Book Review: Dictionary of Wa. With Translations into English, Burmese and Chinese

The corpus includes both renderings of spoken dialogue as presented in school textbooks, interview transcripts and more recent rock-band lyrics, as well as more formulaic language, such as proverbs and sayings or religious texts (including translated texts from foreign religions, such as Christianit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London Vol. 78; no. 1; p. 235
Main Author Fiskesjö, Magnus
Format Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.02.2015
Subjects
Burmese
Chinese
Dictionaries
English
Language
Literary translation
Orthography
Vietnam
Myanmar (Burma)
United States > US
China
East Asia
Thailand
India
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Summary:The corpus includes both renderings of spoken dialogue as presented in school textbooks, interview transcripts and more recent rock-band lyrics, as well as more formulaic language, such as proverbs and sayings or religious texts (including translated texts from foreign religions, such as Christianity). At the end of volume 2, there is another set of useful appendices: on Wa personal pronouns (explaining the three Wa pronouns, including the singular, dual as well as the plural pronoun), Wa personal names (a very useful brief overview of the Wa naming system and its several dimensions), numbers in Wa, weights and measures, a selective list of Wa-language place names, references for the entire work, and, finally, a "PRC Wa" to "Official Wa" spelling conversion table (placed last for easy reference). Versions of this dictionary as well as the online corpus of Wa texts that Watkins and his collaborators have assembled are set to become increasingly used, and they will also offer invaluable help to all those interested in further research on Wa language, culture and history.
ISSN:0041-977X
1474-0699
DOI:10.1017/S0041977X14001396