The following study is an analysis of the speech of one speaker, Maung Shwe Waing (máun šwéi wâin) of Taw Wi village (tó wì ywá) in Lower Burma some one hundred miles north of Rangoon. Mr. Shwe Waing was born August 15, 1902 (gôzá θagayiˀ tatháun hnayà chausshè ŋâgù hniˀ, wágáun làzân shè tayeˀ, tanînlá nèi nyà shè tanáyí ˀachéin ‘in the year 1265, eleventh day of the waxing moon, Monday at eleven o'clock in the evening‘). For seven years, from his seventh to his fourteenth year, he attended the local monastery school. At the age of eighteen he left Taw Wi for Rangoon. In 1921 he shipped aboard a steamer as fireman. The next twenty years he spent aboard ship, until he came to the United States in 1940. From June 1943 to the present he has served as tutor for Burmese in the Army Specialized Training Program at Yale University.