Intha-Danu language

Intha-Danu
Intha-Danu
Pronunciation	dənuʔ
Native to	Burma
Region	Inle Lake, Shan State
Ethnicity	Intha, Danu
Native speakers	ca. 200,000 (2000–2007)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan ( Burmese dialects) Intha-Danu; ;
Dialects	Danu; Intha;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either:; dnv – Danu; int – Intha
Glottolog	inth1238

Intha and Danu are southern

dialects of Burmese by the Government of Myanmar, Danu has 93% lexical similarity with standard Burmese, while Intha has 95% lexical similarity with standard Burmese.^[2] Intha and Danu differ from standard Burmese with respect to pronunciation of certain phonemes, and few hundred local vocabulary terms.^[3] Language contact has led to increasing convergence with standard Burmese.^[3] Both are spoken by about 100,000 people each.^[1]

ရှမ်ပြည်နယ်shwehmoneaလေမောင်ပြုံးရာဇဝင်soeLln== Phonology == Both Danu and Intha are characterized by retention of the /-l-/ medial (for the following consonant clusters in Intha: /kl- kʰl- pl- pʰl- ml- hml-/). Examples include:*"full": Standard Burmese ပြည့် ([pjḛ]) → ပ္လည့် ([plḛ]), from old Burmese ပ္လည်

"ground": Standard Burmese မြေ ([mjè]) → မ္လေ ([mlè]), from old Burmese မ္လိယ်

There is no voicing with the presence of either aspirated or unaspirated consonants. For instance, ဗုဒ္ဓ (Buddha) is pronounced [boʊʔda̰] in standard Burmese, but [poʊʔtʰa̰] in Intha. This is likely due to the influence of the Shan language.

Furthermore, သ (/θ/ in standard Burmese) has merged to /sʰ/ (ဆ) in Intha.

ရှမ်ပြည်နယ်shwehmoneaလေမောင်ပြုံးရာဇဝင်soeLln==Rhymes== Rhyme correspondences to standard Burmese follow these patterns:^[4]

Written Burmese	Standard Burmese	Intha	Notes
-ျင် -င်	/-ɪɴ/	/-ɛɴ/
-ဉ်	/-ɪɴ/	/-ɪɴ/
ိမ် -ိန် ိုင်	/-eɪɴ -eɪɴ -aɪɴ/	/-eɪɴ/
-ျက် -က်	/-jɛʔ -ɛʔ/	/-aʔ/
-တ် -ပ်	/-aʔ/	/-ɛʔ/
-ည်	/-ɛ, -e, -i/	/-e/	/-i/ if initial is a palatal consonant
ိတ် ိပ် ိုက်	/-eɪʔ -eɪʔ -aɪʔ/	/-aɪʔ/

Rhymes
Open syllables	weak = ə full = i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u
Closed	nasal = ɪɴ, eɪɴ, ɛɴ, aɴ, ɔɴ, oʊɴ, ʊɴ stop = ɪʔ, aɪʔ, ɛʔ, aʔ, ɔʔ, oʊʔ, ʊʔ

Vocabulary

Danu has noticeable vocabulary differences from standard Burmese, spanning areas such as kinship terms, food, flora and fauna, and daily objects.^[5] For example, the Danu term for 'cat' is mi-nyaw (မိညော်), not kyaung (ကြောင်) as in standard Burmese.^[5]

Kinship terms

Term	Standard Burmese	Danu
Father	အဖေ	အဘ
Grandfather	အဘိုး	ဘကြီး
Grandmother	အဘွား	မေကြီး
Mother	အမေ	အမေ
Stepmother	မိထွေး	အဒေါ်
Elder brother	အစ်ကို	ကိုရင်
Elder sister	အစ်မ	မမ
Brother-in-law^[6]	ခဲအို	အနောင်
Uncle	ဦးလေး	အမင်း

Script

Danu and Intha are written using the Burmese alphabet.

Between 2013 and 2014, the Taunggyi branch of the Danu Literature and Culture Committee invented a new alphabet to transcribe the Danu language, taking inspiration from both the Pyu and Burmese scripts found on stone inscriptions.^[7] Within the Danu Self-Administered Zone (SAZ), adoption of this script remains divisive, with other township branches of the committee and politicians firmly opposed to its usage, arguing that the need for a specific Danu script is unjustified since Danu is a Burmese dialect.^[7]^[3] The script is currently not accepted by the Danu SAZ's administration.^[3] These recent developments have also prompted some actors in the Intha community to invent their own scripts.^[3]

References

^ ^a ^b Danu at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)
Intha at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)
^ "Myanmar - Languages" (PDF). Ethnologue. 2016-07-24.
^
ISBN 978-99971-0-558-5
.

^ Barron, Sandy; John Okell; Saw Myat Yin; Kenneth VanBik; Arthur Swain; Emma Larkin; Anna J. Allott; Kirsten Ewers (2007). Refugees From Burma: Their Backgrounds and Refugee Experiences (PDF) (Report). Center for Applied Linguistics. pp. 16–17. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2010-08-20.
^ ^a ^b ခင်စန္ဒာတိုး (2018). "နောင်ချိုဒေသရှိ ဓနုဒေသိယစကားမှ နေ့စဉ်သုံးစကားများလေ့လာချက်" (PDF). Journal of the Myanmar Academy of Arts and Science (in Burmese). XVI (6B).
^ Elder sister's husband, or husband's elder brother
^ ^a ^b "Teaching Ethnic Languages, Cultures and Histories in Government Schools today: Great Opportunities, Giant Pitfalls? (Part II)". Tea Circle. 2018-10-02. Retrieved 2023-04-01.

[e21-1] Danu at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)
Intha at Ethnologue (21st ed., 2018)

[2] "Myanmar - Languages" (PDF). Ethnologue. 2016-07-24.

[:1-3] 
ISBN 978-99971-0-558-5
.

[4] Barron, Sandy; John Okell; Saw Myat Yin; Kenneth VanBik; Arthur Swain; Emma Larkin; Anna J. Allott; Kirsten Ewers (2007). Refugees From Burma: Their Backgrounds and Refugee Experiences (PDF) (Report). Center for Applied Linguistics. pp. 16–17. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-04-27. Retrieved 2010-08-20.

[:0-5] ခင်စန္ဒာတိုး (2018). "နောင်ချိုဒေသရှိ ဓနုဒေသိယစကားမှ နေ့စဉ်သုံးစကားများလေ့လာချက်" (PDF). Journal of the Myanmar Academy of Arts and Science (in Burmese). XVI (6B).

[6] Elder sister's husband, or husband's elder brother

[:2-7] "Teaching Ethnic Languages, Cultures and Histories in Government Schools today: Great Opportunities, Giant Pitfalls? (Part II)". Tea Circle. 2018-10-02. Retrieved 2023-04-01.

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