Myanmar units of measurement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article contains Burmese script. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script.

The traditional Burmese units of measurement are still in everyday use in Myanmar (also known as Burma). According to the CIA Factbook, Myanmar is one of three countries that have not adopted the International System of Units (SI) metric system as their official system of weights and measures.^[1] However, in June 2011, the Burmese government's Ministry of Commerce began discussing proposals to reform the measurement system in Burma and adopt the metric system used by most of its trading partners,^[2] and in October 2013, Dr. Pwint San, Deputy Minister for Commerce, announced that the country was preparing to adopt the metric system.^[3]
Most of the nation uses Burmese units only, although Burmese government web pages in English use imperial and metric units inconsistently. For instance, the Ministry of Construction uses miles to describe the length of roads^[4] and square feet for the size of houses,^[5] but square kilometres for the total land area of new town developments in Yangon City.^[5] The Ministry of Agriculture uses acres for land areas.^[6] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses kilometres (with mile equivalents in parentheses) to describe the dimensions of the country.^[7]

Contents

• 1 Length
• 2 Mass
• 3 Volume
• 4 Money
• 5 Adoption of SI (metric) system
• 6 References
• 7 See also

Length

Table of length units

Unit		Metric	Imperial/US	Ratio to previous
Burmese	Romanized
ဆံခြည်	sanchi	79.375 µm	​3 1⁄8 thou/mil
နှမ်း	hnan	0.79375 mm	​31 1⁄4 thou/mil	10
မုယော	mayaw	4.7625 mm	​3⁄16 in	6
လက်သစ်	let thit	1.905 cm	​3⁄4 in; one digit	4
မိုက်	maik	15.24 cm	6 in; one shaftment	8
ထွာ	htwa	22.86 cm	9 in; one span	1.5
တောင်	taung	45.72 cm	​1 1⁄2 ft; one cubit	2
လံ	lan	1.8288 m	6 ft; one fathom	4
တာ	ta	3.2004 m	​10 1⁄2 ft	1.75
ဥသဘ	out-thaba (from Pali usaba)	64.008 m	70 yd	20
ကောသ	kawtha (from Pali kosa)	1.28016 km	0.795455 mi	20
ဂါဝုတ်	ga-wout (from Pali gavuta)	5.12064 km	3.18182 mi; about one league	4
ယူဇနာ	yuzana (from Pali yojana)	20.48256 km	12.7273 mi	4

Mass

Table of mass units

Unit		Metric	Imperial/US	Ratio to previous
Burmese	Romanized
ရွဲလေး	yway lay	136.078 mg	2.1 grain
ရွဲကြီး	yway gyi	272.155 mg	4.2 grain	2
ပဲသား	petha	1.02058 g	15.75 grain	3.75
မူးသား	mutha	2.04117 g	31.5 grain	2
မတ်သား	mattha	4.08233 g	63 grain	2
ငါးမူးသား	nga mutha[N 1]	8.16466 g	0.288 oz	2
ကျပ်သား	kyattha[N 2]	16.3293 g	0.576 oz	2
အဝက်သား	awettha	204.117 g	7.2 oz	12.5
အစိတ်သား	aseittha	408.233 g	14.4 oz	2
ငါးဆယ်သား	ngase tha	816.466 g	1.8 lb	2
၁ပိဿာ	peittha[N 3]	1.63293 kg	3.6 lb	2
အချိန်တစ်ရာ	achein taya	163.293 kg	360 lb	100

1. 
   

Literally "five mutha", but in fact it is only four.

Traditionally known as a tical in English.

3. Traditionally known as a viss in English.

Volume

Table of volume units

Unit		Metric	Imperial	US	Ratio to previous
Burmese	Romanized
လမြူ	la myu	79.9118 ml	​2 13⁄16 fl oz	2.70214 fl oz
လမျက်	la myet	159.824 ml	​5 5⁄8 fl oz	5.40428 fl oz	2
လမယ်	la me	319.647 ml	​11 1⁄4 fl oz	10.8086 fl oz	2
စလယ်	sa le	639.294 ml	​1 1⁄8 pints	1.35107 pints	2
ခွက်	hkwet	1.27859 l	​1 1⁄8 qt	1.35107 qt	2
ပြည်	pyi	2.55718 l	​2 1⁄4 qt	2.70214 qt	2
စိတ်	seit	10.2287 l	​2 1⁄4 gallons ​1 1⁄8 pecks	2.70214 gallons 1.16106 pecks	4
ခွဲ	hkwe	20.4574 l	​4 1⁄2 gallons ​2 1⁄4 pecks	5.40428 gallons 2.32213 pecks	2
တင်း	tin	40.9148 l	9 gallons ​1 1⁄8 bushels	10.8086 gallons 1.16107 bushels	2

Money

Table of money units

Unit		Equivalent to
Burmese	Romanized
၁ျပား	1 pya
မတ္	1 mat	25 pya
ငါးမူး	5 mu	2 mat
၁က်ပ္	1 kyat	10 mu

Adoption of SI (metric) system

In October 2013, the Ministry of Commerce announced that Myanmar was preparing to adopt the International System of Units (SI System) as the country's official system of measurement.^[3]