The Primary Dialects of Myanmar

This chapter provides a profile for each of the nine primary dialects of Myanmar: Yangon/Rangoon, Arakanses, Yaw, Tavoyan, Merguese, Intha, Taungyo, Danu, and Hpun. Each profile comprises four main sections: demographic and ethnographic information, phonolgy, morphology, and syntax. The demographic and ethnographic information includes the history of the people using the dialect, migrations in the past, and the present geographical settings where the dialect is spoken, as well as the livelihood of the people. The phonological section discusses consonantal initials, rhymes, tonal categories, and the syllable structure. The morphological section covers monomorphemic words; multi-morphemic words that are formed through the processes of compounding, affixation, and reduplication; an overview of parts of speech including nouns, pronouns, numerals and classifiers, adjectives, verbs, auxiliaries, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, onomatopoeias, and particles. Finally, the syntax section discusses the formation and functions of various types of phrases; simple sentences including declaratives, questions, negatives, imperatives, and exclamatories; and complex sentences formed via juxtaposition or coordination.