Studies in Pyu Phonology, ii: Rhymes

Abstract

The extinct Pyu language was spoken during the first millennium CE and the early centuries of the second millennium CE in what is now Upper Burma. Pyu appears to be Sino-Tibetan on the basis of its basic vocabulary. It survives in inscriptions in an Indic script. This study reconstructs Pyu rhymes on the basis of spellings in those inscriptions and concludes that Pyu was an atonal language with 7 vowels and 18 final consonants. Some previous scholars have interpreted the subscript dots of the Pyu script as tone markers, but this study argues that they indicate fricative initials.