ABSTRACT This thesis provides a consonantal comparison of the Burmese, Rakhine and Marma languages of Myanmar and Bangladesh with primary focus on initial and medial consonants Its main purposes are to provide new data from the Rakhine and Marma languages of Bangladesh and to make some initial observations about the historical relationship between the three languages based on compiled consonant correspondences. Although much literature is available on the Burmese language as the primary representative of the Southern Burmish language, little information is available on Rakhine and Marma. This theis thus extends previous work on the family tree to these two close relatives. It compares new Rakhine and Marma wordlist data from Bangladesh to previously-collected Burmese and Rakhine data from Myanmar. It identifies cognate forms and regular sound correspondences, as well as exceptions, with reference to previsiously documented Burmese sound changes. Marma is more conservative than Burmese ...