Rakhine (/rəˈkaɪn/; Burmese: ရခိုင်ဘာသာ, MLCTS: ra.hkuing bhasa [ɹəkʰàɪɴ bàθà]), also known as Arakanese, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in western Myanmar, primarily in the Rakhine State. Closely related to Burmese, the language is spoken by the Rakhine and Marma peoples; it is estimated to have around one million native speakers and it is spoken as a second language by a further million.

Though Arakanese has some similarity with standard Burmese, Burmese speakers find it difficult to communicate with Arakanese speakers. Thus, it is often considered to be a dialect or variety of Burmese. As there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Arakanese.^[2] There are three dialects of Arakanese: Sittwe–Marma (about two thirds of speakers), Ramree, and Thandwe.^[3]

While Arakanese and Standard Burmese share the majority of lexicon, Arakanese has numerous vocabulary differences. Some are native words with no cognates in Standard Burmese, like 'sarong' (လုံခြည် in Standard Burmese, ဒယော in Arakanese). Others are loan words from Bengali, English, and Hindi, not found in Standard Burmese. An example is 'hospital', which is called ဆေးရုံ in Standard Burmese, but is called သိပ်လှိုင် (pronounced [θeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]/[ʃeɪʔ l̥àɪɴ]) in Arakanese, from English sick lines. Other words simply have different meanings (e.g., 'afternoon', ညစ in Arakanese and ညနေ in Standard Burmese). Moreover, some archaic words in Standard Burmese are preferred in Arakanese. An example is the first person pronoun, which is အကျွန် in Arakanese (not ကျွန်တော်, as in Standard Burmese). A more unique difference is the 'Hra' sound which is not found in Burmese: only in Arakanese. eg. ဟြာ(Hra/Seek) and Hraa(ဟြား/very good/smart).

The phonological system described here is the inventory of sounds, represented using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

The following is a summary of consonantal, vowel and rhyme differences from Standard Burmese found in the Arakanese dialect:^[8][9]

Arakanese is written using the Burmese script, which descends from Southern Brahmi. Rakhine speakers are taught Rakhine pronunciations using written Burmese, while most Marma speakers are only literate in Bengali.^[10]

The first extant Arakanese inscriptions, the Launggrak Taung Maw inscription and the Mahathi Crocodile Rock inscription (1356), date to the 1300s, and the epigraphic record of Arakanese inscriptions is unevenly distributed between the 1400s to 1800s.^[11] In the early 1400s, Arakanese inscriptions began to transition from the square letters associated with stone inscriptions (kyauksa), to rounder letters that is now standard for the Burmese script.^[11] This coincided with developments in Arakanese literature, which was stimulated by the rise of Mrauk U during the 1400s.^[12]

What is now Rakhine State is home to Sanskrit inscriptions that date from the first millennium to the 1000s.^[11] These inscriptions were written in Northern Brahmic scripts (namely Siddham or Gaudi), which are ancestral to the Bengali script.^[11] However, these inscriptions are not ancestral to Arakanese epigraphy, which uses the Mon–Burmese script.^[11] While some Arakanese have coined the term "Rakkhawunna" (Rakkhavaṇṇa) to describe a script that predates the usage of written Burmese, there is no contemporary lithic evidence to support the existence of such a script.^[12]