Lawa (La'wa, L'wa) is a

Mon–Khmer language The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

of Thailand. There are two distinct varieties or dialects of Lawa, considered to be separate languages; their names in the ''Ethnologue'' are Eastern Lawa and Western Lawa. They are spoken in Lawa villages in the provinces of

Mae Hong Son Mae Hong Son ( th, แม่ฮ่องสอน, ) is a town (''thesaban mueang'') in north-west Thailand, capital of Mae Hong Son Province. It is in the Shan Hills, near the border with Burma along the banks of the River Pai. As of 2018, the ...

and

Chiang Mai Chiang Mai (, from th, เชียงใหม่ , nod, , เจียงใหม่ ), sometimes written as Chiengmai or Chiangmai, is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the second largest city in ...

Northern Thailand Northern Thailand, or more specifically Lanna, is geographically characterised by several mountain ranges, which continue from the Shan Hills in bordering Myanmar to Laos, and the river valleys which cut through them. Though like most of Thail ...

. Linguistically, Lawa belongs to the

Palaungic The nearly thirty Palaungic or Palaung–Wa languages form a branch of the Austroasiatic languages. Phonological developments Most of the Palaungic languages lost the contrastive voicing of the ancestral Austroasiatic consonants, with the disti ...

branch of the

Mon-Khmer The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

family of languages, which is part of the

Austro-Asiatic The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are th ...

super-family. Eastern Lawa is distinct from Western Lawa despite being highly cognate because the two languages are not mutually understandable based on consistent testimonies of Eastern and Western Lawa speakers and testing by SIL.Nahhas, Dr. Ramzi W. 2007
Sociolinguistic survey of Lawa in Thailand
Chiang Mai: Payap University. There are two distinct dialects spoken among the Eastern Lawa. These dialects have differences in pronunciation and some lexeme differences. The differences, however, do not present any difficulty in comprehension between speakers of these dialects, due to their close interaction. The main dialect is from ''Bo Luang'', (known locally as ''juang ra''), which is by far the largest Eastern Lawa village, with a population of approximately 3,000 people. ''Bo Luang'' is spoken in 16 villages of

Bo Luang Bo Luang ( th, บ่อหลวง) is a ''tambon'' (subdistrict) of Hot District, in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. In 2019 it had a total population of 12,143 people. Administration Central administration The ''tambon'' is subdivided into 13 ...

and

Bo Sali Bo Sali ( th, บ่อสลี) is a ''tambon'' (subdistrict) of Hot District, in Chiang Mai Province, Thailand. In 2019, it had a total population of 8,026 people. History The subdistrict was created effective July 20, 1971 by splitting off 7 ...

subdistricts in Hot District,

Chiang Mai Province Chiang Mai ( th, เชียงใหม่, ; nod, , ) is the largest Province ('' changwat'') of Thailand. It lies in upper northern Thailand and has a population of 1.78 million people. It is bordered by Chiang Rai to the northeast, ...

. The other dialect is from ''Bo Sangae'', (known locally as ''juang tiang''). Eastern Lawa has a high level of language vitality and is spoken in the home by all ages. Government education, village notices and official business are usually undertaken in Central Thai. Most Eastern Lawa are bi-lingual with at least

Northern Thai Kam Mueang ( nod, , กำเมือง) or Northern Thai language ( th, ภาษาไทยถิ่นเหนือ) is the language of the Northern Thai people of Lanna, Thailand. It is a Southwestern Tai language that is closely rela ...

, although there are some older people who will reply in Lawa when spoken to in Northern Thai. The younger generation tend to be fluent in Central Thai because of the education system and mostly fluent in Northern Thai due to the inter-marriages between Lawa and Northern Thais.

References

*Blok, Gregory Robert. 2013.
A Descriptive Grammar of Eastern Lawa
'. Master’s thesis, Payap University. *Munn, Elizabeth. (2017). A phonological reanalysis of Eastern Lawa. ''Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (JSEALS), 10''(2), 23-65. *Munn, Elizabeth. 2018.
A Phonological Comparison of Eastern Lawa Varieties in Hot District, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand
'. Master’s thesis, Payap University.

External links

Palaungic languages Wa people {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub

See also

References

External links