The Tavoyan or Dawei dialect of Burmese (ထားဝယ်စကား) is spoken in Dawei (Tavoy), in the coastal Tanintharyi Region of southern Myanmar (Burma).

Tavoyan retains an /-l-/ medial that has since merged into the /-j-/ medial in standard Burmese and can form the following consonant clusters: /ɡl-/, /kl-/, /kʰl-/, /bl-/, /pl-/, /pʰl-/, /ml-/, /m̥l-/. Examples include မ္လေ (/mlè/ → Standard Burmese /mjè/) for "ground" and က္လောင်း (/kláʊɴ/ → Standard Burmese /tʃáʊɴ/) for "school".^[2] Also, voicing can only occur with unaspirated consonants in Tavoyan, whereas in standard Burmese, voicing can occur with both aspirated and unaspirated consonants. Also, there are many loan words from Malay and Thai not found in Standard Burmese. An example is the word for goat, which is hseit (ဆိတ်) in Standard Burmese but bê (ဘဲ့) in Tavoyan, most likely from Mon /həbeˀ/ (ဗၜေံ) or Thai /pʰɛ́ʔ/ (แพะ).^[3]

In the Tavoyan dialect, terms of endearment, as well as family terms, are considerably different from Standard Burmese. For instance, the terms for "father" and "mother" are ဖစု (/pʰa̰ òu/) and မိစု (/mḭ òu/) respectively.^[4] Moreover, the honorific နောင် (Naung) is used in lieu of မောင် (Maung) for young males.^[4]

Rhymes

The following is a list of rhyme correspondences unique to the Tavoyan dialect^[5]

History

According to Michael Aung-Thwin, the Burmese dialect of Dawei/Tavoy preserved the "spelling (and presumably pronunciation)" of the Old Burmese from the Bagan era. As a result, he suggests that it diverged from other Burmese varieties sometime after the Burmese settlement of Lower Burma under the Bagan era, between the 11th and 13th centuries. He attributes this divergence to a migration of Mon speakers into the area north of Dawei in the late 13th century, which would have cut off Dawei from the main Burmese area.^{[6]: 112–3}