Region Southeast Native speakers ca. 440,000 (2000) | Ethnicity incl. Taungyo | |
Glottolog tavo1242 (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 /-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". Also, voicing only with unaspirated consonants, 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 be (ဘဲ) in Tavoyan, most likely from Mon /həbeˀ/ (ဗၜေံ) or Thai /pʰɛ́ʔ/ (แพะ).
In the Tavoyan dialect, terms of endearment, as well as family terms, are considerably different from Standard Burmese. For instance, the terms for "son" and "daughter" are ဖစု (/pʰa̰ òu/) and မိစု (/mḭ òu/) respectively. Moreover, the honorific နောင် (Naung) is used in lieu of မောင် (Maung) for young males.
Rhymes
The following is a list of rhyme correspondences unique to the Tavoyan dialect