Tavoyan or Dawei (, abbreviated ) is a divergent dialect of Burmese is spoken in

Dawei Dawei (, ; , ; , RTGS: ''Thawai'', ; formerly known as Tavoy) is a city in south-eastern Myanmar and is the capital of the Tanintharyi Region, formerly known as the Tenasserim Division, on the eastern bank of the Dawei River. The city is about ...

(Tavoy), in the coastal

Tanintharyi Region Tanintharyi Region (, ; Mon: or ; formerly Tenasserim Division and Tanintharyi Division) is a region of Myanmar, covering the long narrow southern part of the country on the northern Malay Peninsula, reaching to the Kra Isthmus. It borders ...

of southern

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

(Burma). Tavoyan speakers self-identify as

Bamar The Bamar people (Burmese language, Burmese: ဗမာလူမျိုး, ''ba. ma lu myui:'' ) (formerly known as Burmese people or Burmans) are a Sino-Tibetan-speaking ethnic group native to Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). With an esti ...

, and are classified by the Burmese government as a subgroup of the Bamar. Approximately 400,000 people speak Tavoyan. Burmese speakers further south speak the Palaw and Myeik dialects. Tavoyan and Burmese have 87%

lexical similarity In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...

. Distinct phonological features of Tavoyan have been strengthened by language contact with the

Karenic languages The Karen () or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some 4.5 million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages. The Karen languages are written using the Karen script. The three main branches a ...

. Tavoyan prosody is markedly different from Standard Burmese, especially with respect to rhythm and intonation. Similar to Karen speakers, Tavoyan speakers do not draw out their vowels like Standard Burmese speakers. Tavoyan retains an medial that has since merged into the medial in standard Burmese. Also, voicing can only occur with unaspirated consonants in Tavoyan, whereas in standard Burmese, voicing can occur with both aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Also, Tavoyan has many loan words from Malay and Thai not found in Standard Burmese. In the Tavoyan dialect,

terms of endearment ''Terms of Endearment'' is a 1983 American family tragicomedy film directed, written, and produced by James L. Brooks, adapted from Larry McMurtry's 1975 novel. It stars Debra Winger, Shirley MacLaine, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Jeff D ...

, as well as family terms, are considerably different from Standard Burmese.

History

According to Michael Aung-Thwin, the Tavoyan dialect of Burmese preserved the "spelling (and presumably pronunciation)" of the

Old Burmese Old Burmese was an early form of the Burmese language, as attested in the stone inscriptions of Pagan, and is the oldest phase of Burmese linguistic history. The transition to Middle Burmese occurred in the 16th century. The transition to Middl ...

from the

Bagan Bagan ( ; ; formerly Pagan) is an ancient city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Pagan Kingdom, the first kingdom that unified the regions that w ...

era. As a result, he suggests that it diverged from other Burmese varieties sometime after the Burmese settlement of Lower Burma under the Bagan era, between the 11th and 13th centuries. He attributes this divergence to a migration of Mon speakers into the area north of Dawei in the late 13th century, which would have cut off Dawei from the main Burmese speaking areas. To this day, the

are called ''gantha'' (, ) in Tavoyan.

Phonology

Medials

Tavoyan has preserved the medial, which is only extant to

, which was likely strengthened through language contact with the Karenic languages, which also feature this medial. Tavoyan can form the following consonant clusters: , , , , , , , . Examples include:

( → Standard Burmese ) for "ground" ( → Standard Burmese ) for "school" ( → Standard Burmese ) for "ground"

Nasalisation

In Standard Burmese, the final nasals have merged into a

nasal vowel A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ () or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are p ...

. Nasalisation is even weaker in Tavoyan (similar to Myeik), and disappears altogether for some words:

( → Standard Burmese ) for "elder brother"

Phonemes

Tavoyan possesses a '

voiced glottal fricative The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phonet ...

' that does not exist in Standard Burmese. The phoneme appears in functor particles: : ( → Standard Burmese ) for the subject marker : ( → Standard Burmese ) for the subject marker

Rhymes

The following is a list of rhyme correspondences unique to the Tavoyan dialect

Vocabulary

Due to language contact with Malay and Thai, Tavoyan vocabulary has adopted many loanwords that are not otherwise present in standard Burmese. Certain lexical terms, such as kinship terms, differ from standard Burmese.

References

* {{Languages of Burma Burmese language