The Waic languages are spoken in
Shan State
Shan State ( my, ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်, ; shn, မိူင်းတႆး, italics=no) also known by the endonyms Shanland, Muang Tai, and Tailong, is a state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China (Yunnan) to the north, Laos ...
,
Burma
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...
, 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 ...
, and in
Yunnan
Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...
province,
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
.
Classification
Gérard Diffloth
Gérard Diffloth (born in Châteauroux, France, 1939) is a French linguist who is known as a leading specialist in the Austroasiatic languages. As a retired linguistics professor, he was former employed at the University of Chicago and Cornell Un ...
reconstructed Proto-Waic in a 1980 paper. His classification is as follows (Sidwell 2009). (Note: Individual languages are highlighted in ''italics''.)
*Waic
**
Samtau (later renamed "Blang" by Diffloth)
***''Samtau''
**Wa–Lawa–La
***Wa proper
****''
Wa''
***
Lawa
****''Bo Luang''
****''Umphal''
The recently discovered
Meung Yum and
Savaiq languages
of
Shan State
Shan State ( my, ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်, ; shn, မိူင်းတႆး, italics=no) also known by the endonyms Shanland, Muang Tai, and Tailong, is a state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China (Yunnan) to the north, Laos ...
, Burma also belong to the
Wa language cluster.
Other Waic languages in
Shan State
Shan State ( my, ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်, ; shn, မိူင်းတႆး, italics=no) also known by the endonyms Shanland, Muang Tai, and Tailong, is a state of Myanmar. Shan State borders China (Yunnan) to the north, Laos ...
, eastern
Myanmar
Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
are En and Siam (Hsem), which are referred to by Scott (1900) as En and Son. Hsiu (2015)
[Hsiu, Andrew. 2015]
''The Angkuic languages: a preliminary survey''
Paper presented ICAAL 6 (6th International Conference on Austroasiatic Linguistics), Siem Reap, Cambodia. classifies En, Son, and
Tai Loi in Scott (1900) as Waic languages, citing the Waic phonological innovation from Proto-Palaungic *s- > h- instead of the Angkuic phonological innovation from Proto-Palaungic *s- > s-.
References
Further reading
*
Sidwell, Paul. 2009.
Classifying the Austroasiatic languages: history and state of the art'. LINCOM studies in Asian linguistics, 76. Munich: Lincom Europa.
*Shintani Tadahiko. 2016. ''The Va (En) language''. Linguistic survey of Tay cultural area (LSTCA) no. 108. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
External links
and Internet Database for Minority Languages of Burma (Myanmar)
{{Austro-Asiatic languages
Languages of Myanmar
Languages of China
*
Wa people