Myanmar Keyboard Layout (Visual Order) Options Needed

Since 2019, Myanmar has officially adopted the Unicode standard, which has greatly improved the language rendering in technology. MacOS offers a built-in Myanmar keyboard, but it only supports the Phonetic Order layout, which is not commonly used. Most devices use the Visual Order layout, which is more popular. Could we have the option to choose between layouts, like on Windows, or make Visual Order the default Myanmar keyboard?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.6

Posted on Sep 8, 2024 8:00 AM

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7 replies

Sep 9, 2024 7:22 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

My iPhone's Myanmar Keyboard works perfect.


In linguistic logic, we have to write consonant letter + vowel. E.g.  the word "emerald green - မြ ," I have to type မ first + ြ second to produce " မြ။ In phonetic sense, I would pronounce it as မ + ြ ။ If we follow this logic, the word နေ should be written as န + ေ။ too. However, the exception in the case is in phonetic sense, I won't pronounce နေ as န + အ။; it just doesn't make sense. I would normally say " ေ" + န = နေ။


Going back to the keyboard issue, the current keyboard is logical, however, it is not a widely practice to write like that with "ေ"to come second, as phonetically, it is considered incorrect.


Thus, the common keyboard typewriting is to type "ေ" vowel sign first. Others vowel signs still follow after consonant letters phonetically.








Sep 9, 2024 3:09 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks for your response. You are correct about the Myanmar Qwerty Layout. However, the issue I want to raise is not about the Qwerty or Dvorak, but rather how typing works in my MacOS Sonoma 14.6.1.


E.g. In the normal typing, if I want write the word "Sun - နေ",


I would type - ေ (a) + န (e), right. But, the current keyboard setting won't let me do that. So, I have to type - န (e) + ေ (a) to form the word - နေ . If I type the letter ေ (a) first, it would just show like this without combing the two words - ေ-န (ေ) a circle form appear between the two letters.


In Windows system, there is option for this style, called Typesetting style or Phonetic style.


The most common thing now, with other technology devices - laptop or phone, is to type letter "a-ေ" first, my current MacOS system do not have that.


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Myanmar Keyboard Layout (Visual Order) Options Needed

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