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Bamar

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bamar people
ဗမာလူမျိုး
Total population
c. 32 million
Regions with significant populations
 Myanmar~30,110,000
 Thailand~2,890,000[1]
 Australia107,112
 Singapore72,368
 United States96,420
 Japan15,800
 South Korea22,000
 Malaysia66,500
 United Kingdom9,800
 Germany7,300
 Hong Kong5,400
 Cambodia4,700
Languages
Burmese
Religion
Burmese folk religion and Theravada Buddhism
Related ethnic groups
Sino-Tibetan peoples

The Bamar (Burmese: ဗမာလူမျိုး bama loo-myo), Burmese or Burmans are the largest ethnic group in Myanmar.[2] The Bamar live around the Irrawaddy River. They speak the Burmese language, the official language of Myanmar.[2]

Where they are from

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The Burmese-speaking people first migrated from Yunnan, China to the Irrawaddy valley in the 7th century. Over the following centuries, the Burmese absorbed other groups like the Pyu.[3] DNA tests show that the Bamar are East Eurasian, related to Southeast Asian and Northeast Asian people. But they also have "Indian influences".[3]

What they speak

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The Bamar speak Burmese, a Sino-Tibetan language. So basic words are related to Chinese language and Tibetan language. Many words related to Buddhism are borrowed from Pali. The Burmese alphabet itself is based on Indian scripts.

References

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  1. CIA World Factbook – Thiland Archived 2010-12-29 at the Wayback Machine; 1.3% of the estimated 68.41 million people in July 2017.
  2. 2.0 2.1 "The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency". www.cia.gov. Archived from the original on 2010-11-04. Retrieved 2018-07-09.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Summerer, Monika; Horst, Jürgen; Erhart, Gertraud; Weißensteiner, Hansi; Schönherr, Sebastian; Pacher, Dominic; Forer, Lukas; Horst, David; Manhart, Angelika (2014). "Large-scale mitochondrial DNA analysis in Southeast Asia reveals evolutionary effects of cultural isolation in the multi-ethnic population of Myanmar". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 14 (1): 17. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-14-17. PMC 3913319. PMID 24467713.