It is ultimately adapted from a Brahmic script, either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India.

[1] The earliest evidence of the Burmese alphabet is dated to 1035, while a casting made in the 18th century of an old stone inscription points to 984.

[4] The alphabet has undergone considerable modification to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language.

As with other Brahmic scripts, the Burmese alphabet is arranged into groups of five letters for stop consonants called wek (ဝဂ်, from Pali vagga) based on articulation.

This is true of the first twenty-five letters in the Burmese alphabet, which are called grouped together as wek byi (ဝဂ်ဗျည်း, from Pali vagga byañjana).

Like other abugidas, including the other members of the Brahmic family, vowels are indicated in Burmese alphabet by diacritics, which are placed above, below, before or after the consonant character.

The ten following letters are exceptions to the clockwise rule: ပ, ဖ, ဗ, မ, ယ, လ, ဟ, ဃ, ဎ, ဏ.

[8] Although typically not permissible in closed syllables, solitary ◌ာ or ◌ါ can be found in some words of Pali origin such as ဓာတ် (essence, element) or မာန် (pride).

In the case of ကမ္ဘာ, an implied virama is applied to the first consonant (မ်), which is the final of the preceding syllable က, producing ကမ် (kam).

Stacked consonants are always homorganic (pronounced in the same place in the mouth), which is indicated by the traditional arrangement of the Burmese alphabet into the seven five-letter rows of letters (called ဝဂ်).

Consonants not found in the rows beginning with က, စ, ဋ, တ, or ပ can only be doubled — that is, stacked with themselves.

Stacked consonants are largely confined to loan words from languages like Pali, Sanskrit, and occasionally English.

Stacked consonants are generally not found in native Burmese words, with a major exception being abbreviations.

For example, the Burmese word သမီး "daughter" is sometimes abbreviated to သ္မီး, even though the stacked consonants do not belong to the same row in the ဝဂ် and a vowel is pronounced between.

Other abbreviations used in literary Burmese are: -possessive particle( 's, of) Myanmar script was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.