Burma
noun
a mountainous republic in southeastern Asia on the Bay of Bengal
- “much opium is grown in Myanmar”
Origin
Borrowed, initially into British English, from Burmese ဗမာ (ba.ma), colloquial form of မြန်မာ (mranma); see Myanmar for more. The r in Burma was not originally pronounced (and is not present in the Burmese term), the -ur- (alternatively also -ir-, though the spelling Birma is obsolete in English) is a device used by non-rhotic dialects to represent the schwa found in the pronunciation of the Burmese colloquial form.
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Broader terms
WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.