Miandianyu Fangyan Yanjiu [Burmese Dialect Research] by Wang Danian and Cai Xiangyang

Reviewed by: Miandianyu Fangyan Yanjiu [Burmese Dialect Research] by Wang Danian and Cai Xiangyang David Bradley Miandianyu Fangyan Yanjiu [Burmese Dialect Research]. Wang Danian and Cai Xiangyang. [Beijing]: Beijing University Press, 2018. Pp. 7 + 4 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 543. RMB 108 (paper). This wonderful volume represents the culmination of many years of research on the Burmese language and its dialects by the retired Professor of Burmese at Peking University Wang Danian. It includes a massive quantity of phonological and lexical data as well as substantial morphosyntactic examples from nine spoken varieties. The varieties included are the Yangon standard, southeastern Tavoyan, far southeastern Beik (Merguese), western Rakhine (Arakanese) and Yaw, northeastern Intha, Taungyo, and Danu, and northern Hpun. The volume provides comprehensive new and unique data on Danu and Beik, by far the most extensive data ever collected on Yaw and Taungyo, and a massive and extremely valuable supplement to existing sources on Rakhine, Tavoyan, Intha, and Hpun. It draws on recent data from U Tun Aung Kyaw for Hpun; otherwise, all is new original data collected by Prof. Wang over many years. The transcription is consistent and excellent throughout. As has been observed but never documented before, the speech of Beik is very similar to the Yangon standard and not to Tavoyan, which is located between the two. Yaw is intermediate between Rakhine and the standard, geographically and linguistically. Danu, Taungyo, and Intha are spoken in various southwestern areas of Shan State in the northeast of the country, and are conservative in various ways parallel to Tavoyan. Due to the strong influence of standard Burmese as spoken in central Burma, including the capital, Yangon, in lower Burma, and the former capital, Mandalay, in central Burma, most of the other dialects have converged phonologically and lexically toward the standard. This is particularly evident in the case of Rakhine, which is also spoken in southeastern Bangladesh and nearby in India by minorities who have had less contact with the standard since the 1784 Burmese conquest of Rakhine, which was an independent kingdom from the early 1400s that included much of what is now southeastern Bangladesh. The varieties spoken in Bangladesh are substantially different (Bernot 1957); the varieties spoken in Burma have converged extensively towards standard Burmese, while retaining several of the main shibboleths such as Rakhine r, pronounced [ɹ] as in English. In Rakhine State, from north to south there is gradually increasing convergence toward the standard. The complex sociolinguistic situation is not discussed. Standard Burmese is the official language and the language of education and most of national life, and is spreading into many domains of use among other ethnic groups; it is also [End Page 135] strongly influencing all the other related varieties. Hpun is no longer spoken; old fluent speakers of one of two dialects were located in the early 1960s by Luce (1985) and Henderson (1986), but now there are only very old people who remember a few words, though the ethnic group persists and is officially recognized as one of the 135 ethnic groups of the country. The Bamar majority ethnic group speaks more or less standard varieties similar to the modern speech of Yangon, with some minor regional differences in the north, southwest, and southeast. The Rakhine are recognized as an ethnic group, and have a separate ethnic state, Rakhine State, in the west of the country. Danu is recognized as an ethnic group and has a recently established Self-Administered Zone in the southwest of Shan State; the other groups are all recognized as ethnic groups but do not have separate designated territories. Most attention is devoted to phonology, with detailed phonological sketches of all nine varieties (pp. 9–244) and a comparative discussion of their initials, rhymes, and tones (pp. 245–71). Some of the more substantial lexical differences between varieties are illustrated (pp. 271–99), and extensive information on morphosyntax, including numerous parallel phrase and sentence examples illustrating differences, is given (pp. 299–321), along with a table of grammatical markers in written Burmese and the nine spoken varieties (pp. 327–33). An 1,836-item lexicon arranged by semantic fields in Chinese, English, written Burmese, and the nine spoken

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