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 Pwo or Phlou,(Pwo Eastern Karen: ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်, ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်, Burmese: အရှေ့ပိုးကရင်) is a Karen language spoken by Eastern Pwo people and over a million people in Myanmar and by about 50,000 in Thailand, where it has been called Southern Pwo. It is not intelligible with other varieties of Pwo, with which it shares 63 to 65% lexical similarity. The Eastern Pwo dialects share 91 to 97% lexical similarity.

A script called Leke was developed between 1830 and 1860 and is used by members of the millenarian Leke sect of Buddhism. Otherwise, a variety of Mon-Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created a Thai alphabet that is in limited use.

Distribution

• Kayin State and Tanintharyi Region: long contiguous area near the Thai border
• Bago Region: Bago and Toungoo townships

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 in Mon-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	ၮီ့	ဏီး née
3	၃	သိုင့်	သုဟ် thuh
4	၄	လီႋ	လီ Lee း lee
5	၅	ယာဲ	ယေဟ် yeh
6	၆	ၰူ့	ဟု hu
7	၇	နိုဲ့	နွေ့ယ် nwey
8	၈	ၰိုတ်	ၐိုဝ် xoh
9	၉	ခုဲ့	ခွီး khwee
10	၁၀	လ်ုဆီ့(ဆီ့)	luh chi/chi
11	၁၁	ဆီ့လ်ု	chi luh
12	၁၂	ဆီ့ၮီ့	chi ne
20	၂၀	ၮီ့ဆီ့	ne chi
21	၂၁	ၮီ့ဆီ့လ်ု	ne chi luh
22	၂၂	ၮီ့ဆီ့ၮီ့	ne chi ne
100	၁၀၀	လ်ုဖင်ႋ(ဖင်ႋ)	luh pong/pong
101	၁၀၁	လ်ုဖင်ႋလ်ု	luh pong luh
1000	၁၀၀၀	လ်ုမိုင့်(မိုင့်)	luh muh/muh
10000	၁၀၀၀၀	လ်ုလာ(လာ)	luh lah/lah
100000	၁၀၀၀၀၀	လ်ုသိင်ႋ(သိင်ႋ)	luh thay/thay

The Eastern Pwo Karen numeric symbols have been proposed for encoding in a future Burmese 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 9 before chi can be interpreted as "of ten(s)", so 20 would be ne chi. Pong (ဖင်ႋ) denotes 100, any number from 1 to 9 before pong can be interpreted as "hundred(s)", so 200 would be ne pong. Similarly, the same rule applies to thousand, muh (မိုင့်); ten-thousand, lah (လာ); and hundred-thousand, thay (သိင်ႋ).
• Numbers after the hundred-thousands (millions and above) are prefixed with thay (သိင်ႋ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would be thay luh chi (သိင်ႋလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would be thay ne chi (သိင့်ၮီ့ဆီ့), hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would be thay luh pong (သိင်ႋလ်ုဖင်ႋ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would be thay luh lah (သိင်ႋလ်ုလာ), "hundred thousand of ten thousands".

Decimals

Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai's decimal word, chut, (Karen: ကျူဒ်, ကျူ(ဒ်); Thai: จุด; English: and, dot). For example, 1.01 is luh chut ploh plih luh (လ်ု ပၠဝ်ပၠေလ်ု).

Fractions

Fractions are formed by saying puh (ပုံႉ) after the numerator and the denominator. For example, one-third (¹/₃) would be luh puh thuh puh (လ်ုပုံသိုင့်ပုံ) and three over one, three-"oneths" (³/₁) would be thuh puh luh puh (သိုင့်ပုံလ်ုပုံ).