| Wa | |
|---|---|
| Va, Vo, Awa | |
| Spoken in | Burma, China |
| Ethnicity | Va |
| Native speakers | 1.3 million (2000) |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | variously: prk – Parauk wbm – Vo vwa – Awa |
Wa (Va) is the language of the Wa people of Burma and China. There are three distinct varieties, sometimes considered separate languages; their names in Ethnologue are Parauk, the majority and standard form; Vo (40,000 speakers), and Awa (100,000 speakers), though all may be called Wa, Awa, Va, Vo.
In Wa, there are nine vowels: i, e, ɛ, a, ɯ, u, ɤ, o, ɔ. All of these vowels can be tense or lax. Tenseness is a phonemic feature in syllables with unaspirated initials.[1]
There are diphthongs and triphthongs. The general syllabic structure of Wa is C(C)(V)V(V)(C). Only a few words have zero-initials.[1]
The standard Wa is a non-tonal language. However, there are dialects which are tonal. There is correspondence between tones in tonal dialects and tenseness in non-tonal dialects.[1]