Learning To Read Burmese

I am trying to learn to read in Burmese. When I learned to read Thai I found it a bit difficult but in the end it was worth learning, reading and writing (I read at a young child's level) has been very helpful. Yesterday for example I learned how to say Mae Sot properly. I was pronouncing this Thai town using my best guess reading the English and it came out something like MAY-SOT. When I read the Thai font I realized I had been pronouncing the word wrong it is actually pronounced MAAH-SOD (the AA pronounced like the A in the word LAMB and there is a D sound on the last part of the word not a T sound, SOD not SOT).

If I can learn to read in Burmese I will have a similar advantage when learning to pronounce words correctly, I will get that much closer to the real sounds of the language by reading. Here is a example of Burmese writing, its very ROUND!

Burmese font for the word Burmese = မြန်မာအက္ခရာ

Thai font for word Mae Sot = แม่สอด

Burmese font for the word Mae Sot =  မဲဆောက်


Funny how the Thai now seems easy for me to read but the Burmese looks likes complete gibberish, I can read a few letters that's about it. Learning by myself should be interesting, I wish I had a teacher. 


Speaking and reading the language as well as understanding a bit about the culture will hopefully help the photography.