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Resources for Wa Language and Culture
Textual resources
- List of published material in or
about Wa and some closely-related Palaungic languages (updated 2006-07-24)
This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but is primarily a list of print works and audio
or video media which are in our collection and which we are drawing data from. In particular, the list
makes no particular effort to include those works from the early 20th century which included
information concerning the Wa language.
- The writing of the Wa Language (updated 2006-03-29)
with
- Comparative Chart of Wa Orthographies (Summary)
or
- Correspondence List of Wa-CN Orthography and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
(from Loux Gāb Vax 佤语熟语汇释, by Wang Jingliu 王敬骝 et al., pp. 461-462) (new 2006-03-29)
or
- Comparative Chart of Wa
Orthographies (Based on Initials and Finals) (59KB, updated 2005-07-28)
Orthographic correspondence table by initials and finals in "logical" order, i.e., by
traditional Indic order of place and manner of articulation.
or
- Comparative Chart of Wa Orthographies
(Complete) (big! 530KB, updated 2005-07-28)
To see the IPA characters displayed correctly, you will need a Unicode font
with glyphs for IPA characters, such as Lucida Sans Unicode (included
as part of Windows NT/2000/XP) Arial Unicode MS,
Code 2000 (shareware, suggested US$5 registration fee),
or the free Doulos SIL.
also see:
- On-line automatic Wa
Orthography Converter on the Interactive Tools Page
- An Experimental Unified Wa Orthography (updated 2005-07-12)
- Regular phonetic
correspondences in orthographic variation between Chinese and Myanmar Wa (updated 2006-06-03)
- The new bilingual Chinese-Wa language text Lāi Loux,
for use in primary education in the Wa-speaking areas of Yunnan, China.
- Sipeem Tawx Bwan: (STB)
Orthography Changes 2000-2005 (updated 2006-06-19)
- Draft documents for some appendices to the Wa Dictionary
- Concise Table of Abbreviations for Titles of Texts in Wa Corpus (updated 2006-07-25)
- List of Common Abbreviations and Acronyms used
in writings about Wa, Myanmar, and mainland South East Asia in general
(updated 2006-03-07)
- List of Frequently Encountered Terms
from languages of China, Myanmar and Thailand, as well as local terms
in "Asian English" (updated 2006-07-24)
- Hanzi used in Yunnan
Placenames (working draft) (updated 2006-03-23)
- List of about 300 Pairs of Morphologically-related
Wa Words, with Chinese glosses, drawn from Zhao Yanshe's Wayu yufa
佤语语法, Wang Jingliu and Chen Xiangmu's "Wayuci de xingtai bianhua" 佤语词的形态变化
(WYYJ, pp.117-129), Yan Qixiang and Zhou Zhizhi's Wayu jianzhi 佤语简志,
and our Wa dictionary database. (updated 2006-07-12)
- Chart of
Austroasiatic Languages. (Consists primarily of the Mon-Khmer languages,
along with the Munda languages of India.)
- The Young Family and their work with the Wa people over four generations
 Elder Ai Rong (1855-1940) (English-language version)
Tax Ai Rong (1855-1940) (Ceu Lai Vax [Wa-MM])
- The Wa language in South East Asian Linguistic Context (forthcoming)
Media (Samples of spoken Wa)
- The Tale of the Two Kings
(from Old Testament [2 Chronicles 16-17?; 2 Kings?]) (MP3 format)
- Friends Forever
(from Old Testament) (MP3 format)
- The Peaceable Kingdom (Haktiex Yien yawk)
(from Bible) (MP3 format)
- "Pet La Pa Ang
Kwe Rhawm Keut" (The Mindless Rabbit) (MP3, 3756KB) from Lai
Vax, Wa Reader, Glawg 4, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2000), read by
the editor of that textbook series, the Rev. Ai Pao Pleek Sgu, with
accompanying text.
- Wa Hymns Audio CD
- Dialogues 25-38 from Wayu huihua keben 佤语会话课本)
[Phuk Lai Gau Ra Lai Ah Loux Vax / Pug lāi mgāe dui loux loux Vax (MP3, Big! 13,751KB)
- Tapes to accompany new bilingual Chinese-Wa primary-school language text Lāi Loux (2003)
- Tape 1: basic sounds, word lists, first part of kewen texts etc. for vols. 1-2 (MP3, 11,241KB)
- Tape 2: Most of kewen lesson texts, etc. for vols. 1-2 (MP3, 11,161KB)
Fonts and Displaying Burmese Characters
The Web pages on our website are increasingly requiring more sophisticated display capability for
foreign-language characters, including the main languages with which we are concerned: Wa,
Burmese (Myanmar), Chinese, and English, and also several symbols of the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA). English, Wa in the Revised Bible orthography, and Wa in the Chinese orthography
(using macrons over vowels to indicate breathy syllables), and also Chinese pinyin transcription with tones, can be
handled by the core fonts installed with most of the operating systems since 2000 or so (Windows, Macintosh,
Unix/Linux). Fonts for displaying Chinese are widely available, so proper display of Chinese on our pages
should not be a problem for those who require it.
As mentioned above concerning the orthography charts,
in order to see IPA characters displayed correctly, you
will need to have installed in your operating system a Unicode font with
glyphs for IPA characters, such as Lucida Sans Unicode (included as part of
Windows NT/2000/XP) Arial Unicode MS, Code
2000 (shareware, suggested US$5 registration fee),
or the free Doulos SIL.
This leaves Burmese, which is indeed a problem. All our data, including Burmese, is stored
as Unicode. However, in the case of Burmese, in order to accommodate the
existing state of limited display capabilities for complex scripts in operating systems
and Web browsers, we make use of a transitional "Unicode-compatible" Burmese, in which
most characters are stored with their regular Unicode values in the U+1000-U+1059 Myanmar block.
But there are two departures from "pure Unicode."
- A few (but high-frequency) characters are stored out of their canonical phonetic
(dictionary-sort) order (and they are thus currently displayed in their correct visual order).
- Some characters are stored using variant glyph shapes using codepoints in the Unicode Private
User Area (PUA), again ensuring correct current visual appearance.
We make use of conversion tools both to convert Burmese text in legacy "ASCII"
encodings into this transitional "Unicode-compatible" encoding; and also to convert the transitional
encoding into canonical Unicode for long-term preservation and exchange of data,
as well as future display of the data, when the major operating systems support display of Burmese.
You can use any Unicode font which includes Burmese characters (for example,
Code2000 or
SIL Padauk)
to display the majority of characters correctly, but in order to see the special glyphic variations
displayed properly, you will need to download and install our SOASMyanmar font
(read more about SOASMyanmar
font | download SOASMyanmar
font. Because of idiosyncracies in the way Microsoft Internet Explorer
handles display of PUA characters, it is regrettably very likely that you will not
see all the variant glyphs displayed correctly in MSIE. Current versions of Netscape,
Mozilla (Firefox), Opera, and perhaps other browsers, do a better job.
If you have no special font for displaying IPA, Chinese, or Burmese,
installing the single font "Code 2000" will
give you the ability to display IPA, much of the Burmese, and several
thousand common Chinese characters.
Maps
Maps of the greater Wa-speaking area
Some Internet links to other Wa-language-related sites or corpus-based lexicography sites
- Ethnologue
database entry for Parauk language (SIL code PRK, alternate names: Wa, Praok, Baraog,
Baraoke)
(Standard Wa)
Compare the following Wa dialects or closely-related languages:
- Ethnologue
database entry for Vo language (SIL code WBM, alternate names: Awa,
Wa, K'awa, Kawa, Wa Pwi, Wakut)
- Ethnologue
database entry for Blang language (SIL code BLR, alternate names:
Bulang, Pulang, Pula, Plang, Kawa, K'ala, Kontoi)
- Ethnologue
database entry for Lawa, Western language (SIL code LCP, alternate
names: Wa, Wa proper, Pava, Luwa, Lua, L'wa, Lavua, Lavüa, Mountain Lawa)
- Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project
- Other links with useful information
about the Wa people and their language
Internal
The following pages require a password for access:
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