Sino-Tibetan · ISO 639-3 mya · my
Burmese Language မြန်မာ
Burmese is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 36 million people in 2 countries. It is an official language of Myanmar. It is written in the Myanmar script.
Where Burmese is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Burmese
Language family
- Sino-Tibetan
- Burmo-Qiangic
- Lolo-Burmese
- Burmish
- Southern Burmish
- Mranmaic
- Nuclear Mranmaic
- Burmese
Writing system
Myanmar script
Related languages
About the Burmese language
Burmese (မြန်မာ) is spoken by about 36 million people, which makes it the 49th most spoken language in the world — just behind Amharic (36 million) and ahead of Odia (35 million). It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and, more precisely, to the Nuclear Mranmaic group within the Lolo-Burmese branch.
Where is Burmese spoken?
Burmese is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in Myanmar (37 million) and Bangladesh (354,263). More than half of the population speaks it in Myanmar — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Burmese: Myanmar 64% (37 million) and Bangladesh 0.2% (354,263).
Burmese is an official language in 1 country: Myanmar.
Writing system and status
Burmese is written in the Myanmar script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Marma, Rakhine and Sichuan Yi.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 my, ISO 639-3 mya.
Frequently asked questions about Burmese
How many people speak Burmese?
Where is Burmese spoken?
In which countries is Burmese an official language?
What language family does Burmese belong to?
What is Burmese called in Burmese?
Is Burmese an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.