Htanaw (Kanaw) is an Austroasiatic language of the Palaungic group spoken by some 3000 people in six villages in southern Shan State, Myanmar. All Htanaw are at least bilingual, speaking Htanaw and Burmese fluently, many also have different degrees of communicative proficiency in other languages of the area, including Pa'O (a Karenic language), Intha, Danu, and Taungyoe (three local Burmese varieties). Htanaw has never been written in any systematic form, and resources on the language in general are scarce. This website presents the progress in collecting and analyzing Htanaw language material and developing an adequate orthography to be used by the language community. The project is a collaborative effort by Htanaw speakers and linguists from abroad. 

Please check back here for updates on Htanaw writing - how to write Htanaw language easily with Burmese letters. We will post spelling rules, examples, vocabulary lists, Htanaw readers for beginners, stories, and much more. The goal is to design a practical and clear way of representing Htanaw adequately in standard Burmese letters. Htanaw should be easily writable on mobile devices and computers, so that speakers can communicate conveniently in their native language and publish texts in Htanaw. Htanaw orthography makes use of non-standard Burmese combinations of vowels and consonants in order to represent all sounds of the language. The spelling has been preliminarily  fixed is being tested the members of the Htanaw community and adjustments are continuously implemented. More material will be produced and published once the orthography is set and accepted by the language community.