Myanmar Letter E

It is an independent Myanmar vowel letter for e. It marks a vowel-initial syllable without attaching a vowel sign to a consonant. In Burmese, it appears chiefly in a small set of Pali and other Indian loanwords; ဧရာမ (“big”) is one example.

Around the eighth century, a South Indian script related to Brahmi, an ancient writing system, was adapted to write Mon. Unicode places the first Myanmar-script inscription in the eleventh century; a second review dates the earliest surviving records it covers to the twelfth century. The script later served Burmese, Mon, Karen, Shan, Pali, Sanskrit, and other languages, so ဧ’s sound and distribution depend on the language.

Why is ဧ not the usual Burmese e?

Because Burmese usually writes standalone e as အေ. The dependent sign ေ attaches to a consonant; ဧ is an independent vowel letter. They can represent related vowel values but have different jobs in the writing system.

Myanmar writing follows a Brahmi-related structure: each consonant carries an inherent vowel, and attached signs change that vowel. Khmer uses a similar structure, but that does not make a Khmer character interchangeable with ဧ.