and/or Computer Scientist.
Min Oo received two Doctorates in Mathematics from Germany, and is Professor Emeritus of McMaster’s University in Canada.
Seated : Min Oo(2nd) Khin Maung U (1st) , Myo San (Freddie Ba San, 3rd, GBNF)
Kyaw Win was my crew mate at RUBC. On one of his birthdays, he offered Soon to Uzin Aung Chaw (Victor) and invited several former classmates.
Nyunt Wai (Victor) is retired Professor of Physiology. He also taught briefly in Malaysia. He published a collection of Kauk Kyaung Kabyars.
Myo Nyunt (Harry) is Past President of OPA (Old Paulian Association)
Khin Maung Zaw (Frank) is retired Medical Doctor from UK. He came back several times to see his mother and sisters. Sad to note that his mother and his eldest sister are GBNF.
OP 1
Visit to Maung Maung Kyi (SPHS63) in Wales
Maung Maung Kyi attended I.Sc.(A) at LeikKhone Intermediate College.
He also rowed at RUBC (Rangoon University Boat Club) along with Willie Soe Maung (Myint Soe, GBNF), Kyaw Wynn and me. We were awarded Full Green.
When Rangoon University was closed citing Security reasons (following the student protests for the anniversary of 7th July), he applied for State Scholarship to study at Dresden University in Germany. He received Dip, Ing (equivalent to Master’s) in Chemical Engineering with specialization in Pulp and Paper.
He worked for PPIC, Sittaung and Yay Ni Paper Mills.
He later moved to Wales, UK.
OP 5
My cousin nephew Dr. Khin Tun (Peter, GBNF) and his spouse Win Mar took us to visit Maung Maung Kyi and Khin May Than (ChE72) in Ogmore-by-the-sea.
OP 6
Myo Khin (SPHS63)
Myo Khin taught at RIT before moving to Japan. He received his Doctorate in Civil Engineering and worked as Professor.
He donated K100 Lakhs to YTU Library Project.
OP 7
Myint Lwin (Henry, SPHS55, GBNF)
He received his Civil Engineering degree in 1963 (after taking sabbatical to get married).
He was an organizer for SPZP-2000.
He is an accomplished vocalist.
OP 8
Victor Kyaw Phyo (GBNF)
He was my classmate in Middle School.
He was an Organizer for the Combined 1st BE Intake of 1964 and 1965.
ဂျပန် – မြန်မာ အဘိဓာန် Japanese – Burmese Dictionary (ချစ်မန်းနွယ် အဖွဲ့နှင့် အတူ) with Chit Man Nwe / Professor Harada & team
ခေတ်စမ်းစာပေ Co-founder of Khit San Sar Pay with Theikpan Maung Wa and Zawgyi
Three Pioneers
Saya U Wun (Minthuwun), BBS U Khin Zaw (“K”) and Saya U Thein Han (Zawgyi)
U Khin Zaw founded BBS (Burma Broadcasting Service, Myanmar Ah Than) and served as its Director. Earlier, he was Chief Librarian of Rangoon University Library. He was succeeded by U Thein Han.
U Wun headed the Translation Department at Rangoon University. He served as Professor of Burmese at RU, and as Visiting Professor at Osaka University. He is a Lexicographer. He compiled the Myanmar Abhidan. He worked with Professor Harada (Chit Man Nwe) and team on the Japanese-Burmese Dictionary.
Zawgyi and Minthuwun are Laureate Poets. They co-founded Khit San Sar Pay with Theikpan Maung Wa (ICS U Sein Tin). They were the early students of Saya U Pe Maung Tin (Pali and Burmese Scholar, first native Principal of Rangoon College).
အထက်ပါခေါင်းစဉ်အောက်တွင် … ချန်လှပ်ထား၍ မဖြစ်သော ကဏ္ဍတခုမှာ ကျေးဇူးရှင်ဆရာ(ကြီး) တို့နှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ ကျွန်တော် ထိတွေ့မှတ်သားရသည့်အမှတ်ထင်ထင် အကြောင်းရာအချို့ဟု ကျွန်တော် သုံးသပ်ပါသည်။— with Mg Mar Ga and U Hla Min.
Thanks for your birthday wishes. I really appreciate it. I am lucky to have good friends and good former students like you in my life. Hope I will be able to see you in person some time in future.
There are two forms of Myanmar / Burmese language.
Myanmar Sagar (Oral / spoken)
Myanmar Sar (Written)
Alphabet
The Alphabet has 33 Eik Khaya (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 မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ published two major revisions for spelling. It forced publishers to use “Tit” တစ် instead of “Ta” တ (without exception) with a fine of ten pyas for each violation. Scholars pointed out the ancient pagoda had “Bo Ta Htaung” ဗိုလ်တထောင် 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.
မြန် မေ့လွယ် Dementia ဖြစ်လျှင် ပိုမေ့လွယ် Most people see the decline in function of the short term memory.
ခန့်မှန်း 4 Channel အရေးကြီးသောအကြောင်းအရာများ ကို chunking (စုဆည်း) ပြီး ရေရှည်မှတ်ဥာဏ်ထဲမှာသိမ်းပါ။ It is believed that there are about four memory channels. It is advisable to group items in the short term memory into chunks and then save in the long term memory.
ရေရှည် မှတ်ဥာဏ် Long term / Archive Memory
သိပ်မမြန် / နှေး လိုအပ်သလို reorganize လုပ် It may not provide quick access as the short term memory. As needed, the contents in the archive memory may be reorganized.
မေ့ခဲ (လူတယောက်သည် သူထိန်းခဲ့သောမြေးကိုမသိတော့ ။ သူငယ်တန်းက သူငယ်ချင်းများကို အမှတ်တရ တောင့်တ။ အံ့ဩစရာ) Someone could not recognize his grandkid, but he could recall events from his childhood days. He remembers his KG classmates,. It seems like he still have good long term memory, but a flawed short term memory.
ရေတိုမှတ်ဥာဏ် ကို ကူညီဖေးမ
ကင်မရာ မှတ်ဥာဏ်Photographic Memory
ခဏ ကြည့် / ချက်ခြင်းမှတ်မိ
ဆက်စပ် မှတ်ဥာဏ်Associative Memory
အကျိုး အကြာင်း ဆက်စပ် ၍ မှတ်တတ်
Related Topics
မှတ်ဥာဏ် အကူအချို့Memory Aids
Mnemonics
ဥပမာ VIBGYOR (သက်တန့်ရောင်) to remember the Colors of a Rainbow — Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red
ဥဩအော်မည် ကုန်းဘောင်တည် Konbaung Dynasty started in the Burmese Era 1115
ဆန်း – မြ – ချို – ခိုင် – ကြီး – ဝင်: – ဇာတ် – အုန်း – ထွေး (အာဇာနည်) The Martyrs : Aung San, Tahkin Mya, Deedok U Ba Cho, Mongpawn Sawbwagyi, U Ba Win, U Razak, U Ohn Maung, Yebaw Maung Htwe
There are several classifications. They are not mutually exclusive.
Natural Language
Native Language / Mother Tongue
Foreign Language
Spoken Language (e.g. Myanmar Sagar)
Written Language (e.g. Myanmar Sar)
Ideal / Universal Language (e.g. Esperanto)
Machine Language
Programming Language
Compiled Language
Interpreted Language
Assembly Language / Symbolic / Macro
Scientific & Technical Language
Business Language
Specialty Language (e.g English as a Specialty Language)
Domain Language
Meta Language (to describe a language)
Sign Language
Body Language
Dead Language
Major Languages
Chinese
English
Spanish
Arabic
Dialects
Some languages have dialects.
English (UK, USA, Australia …)
French (France, Canada …)
Spanish (Spain, Latin America …)
English
English is not our native language.
For studying abroad, we had to take TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) to prove that we had a reasonably good command of English. TOEFL covers (a) Reading Comprehension (b) Listening Comprehension (c) Essay
Several Community Centers in the USA offer ESL (English as a Second Language).
Saya Des Rodgers taught English at RIT. He did further studies in the UK. He taught “English as a Specialty Language” (aka ESLin Canada.)
HlaMin 