Wa phonology

Standard Wa is a non-tonal language. However, there are dialects that are tonal. There is correspondence between tones in tonal dialects and tenseness in non-tonal dialects.

In Wa, there are 44 phonemes; 35 consonants and 9 vowels. All of these vowels can be tense or lax. Tenseness is a phonemic feature in syllables with unaspirated initials.

Vowels
There are 15 diphthongs: iu, ɯi, ui, ia, ɤi, ua, ei, ou, oi~ɔi, ai, aɯ, au and 2 triphthongs: iau, uai. The general syllabic structure of Wa is C(C)(V)V(V)(C). Only a few words have zero-initials.