Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Intha dialect

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Region
  
Inle Lake

Native speakers
  
90,000 (2000)

Glottolog
  
inth1238

Ethnicity
  
Intha

ISO 639-3
  
int

Language family
  
Sino-Tibetan (Tibeto-Burman) Lolo–Burmese Burmish Southern Burmese Intha

The Intha dialect of Burmese is spoken by the Intha people, a group of Bamar descendants who migrated to Inle Lake in Shan State. The dialect is spoken by 90,000. The Intha dialect is characterized by a retention of the /-l-/ medial (for the following consonant clusters: /kl- kʰl- pl- pʰl- ml- hml-/). Examples include:

  • "full": Standard Burmese ပြည့် ([pjḛ]) → ပ္လည့် ([plḛ]), from old Burmese ပ္လည်
  • "ground": Standard Burmese မြေ ([mjè]) → မ္လေ ([mlè]), from old Burmese မ္လိယ်

    • There is no voicing with the presence of either aspirated or unaspirated consonants. For instance, ဗုဒ္ဓ (Buddha) is pronounced [boʊʔda̰] in standard Burmese, but [poʊʔtʰa̰] in the Intha dialect. This is probably due to influence from the Shan language.

    Furthermore, သ (/θ/ in standard Burmese) has merged to /sʰ/ (ဆ) in the Intha dialect.

    Rhymes

    Rhyme correspondences to standard Burmese follow these patterns:

    References

    Intha dialect Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA