Wa language


Wa is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Wa people of Myanmar and China. There are three distinct varieties, sometimes considered separate languages; their names in Ethnologue are Parauk, the majority and standard form; Vo and Awa, though all may be called Wa, Awa, Va, Vo. David Bradley estimates there are total of 820,000 Wa speakers.

Distribution and variants

refers to the Wa geographic region as the "Wa corridor", which lies between the Salween and Mekong Rivers. According to Diffloth, variants include South Wa, "Bible Wa" and Kawa.
Christian Wa are more likely to support the use of Standard Wa, since their Bible is based on a standard version of Wa, which is in turn based on the variant spoken in Bang Wai, 150 miles north of Kengtung. Bang Wai is located in Northern Shan State, Burma, close to the Chinese border where Cangyuan County is located.
Certain dialects of Wa preserve a final -/s/. They include the variants spoken in Meung Yang and Ximeng County .

Burma

David Bradley estimates that there is a total of about 500,000 Wa speakers in Burma.
A small number of Wa speakers also reside in Taunggyi, Mandalay and Yangon.

China

The PRC writing system for Wa is based on the Wa variant in Aishuai, Cangyuan County, Yunnan.
David Bradley estimates that there are 322,000 Wa speakers in China. In China, the Wa people live in :
A small number of Wa speakers also reside in Kunming and throughout various parts of Yunnan.
The three dialects of Wa according to Zhou, et al. are:
Jackson Sun lists the Awa dialects and their alternate names as follows.
  • Masan 馬散. Sun documents the Lavïa variety of Banzhe 班哲 Village, Mengka 勐卡 Town in Ximeng County, Yunnan Province. Lavïa of Banzhe is non-tonal and sesquisyllabic.
  • Awalai 阿佤來
  • Damangnuo 大芒糯
  • Xiyun 細允. Sun documents the Va variety of Yingla 英臘 Village, Wenggake 翁嘎科 Township, Ximeng 西盟 County, Pu'er 普洱 City, Yunnan Province. Va of Yingla is monosyllabic has 3 tones, which are high, mid and low. Sun notes that the Va varieties of Yingla and neighboring villages in Wenggake 翁戛科 Township of Ximeng County belong to the same dialect as varieties spoken farther away in Donghui 东回 and Nuofu 糯福 Townships, Lancang County.
The Dai exonym for the Wa of Yongde, Zhenkang and Nanla 南腊 is '. In Sipsongpanna, the Dai call them the ', ', ', '. In Ximeng and Menglian counties, the Wa autonym is ', while in Cangyuan and Gengma counties it is '.
Yan & Zhou list the following names for Wa in various counties.
A language known as Bujiao 补角 in Mengla County was mentioned in Yunnan The Bujiao were classified as ethnic Bulang and had a population of 212 in 1960.
The Kela 克拉 live in District 3 三区 of Tengchong County 腾冲县, Yunnan. The Kela used to speak a variety of Wa, but now speak only Chinese. The Kela also refer to themselves as the Wama 佤妈.

Thailand

Wa have also migrated to Thailand in the past several decades, mainly from Burma. There are about 10,000 Wa speakers in Thailand. Wa villages can be found in :
Standard Wa is a non-tonal language. However, tone has developed in some of the dialects. There is correspondence between tones in tonal dialects and tenseness in non-tonal dialects.
In Wa, there are 44 phonemes; 35 consonants and 9 vowels. All of these vowels can be tense or lax. Tenseness is a phonemic feature in syllables with unaspirated initials.

Vowels

There are 15 diphthongs: iu, ɯi, ui, ia, ɤi, ua, ei, ou, oi~ɔi, ai, aɯ, au and 2 triphthongs: iau, uai. The general syllabic structure of Wa is CV. Only a few words have zero-initials.

Consonants

Script

The Wa language formerly had no script and some of the few Wa that were literate used Chinese characters, while others used the Shan language and its script. Christian missionary work among the Wa began at the beginning of the 20th century first in the Burmese and later in the Chinese areas of the Wa territory. It was led by William Marcus Young, from Nebraska. The first transcription of the Wa language was devised by Young and Sara Yaw Shu Chin in 1931 with the purpose of translating the Bible. This first Wa alphabet was based on the Latin script and the very first publication was a compilation of Wa hymns in 1933, the Wa New Testament being completed in 1938. This transcription, known as Bible orthography, is known as lǎowǎwén 老佤文 old Wa orthography in Chinese, and is now used mainly in the Burmese Wa areas and among the Wa in Thailand through the materials published by the Wa Welfare Society ' in Chiang Mai.
In 1956, a transcription adapted to the new pinyin romanization, known as new Wa orthography, "PRC orthography" or "Chinese orthography", was developed for the Wa people in China. However, its publications, mainly propagated through the Yunnan administration, are yet to reach a wider public beyond academics. This transcription, which originally included even a couple of letters of the Cyrillic script, has also since been revised. Despite the revisions, both the Chinese and the Bible orthography are still marred by inconsistencies.
Recently, a revised Bible orthography adopting some features from the Chinese orthography has been adopted as Wa State Wa orthography''' or "official Wa spelling" by the central authorities of the Wa State in Pangkham which have published a series of primers in order to improve the literacy of the United Wa State Army troops. Also, after 2000 Wa people in social networks such as Facebook, as well as Wa songwriters in karaoke lyrics of Wa songs, use this Myanmar orthography in its main variations.
WBOIPAWBOIPAWBOIPAWBOIPAWBOIPAWBOIPA
pbhnhrhoe
pdnyyieo
tdhnyhyhawoi, oe, we
thjnglaai
cjhnghlhiuau
chgsieei, uiau, ao
kghheeui, wiiao
khmvuiaoe
xmhvh, feeue--
bnreuua, wa--