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In 2018, the British embassy in Myanmar held an eventĬelebrating the 10 th anniversary of the in-country Burmese intensive He had an immaculate attention to detail we can only aspire to. Typesetting and new digital edition of his Dictionary of Grammatical Forms.Īssisting John in his roles as a teacher and as an author was an absolute He used to refer to me as a “brick” (it took me some time toįathom that this was meant as a compliment). Helping administer these intensive Burmese language classes in Yangon in 2017,Ģ0. I had the immense pleasure of working with John while John would make an annual remarkĪbout the absurdity that he, a British person, was still being invited to teachīurmese in Myanmar, but there was an insatiable and growing demand byįoreigners living in Myanmar for John’s inimitable in-person pedagogy. Yangon, which he continued for 11 more years. Several years, and beginning in 2009 started teaching intensive courses in John also taught classes in Chiang Mai, Thailand for Than an Australian Standard-approved bicycle helmet.
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Of its police to stop gentlemen who insisted on riding with a flat cap rather Helmet laws, cheerfully describing my home as a “nanny state” for the readiness He was unimpressed with Australia’s draconian Visit to the country and, at the age of 82, he maintained that he would be Melbourne, Australia, for the Australia-Myanmar Institute. In October 2016 John taught intensive classes at RMIT University in While he did “officially retire” at age 65, JohnĬontinued publishing on Burmese and teaching for the British government andĮlsewhere. John taught or was connected to SOAS in some capacity until his death. Being made first LecturerĪnd Senior Lecturer there, he was eventually hired as Professor of Burmese. He roamed to Dawei, Sittwe and Inle Lake, and cameīack to SOAS a year later speaking fluent Burmese. Village out past Shwebo, north of Mandalay in Sagaing Region, and he evenĪccompanied a theatre troupe for a month, performing in Bhamo, Indawgyi and John also lived in a monastery for a time, in a rural His assigned university dormitory to a homestay arrangement in Amarapura, near He was sent to Burma in September 1960, where he quickly moved out from Of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, under Saya Hla Pe and John first began studying Burmese in 1959 at the School John was committed to teaching Burmese to help Myanmar reconnect with the outside world, whenever it should become politically feasible once more, which it did eventually.
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He was always tactful and understood deeply the humanity and sadness of the people living in Burma, who were the real victims of the slide into poverty that the country underwent during the first 40 years of his teaching career. John patiently listened to the many complaints from elderly British members who had had their family’s assets expropriated or nationalised. I remember, at one of the society’s sessions in 2017, a documentary stridently critical of the military regime premiered. John was also chairman of the London-based Britain–Burma Society, where he was widely respected as a fair and generous host. He showed enviable generosity in helping his friends, colleagues and students and was deft in assisting all learners of Burmese in achieving their particular goals.
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Simply put, everyone studying Myanmar knew John or wanted to know John. He was a true denizen of the scholarly community as well as a much-loved linguist, teacher, friend, father and husband. John’s name graces dozens of acknowledgement sections in theses, articles, books and other publications on Myanmar. Romanisation scheme for transliterating the Burmese language into the Roman Language learning, including cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s – opened the study ofīurmese to thousands of new learners, as did his pioneering work creating theĪvalaser Burmese computer font. Textbooks and dictionaries – and his early adoption of audio technology for He stood on the shoulders of other giants, but his many John was perhaps the English-language world’s pre-eminent teacher of theīurmese language. Okell died painlessly at his home earlier this week. The British linguist first set foot in Myanmar in 1960 and trained generations of Burmese language students who loved him for his patience, humour and unrivalled expertise.Ī gentle giant of Myanmar studies has left us.