Tavoyan dialects

Tavoyan or Dawei is a divergent dialect of Burmese is spoken in Dawei, in the coastal Tanintharyi Region of southern Myanmar. Tavoyan speakers self-identify as Bamar, 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.
Distinct phonological features of Tavoyan have been strengthened by language contact with the Karenic languages. 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, 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 " of the Old Burmese from the Bagan 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 Bamar are called gantha in Tavoyan.

Phonology

Medials

Tavoyan has preserved the medial, which is only extant to Old Burmese, 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:

မ္လေ for "ground"
က္လောင်း for "school"
က္လ for "ground"

Nasalisation

In Standard Burmese, the final nasals have merged into a nasal vowel. Nasalisation is even weaker in Tavoyan, and disappears altogether for some words:

နောင် for "elder brother"

Phonemes

Tavoyan possesses a 'voiced glottal fricative' that does not exist in Standard Burmese. The phoneme appears in functor particles:

Rhymes

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

Written Burmese	Standard Burmese	Tavoyan dialect	Notes
-င် -န် -မ်
-ဉ် -ျင်
ောင်
ုန်
ုမ်
ိမ်
ုတ်
ုပ်
-က် -တ် -ပ်
-ိတ် -ိပ်
-ည်
-စ် -ျက်
ေွ			ေ is pronounced as in standard Burmese

Open syllables	weak = ə full = i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Closed syllables	nasal = iːɴ, ɪɴ, aɪɴ, an, ɔɴ, ʊɴ, uːɴ, aoɴ stop = ɪʔ, aɪʔ, aʔ, ɔʔ, ʊʔ, aoʔ

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.

Gloss	Tavoyan	Standard Burmese	Source
'goat'	ဘဲ့ bê	ဆိတ် hseit	Mon or Thai
'axe'	ကတ်ပ katpa	ပုဆိန် pasein	Malay kapak
'grandfather'	ဖအို	အဖိုး apho	Tavoyan prefers the Burmese augmentative အို
'grandfather'	မိအို	အဖွား aphwa	Tavoyan prefers the Burmese augmentative အို
'son'	ဖစု	သား tha	Tavoyan prefers the Burmese diminutive စု
'daughter'	မိစု	သမီး thami	Tavoyan prefers the Burmese diminutive စု
honorific for younger males	နောင် naung	မောင် maung	နောင် refers to the elder brother in standard Burmese