THE Global New Light of Myanmar of 28 April 2021 issue carried a news story on the English proficiency course jointly conducted by the Ministry of Information (MOI) and the Ministry of Education. According to the news, it was the second English language course to improve the quality of MOI staff. The first course was opened at the MRTV in Tatkon. Doubtlessly, such training courses contribute much to the capacity building of the staff.

The news reminded me of the days of the early 1980s when I joined the Sarpay Beikman. As we were raw hands who needed experiences in writing, editing and translating, we had to attend the on-the-job training conducted under the supervision of the then Printing and Publishing Corporation (now Printing and Publishing Department). The visiting lecturers were Sayagyi U Ohn Pe (Tet Toe) and U Htin Fatt (Maung Htin), who were well-versed both in Myanmar and English literature. And they were also scholars with an excellent reputation for writing fiction and nonfiction literature. They taught us English and Myanmar literature, including the art of writing and translating.

Because of their benevolence in teaching, we were able to stand on our own feet in the literary arena.

Such training courses are mostly set apart for capacity building which is the essential requirement for national development and the task of nurturing young service personnel to become those who will contribute a great deal towards political, economic and social development. Naturally, experienced hands who are in their golden years want to provide more opportunities to the raw hands who were talented and eager to learn.

Prior to the Covid-19 period, it was very encouraging to see that many government departments were conducting training courses on capacity building. Mostly, they conducted English language proficiency courses, technical expertise courses and multiplier courses in succession as part of plans to enhance human resource development. The courses will help the young service personnel assess the past, present and future, having the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experiences while attending the courses.

Unlike the days when we were in service, young service personnel of today are lucky enough to enjoy the privileges that we failed to do so in our days. As English becomes a bridge in the sectors of communications, technologies, education, research, and so on, many departments come to conduct English proficiency courses where trainees can learn Four Skills — reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Regarding English learning in Myanmar, we cannot ignore the far-sightedness and goodwill of Myanmar monarchs. As I am neither authority on the English language — learning and teaching — nor a researcher, I cannot definitely tell the time when learning and teaching English began in Myanmar. According to the historical records, we found that English learning had taken root in Myanmar before the arrival of Dr Adoniram Judson, who came to Rangoon (Yangon) in 1813.

It was during the reign of king Bodaw Paya, also known as Badon Min. The king himself gave encouragement to those who were eager to learn English. In those days, Myanmar youths who came of age were called up for military service as everyone was responsible for the nation’s defence. However, the young men who were learning English were exempt from military service. Moreover, the parents of those who were learning English were also exempt from taxes and revenues levied by the government (king) in order to offer an incentive with a view to increasing the number of English learners. Until that time, even a useful English-Myanmar or Myanmar-English dictionary had not come out yet.

Another one who paved the way for learning English was the Prince of Mekhara, one of the sons of King Bodaw Paya. Because of the endeavours made by the Prince, an English-Burmese Dictionary came out in 1841. The name of the dictionary was “Dictionary, ENGLISH and BURMESE by Charles Lane, E s Q, F.A.S” (For many years a resident of AVA). It was published in Calcutta by Ostell and Lepage, British Library, Tank Square, 1841. On the cover of the dictionary, we can read the message — “The whole of the Burmese Portion carefully revised by His Highness the Prince of Mekhara, Uncle to the then reigning King of Burmah (According to the original spelling).

According to the message “… carefully revised by His Highness the Prince of Mekhara,” we can make a guess of the efforts made by the Prince. (The author of this article is very proud of having such a copy of this first and foremost dictionary distributed in Myanmar. Even this copy, I think, may be reprinted.)

May I introduce you to the original Burmese (Myanmar) preface to the dictionary written in Myanmar by Prince of Mekhara to enable you to fully appreciate it:- အထူးထူးသော ဘာသာများစွာသော လူမျိုးတို့တွင် အင်္ဂလိတ်လူမျိုးသည် ဟုတ်မှန်သော ထင်ရှားမျက်မှောံ တွေ့မြင်သော အတပ်ပညာကိုသာ ရှာဖွေ နှိုင်းရှည်ပြီးလျှင် ရုံးစုမှတ်သားလေ့ ရှိသည်ဖြစ်၍ အင်္ဂလိတ်ဘာသာကို နားလည်သိမြင်ခြင်းသည် ဗဟုသုတ အရာနှိုက် များစွာ အကျိုးရှိသည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် ဗဟုသုတကို အလိုရှိကုံသော မြန်မာလူမျိုးတို့အား အင်္ဂလိတ်ဘာသာ ကို မြန်မာဘာသာအားဖြင့် နားလည် သိမြင်စေခြင်းအကျိုးငှါ မက္ခရာမင်းသားက သင်္ဘော သူကြီး ကပ္ပီတံလျင်ကို အင်္ဂလိတ်အဘိဓာန်စာရှိသည်အတိုင်း မြန်မာဘာသာမှန်ကန်အောင် ပြန်ဆိုပါဆို ၍ မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ် ၁၁၉၅ ခုနှစ်။ အင်္ဂလိတ်သက္ကရာဇ် ၁၈၃၃ ခုနှစ်မှစ၍ ပြန်ဆို ရေးသားသည်။ ပြန်ဆိုအပ်သော အဘိဓာန်စာသည်ကား အင်္ဂလိတ် အက္ခရာကို ဖတ်နိုင်ကာမျှ သင်ပြီး၍ ရှေ့နောံစကား ကြည့်ရှုမှတ်သားပြီးလျှင် ထိုအဘိဓာန်စာကို အမှီပြု၍ အင်္ဂလိတ် ပညာ စာ ၄၅ မှစ၍ အင်္ဂလိတ်စတို့ကို မြန်မာဘာသာအားဖြင့် သိမြင်နားလည် နှိုင်ရာရှိသည် (မူရင်းရေးဟန်နှင့် သတ်ပုံ အတိုင်း)

 The following is its original translation: -

“The English people search amongst different nations, having a great variety of customs, for only such branches of knowledge as are clearly apparent to the senses which after collating, they collect and commit to writing; consequently, “great knowledge” will be much advanced by an acquaintance with the English language; therefore, in order that all Burman people, who have a desire for “great knowledge,” may have the benefit of understanding the English language by means of the Burman language, the Prince of Mekhara desired Mr Lane to translate the English Dictionary into the Burman language.

By using this Dictionary, the translation of which commenced in the Burman year 1195, and the English year 1833, as a guide, having first merely learnt sufficient of the English characters as to be able to read, and by noting the context, the 45 Volumes of the Arts and Sciences, and other English Books may be understood by means of the Burman Language. (According to the original style of writing and spelling.)”

 The preface to the dictionary revealed the genuine စေ တနာ or goodwill of the Prince of Mekhara. According to the historical records, we know that the Prince himself was always occupied with the study of (modern) science, including astronomy and geography.

While I was reading history at the Workers’ College in the late 1960s, my mentors told me that the Prince had translated the articles on science subjects, including natural sciences, from the Rees’ Encyclopaedia. He learned English from Dr Judson, and at the same time, he encouraged the talented youths of his time to learn English. (The Prince of Mekhara had received Dr Judson, who arrived in Amarapura in 1822.)

History revealed that because of the far-sightedness of King Mindon, the Royal princes, including courtiers, could learn English from Dr J.E. Marks, who was well known as Saya Hmark among the Myanmar learners of those days. In his “KING MINDON’S Strategy for Defending Independence (1853- 1878), Dr Myo Myint wrote that King Mindon sent nine of his sons to the missionary school to learn English.

History has taught us that colonialists used to resort to three Ms — Merchant, Military, and Missionary — to invade a country. Myanmar monarchs took advantage of the courtiers to learn English from the Christian missionaries while the latter was operating missions in Upper Myanmar.

Myanmar monarchs did so to pave the way for human resource development through the learning of English.

 Reference :

 မြန်မာ့စွယ်စုံကျမ်း အတွဲ (၁၀)၊ စာပေဗိမာန် ‘ဆရာ ယုဒသန်’ (တင်နိုင်တိုး)၊ စေတနာစာပေ၊ ၂၀၁၁

By Maung Hlaing

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