The phonetics of Wa: Experimental phonetics, phonology, orthography and sociolinguistics

This is a linguistic phonetic study of the Northern Mon-Khmer language Wa, spoken by about one million people in an area on the border between China's Yúnán Province and Burma's (Myanmar's) Shan State. The aim of this book is to describe the phonetic facts of the sounds of Wa in terms of the simplest segment types without compromising detail, and to illustrate the types of contrasts which distinguish them from one another, so that they may be viewed in a wider, phonetic linguistic, context. It is hoped that sufficient material is presented here to inform a comparison of dialectal variants of Wa and that the instrumental data may be of value in comparing a sound in Wa with similar sounds in other languages. This study aims to be accessible to all those who are interested by the relevance of phonetics to linguistics. It is hoped that certain sections, in particular the background information and the discussion of topics relating to the historical phonology of Wa may be of interest to a wider readership, namely Mon-Khmerists, those working on other minority languages of South East Asia or elsewhere, or those with a general interest in Wa language, culture or society.