Talk:ဘာသာ

ဘာသာ vs. စကား

@Hintha, Cepyita, Saimawnkham: Somewhere I heard that ဘာသာ (bhasa) refers primarily to written language and စကား (ca.ka:) primarily to spoken language. Can anyone confirm or deny? If so, that information should be included in both entries. Also, if that's true, what does ဘာသာစကား (bhasaca.ka:) refer to? Language in general regardless of whether it's written or spoken? —Mahāgaja · talk 17:48, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

That is not necessarily true. In our Burmese language, ဘာသာ is a Pali word that can be used interchangeably with စကား to mean any language in general. Therefore, မြန်မာဘာသာ can mean both written and spoken Burmese. မြန်မာစကား, however, mostly denote spoken form. We usually say, မြန်မာစာ( Written Burmese) and မြန်မာစကား (Spoken Burmese). If someone use a literary term in conversation, we call it အရေးစကား or စာစကား (Written Speech). ဘာသာစကား is a combined technical term used specifically to translate the word "Language", since ဘာသာ can also mean "subject", "religion", or "diverse characteristics". Cepyita (talk) 03:27, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

OK, thanks! I think it was the distinction between စာ (ca) and စကား (ca.ka:) that I remembered hearing about, but I misremembered the terms in question. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:41, 1 May 2024 (UTC)