Marvin Brown (1965) divides the three dialects of Shan as follows: There are also dialects still spoken by a small number of people in Kachin State and Khamti spoken in northern Sagaing Region. 'Tai Long' is used to refer to the dialect spoken in southern and central regions west of the Salween River. Chinese Shan is also called (Tai) Mao, referring to the old Shan State of Mong Mao. Prominent dialects are considered as separate languages, such as Khün (called Kon Shan by the Burmese), which is spoken in Kengtung valley, and Tai Lü. Initial /f/ only appears in the east, while in the other two dialects it merges with /pʰ/. In southwestern regions /m/ is often pronounced as /w/. In Chinese Shan, initial /n/ becomes /l/. In the north, initial /k/, /kʰ/ and /m/, when combined with certain vowels and final consonants, are pronounced /tʃ/ (written ky), /tʃʰ/ (written khy) and /mj/ (written my). A number of words differ in initial consonants. While the southern dialect has borrowed more Burmese words, Eastern Shan is somewhat closer to northern Thai languages and Lao in vocabulary and pronunciation, and the northern so-called "Chinese Shan" is much influenced by the Yunnan-Chinese dialect. Dialects differ to a certain extent in vocabulary and pronunciation, but are generally mutually intelligible. The Shan dialects spoken in Shan State can be divided into three groups, roughly coinciding with geographical and modern administrative boundaries, namely the northern, southern, and eastern dialects.
Estimates of Shan people range from four million to 30 million, with about half speaking the Shan language. The number of Shan speakers is not known in part because the Shan population is unknown. It is called Tai Yai or Tai Long in other Tai languages.
#Myanmar language say hello plus#
It has five tones, which do not correspond exactly to Thai tones, plus a "sixth tone" used for emphasis. Shan is a member of the Tai–Kadai language family and is related to Thai. It is also spoken in pockets of Kachin State in Myanmar, in Northern Thailand and decreasingly in Assam. The Shan language (written Shan: လိၵ်ႈတႆး, pronounced ( listen), spoken Shan: ၵႂၢမ်းတႆး, pronounced ( listen) or ၽႃႇသႃႇတႆး, pronounced Burmese: ရှမ်းဘာသာ, pronounced Thai: ภาษาไทใหญ่, pronounced ) is the native language of the Shan people and is mostly spoken in Shan State, Myanmar. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Burmese script. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.