Eastern Pwo language

Eastern Pwo
ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်,ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်
Native to	Myanmar,Thailand
Ethnicity	Pwo Karen people
Native speakers	(1,050,000 cited 1998)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Karenic Pwo Eastern Pwo
Writing system	Mon-Burmese script(various alphabets) Leke script,Thai script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kjp
Glottolog	pwoe1235

Eastern PwoorPhlou,(Pwo Eastern Karen:ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်,ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်,Burmese:အရှေ့ပိုးကရင်) is aKaren languagespoken byEastern Pwo peopleand over a million people inMyanmarand by about 50,000 inThailand,where it has been calledSouthern Pwo.It is not intelligible withother varieties of Pwo,with which it shares 63 to 65%lexical similarity.The Eastern Pwo dialects share 91 to 97% lexical similarity.

A script calledLekewas developed between 1830 and 1860 and is used by members of the millenarian Leke sect of Buddhism. Otherwise, a variety ofMon-Burmesealphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created aThaialphabet that is in limited use.

Distribution

• Kayin StateandTanintharyi Region:long contiguous area near the Thai border
• Bago Region:BagoandToungootownships

Phonology

The following displays the phonological features of two of the eastern Pwo Karen dialects, Pa'an and Tavoy:

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular/ Glottal
Nasal		m		n		ɲ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t̪	t	tɕ		k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ	tɕʰ		kʰ
	voiced	b		d
	implosive	(ɓ)		(ɗ)
Fricative	voiceless				ɕ		x	h
	voiced						ɣ	ʁ
Trill				r
Approximant	central	w				j
	lateral			l

• Post-alveolar affricates /tɕ,tɕʰ/, are realized as fricatives [s,sʰ], among some formal dialects.
• /t̪/ when pronounced slowly is phonetically realized as a dental affricate [t̪θ].
• Voiced plosives /b,d/ are pronounced as implosives [ɓ,ɗ] only in the Pa'an dialect.
• /h/ does not exist in the Tavoy dialect.
• /j/ may tend to be slightly fricativized [ʝ] when preceding front vowels.
• /r/ may also be realized as a tap [ɾ].

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i	ɨ	ɯ	u
Near-high	ɪ		ʊ
High-mid	e		ɤ	o
Low-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

• /ɪ/ does not occur after a /w/ sound.
• /ɪ,ʊ,ɛ,ɔ/ are merged with /i,u,e,o/ in the Tavoy dialect.

Tones

Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo:

Tones
v́	˦
v̄	˧
v̀	˨
v̂	˥˩

Dialects

• Pa’an (Inland Eastern Pwo Karen, Moulmein)
• Kawkareik (Eastern Border Pwo Karen)
• Tavoy (Southern Pwo Karen)

Alphabet

History

The alphabet used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is inMon-Burmese script.

က ka(/kaˀ/)	ခ kha(/kʰaˀ/)	ဂ ga(/gaˀ/)	ဃ gha(/kʰaˀ/)	င ṅa(/ŋa̰ˀ/)	စ ca(/ca̰ˀ/)
ဆ cha(/cʰa̰ˀ/)	ဇ sa(/sa̰/)	ဈ sa(/sa̰ˀ/)	ည ña(/ñaˀ/)	ဋ ṭa(/taˀ/)	ဌ ṭha(/tʰaˀ/)
ဍ ḍa(/ɗaˀ/)	ဎ ḍha(/ɗʰaˀ/)	ၮ ṇ(/na̰/)	တ ta(/taˀ/)	ထ tha(/tʰaˀ/)	ဒ da(/da̰ˀ/)
ဓ dha(/tʰa̰ˀ/)	န na(/na̰ˀ/)	ပ pa(/pa̰ˀ/)	ဖ pha(/pʰa̰ˀ/)	ဗ ba(/ba̰ˀ/)	ဘ bha(/bʰa̰ˀ/)
မ ma(/ma̰ˀ/)	ယ ya(/ya̰ˀ/)	ရ ra(/ra̰ˀ/)	လ la(/la̰ˀ/)	ဝ wa(/wa̰ˀ/)	သ sa(/sa̰ˀ/)
ဟ ha(/ha̰ˀ/)	ဠ la(/la̰ˀ/)	အ a(/ʔaˀ/)	ၜ ba(/ɓaˀ/)	ၯ hha(/ŋga̰ˀ/)	ၰ ghwa(/ŋghɛ̀ˀˀ/)

Numbers

Number	Eastern Pwo Karen
	Numeral	Written	Pronounce
0	၀	ပၠဝ်ပၠေ	ပ္လေါဟ်ပ္လိဟ် ploh plih
1	၁	လ်ု	လုဟ် luh
2	၂	ဏီ့	ဏီး née
3	၃	သိုငၲ့	သုဟ် thuh
4	၄	လီႉ	လီး Lee း lee
5	၅	ယဲါ	ယေဟ် yeh
6	၆	ၰူ့	ဟု hu
7	၇	နိူဲ့	နွေ့ယ် nwey
8	၈	ၰိုဝၲ	ၐိုဝ် xoh
9	၉	ခိုဲႉ	ခွေး khwee
10	၁၀	လ်ုဆီ့(ဆီ့)	luh chi/chi
11	၁၁	ဆီ့လ်ု	chi luh
12	၁၂	ဆီ့ဏီ့	chi ne
20	၂၀	ဏီ့ဆီ့	ne chi
21	၂၁	ဏီ့ဆီ့လ်ု	ne chi luh
22	၂၂	ဏီ့ဆီ့ဏီ့	ne chi ne
100	၁၀၀	လ်ုဖငၲႉ(ဖငၲႉ)	luh pong/pong
101	၁၀၁	လ်ုဖငၲႉလ်ု	luh pong luh
1000	၁၀၀၀	လ်ုမိုငၲ့(မိုငၲ့)	luh muh/muh
10000	၁၀၀၀၀	လ်ုလါ(လါ)	luh lah/lah
100000	၁၀၀၀၀၀	လ်ုသိငၲႉ(သိငၲႉ)	luh thay/thay

The Eastern Pwo Karen numeric symbols have beenproposed for encodingin a futureBurmese Unicode block.

• The number zero,ploh plih(ပၠဝ်ပၠေ), means "of no value".
• The number zero is not used in day-to-day life and mostly exists in writing only. People are taught to use the Burmese numeric system instead, including zero.
• Chi(ဆီ့) denotes 10, any number from 1 to 9beforechican be interpreted as "of ten(s)", so 20 would bene chi.Pong(ဖငၲ) denotes 100, any number from 1 to 9beforepongcan be interpreted as "hundred(s)", so 200 would bene pong.Similarly, the same rule applies to thousand,muh(မိုငၲ့); ten-thousand,lah(လါ); and hundred-thousand,thay(သိငၲႉ).
• Numbers after the hundred-thousands (millions and above) are prefixed withthay(သိငၲႉ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would bethay luh chi(သိငၲႉလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would bethay ne chi (သိငၲႉဏီ့ဆီ့),hundred thousand of two tens;ten million would bethay luh pong(သိငၲႉလ်ုဖငၲ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would bethay luh lah(သိငၲႉလ်ုလါ), "hundred thousand of ten thousands".

Decimals

Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai'sdecimalword,chut,(Karen: ကျူဒၲ, ကျူ(ဒၲ); Thai: จุด; English: and, dot). For example, 1.01 isluh chut ploh plih luh(လ်ု ပၠဝ်ပၠေလ်ု).

Fractions

Fractions are formed by sayingpuh(ပုံႉ) after the numeratorandthe denominator. For example, one-third (¹/₃) would beluh puh thuh puh(လ်ုပုံသိုငၲ့ပုံ) and three over one, three- "oneths" (³/₁) would bethuh puh luh puh(သိုငၲ့ပုံလ်ုပုံ).