Tavoyan dialects

Tavoyan
Dawei
RegionSoutheast
Ethnicityincl. Taungyo
Native speakers
ca. 440,000 (2000)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
tvn – Tavoyan proper
tco – Dawei Tavoyan (Taungyo)
Glottologtavo1242  Tavoyan
taun1248  Taungyo

The Tavoyan or Dawei dialect of Burmese (ထားဝယ်စကား) is spoken in Dawei (Tavoy), in the coastal Tanintharyi Region of southern Myanmar (Burma).

Tavoyan retains an /-l-/ medial that has since merged into the /-j-/ medial in standard Burmese and can form the following consonant clusters: /ɡl-/, /kl-/, /kʰl-/, /bl-/, /pl-/, /pʰl-/, /ml-/, /m̥l-/. Examples include မ္လေ (/mlè/ → Standard Burmese /mjè/) for "ground" and က္လောင်း (/kláʊɴ/ → Standard Burmese /tʃáʊɴ/) for "school".[2] Also, voicing can only occur with unaspirated consonants in Tavoyan, whereas in standard Burmese, voicing can occur with both aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Also, there are many loan words from Malay and Thai not found in Standard Burmese. An example is the word for goat, which is hseit (ဆိတ်) in Standard Burmese but bê (ဘဲ့) in Tavoyan, most likely from Mon /həbeˀ/ (ဗၜေံ) or Thai /pʰɛ́ʔ/ (แพะ).[3]

In the Tavoyan dialect, terms of endearment, as well as family terms, are considerably different from Standard Burmese. For instance, the terms for "father" and "mother" are ဖစု (/pʰa̰ òu/) and မိစု (/mḭ òu/) respectively.[4] Moreover, the honorific နောင် (Naung) is used in lieu of မောင် (Maung) for young males.[4]

  1. ^ Tavoyan proper at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
    Dawei Tavoyan (Taungyo) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ "Htarrwaalhcakarr bamarhcakarr" ထားဝယ်စကား ဗမာစကား (in Burmese). BBC Burmese. 20 May 2011. Archived from the original on 23 October 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2012.
  3. ^ Census of India, 1901 – Burma. Vol. XII. Burma: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing. 1902. p. 76.
  4. ^ a b "Aalainkar pulellpaann htarrwaal hcakarr" အလင်္ကာပုလဲပန်း ထားဝယ်စကား (in Burmese). BBC Burmese. 10 June 2011. Archived from the original on 23 October 2011. Retrieved 10 October 2012.