Parauk Wa

Parauk Wa (ISO 639-3: prk), also called Wa or Paraok, is a Waic language of the Palaungic branch of Austroasiatic, spoken by roughly 399,000–849,000 people across northeastern Myanmar and adjacent Yunnan, China. It is the largest and most widely standardized Wa variety, alongside other varieties such as Awa and Vo. Its sound system contrasts clear and breathy registers, has a large inventory of initial consonants and clusters, and uses no inflection on verbs; tense, aspect, modality, and negation are expressed mainly by particles. Both VSO and SVO orders are common, with information structure influencing their choice. Parauk is written in several Latin-based orthographies, including Bible-derived and later Wa State and Chinese systems.