Eastern Pwo language


Eastern Pwo or Phlou, is a Karen language spoken by over a million people in Burma and by about 50,000 in Thailand, where it has been called Southern Pwo. It is not intelligible with other varieties of Pwo.
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 Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created a Thai alphabet which is in limited use.

Distribution

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

Consonants

Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo:

Dialects

History

The Eastern Pwo Karen language is heavily derived from the Mon script and the Burmese script.

ka

kha

ga

gha

ṅa

ca

cha

sa

sa

ña

ṭa

ṭha

ḍa

ḍha


ta

tha

da

dha

na

pa

pha

ba

bha

ma

ya

ra

la

wa

sa

ha

la

a

ba

hha

ghwa


The Eastern Pwo Karen numeric symbols currently does not exist in the Burmese Unicode block.
Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai's decimal word, chut,. For example, 1.01 is luh chut ploh plih luh.

Fractions

Fractions are formed by saying puh after the numerator and the denominator. For example, one-third would be luh puh thuh puh and three over one, three-"oneths" would be thuh puh luh puh.