John Okell is a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies

School of Oriental and African Studies

The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the University of London...

, University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

. He is one of the world's leading experts on Burmese language and culture. Okell studied Classics at Oxford. He then received training in linguistics at SOAS under R.K. Sprigg

Richard Keith Sprigg

Dr Richard Keith Sprigg was a British linguist who specialized in the phonology of Asian languages. Sprigg was educated under J. R. Firth and was a member of the first generation of professional British linguists. Also as a consequence Sprigg was an advocate of the prosodic phonological method of...

 and others before travelling to Burma to learn Burmese. Upon his return to SOAS he collaborated on the Burmese English Dictionary founded by Stewart until the abandonment of this project in 1981. He learned Burmese literature and tradition from those like Burmese famous pandit, musician and historian Shwepyi U Ba Tin.

John Okell plays the viola.

Works

• Stewart, J. A.. A Burmese-English dictionary. London: School of Oriental and African Studies. (volumes 5 and 6 edited by Okell and others)
• Hla Pe, Anna J. Allott, John Okell (1963). "Three 'Immortal' Burmese Songs." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies . 26.3: 559-571.
• Okell, John. "Learning Music from a Burmese Master" Man 64: 183
• Okell, John (1965). "Nissaya Burmese: a case of systematic adaptation to a foreign grammar and syntax". Lingua 15: 186-227.
• Okell, John (1969). A reference grammar of colloquial Burmese. London: Oxford University Press.
• Okell, John (1971). "The Burmese Double-Reed "Nhai"". Asian Music 2.1: 25-31
• Okell, John (1971). "K Clusters in Proto-Burmese". Sino-Tibetan Conference, October 8–9, 1971, Bloomington, Indiana. ms.
• Okell, John (1971). A guide to the romanization of Burmese. London: Luzac [for] The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.
• Okell, John (1979). "'Still' and 'anymore' in Burmese." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area 4.2: 69-82.
• Okell, John (1988). ‘Notes on Tone Alternation in Maru Verbs’. David Bradley, Eug´enie J.A. Henderson and Martine Mazaudon (eds), Prosodic analysis and Asian linguistics: to honour R.K. Sprigg. (Pacific Linguistics C-104). Canberra, A.C.T., Australia: Dept. of Linguistics, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University: 109-114.
• Okell, John (1989). First steps in Burmese. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
• Okell, John (1989). "Yaw: a dialect of Burmese". South East Asian linguistics: essays in honour of Eugénie J A Henderson. Ed. J H C S Davidson. London, SOAS: 199-219.
• Okell, John (1994). Review of J. A. Matisoff. A dictionary of Lahu. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 57.2: 434-435.
• Okell, John (1995). Burmese: an introduction to the spoken language. [De Kalb]: Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
• Okell, John (1995). Burmese: an introduction to the script. [De Kalb]: Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
• Okell, John (1995). Burmese: an introduction to the literary style. [De Kalb]: Northern Illinois University, Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
• Okell, John (1995). "Three Burmese Dialects." D. Bradley (ed.). Papers in Southeast Aisan linguistics no. 13: Studies in Burmese Languages. (Pacific Linguistics, A-83). : 1-138.
• Okell, John and Anna Allott (2001). Burmese/Myanmar dictionary of grammatical forms. Curzon Press.
• Okell, John (2002). Burmese by ear, or Essential Myanmar. London: Audio-Forum, Sussex Publications Limited. (Now available for free download from http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/)
• Okell, John (2007). "Dr. U Hla Pe (1913-2007)". Bulletin of Burma Research 5.1-2: 1-4.