The Burmese language is the official language of Myanmar. Although the government officially recognizes the language as Myanmar, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese. It is the native language of the Bamar, Rakhine, and other related sub-ethnic groups of the Bamar. It is spoken by 32 million as a first language, and as a second language by ethnic minorities in Myanmar.

Burmese is a member of the Tibeto-Burman languages, which is a subfamily of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. Burmese is a tonal and analytic language. The language uses the Burmese script, derived from the Mon script and ultimately from the Brahm script. Burmese is classified into two categories. One is formal, used in literary works, official publications, radio broadcasts, and formal speeches. The other is colloquial, used in daily conversation. Diglossia occurs to a large extent in Burmese. The discrepancy is quite large, and many linguists consider formal Burmese to be a separate language from colloquial Burmese. The written and prestige form of Burmese has undergone only a few changes and tends not to accommodate the colloquial phonology of standard Burmese today. In addition, different particles (to modify nouns and verbs) are used in the prestige form than in the spoken form. Literate Burmese speakers are able to intuitively interpret ancient Burmese despite transcriptions that date many centuries due to innate pronunciation rules.

Despite the large differences, Burmese speakers rarely distinguish formal and colloquial Burmese as separate languages, but rather as two registers of the same language. Many have contended that a newer system of orthography for Burmese be created (one based on phonology), to accommodate such differences. In addition, some Burmese linguists have proposed to shift away from formal Burmese, as seen in the gradual changes in form on television broadcasts. However, formal Burmese remains well-established in Burmese. Another obstacle in reforming Burmese orthography are conservative Burmese dialects (that retain older pronunciations more similar to formal Burmese), which primarily come from coastal areas.

However, more distinctive accent and word usage differences emerge in the peripheral areas of the Ayeyarwady valley. Dialects include Merguese, Yaw, Palaw, Beik (Myeik), and Dawei (Tavoyan). The Rakhine dialect (Arakanese) is most reminiscent of archaic Burmese, especially in its usage of the [r] sound, which has become a [j] sound in standard Burmese. Dialects in Tanintharyi Division (such as Beik) often reduce the intensity of the glottal stop. The Dawei dialect has preserved the [-l-] medial, which is only found in Old Burmese transcriptions. Despite vocabulary and pronunciation differences, there is mutual intelligibility among the dialects.

The majority of Burmese vocabulary is of Tibeto-Burman stock. However, the Burmese language has been influenced by Pali, English, and Mon, and to a lesser extent, by Chinese, Sanskrit and Hindi.

As a result, Burmese tends to have many synonyms of the same word, each having certain usages, such as formal, literary, colloquial, and poetic. One example is the word "moon", which can be la (Tibeto-Burman), sanda or san (both Pali derivatives of chanda), or thaw-da (from Sanskrit).

The Burmese script is characterized by its circular letters and diacritics. It is an abugida, with all letters having an inherent vowel. Tone markings are in the form of diacritics placed to the left, right, top, and bottom of letters, but are not always indicative of the proper tone.   Evidence of written Burmese dates to the early 12th century AD, from the Myazedi stone inscription (written 1113), which was a story written about Prince Yazukuma in Pyu, Mon, Pali, and Burmese. During the reign of King Anawrahta, the Mon script, which descended from the Br?hm? script, was adopted for transcribing Burmese. Many changes to suit the phonology of Burmese were made. Standardised tone marking was not achieved until the 1700s. Much of the orthography in written Burmese today can be traced back to middle Burmese, which had a wider range of finals. However, during colonial rule under the British, spelling was standardised through dictionaries and spellers.