Eastern Pwo language
Eastern Pwo | |
---|---|
ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ် | |
Native to | Burma, Thailand |
Ethnicity | Pwo Karen people |
Native speakers | 1 million[1] |
Sino-Tibetan
| |
Burmese script (various alphabets) Leke script, Thai script | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | kjp |
Glottolog | pwoe1235 |
Eastern Pwo or Phlou, (Burmese: အရှေ့ပိုးကရင်) 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[]
- 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 | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | voiceless | p | t̪ | t | k | ʔ | ||
aspirated | pʰ | tʰ | kʰ | |||||
voiced | b | d | ||||||
implosive | (ɓ) | (ɗ) | ||||||
Affricate | voiceless | tɕ | ||||||
aspirated | tɕʰ | |||||||
Fricative | voiceless | ɕ | x | h | ||||
voiced | ɣ | ʁ | ||||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | |||||
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.[2]
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 script used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is heavily derived from the Mon script and the 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/) |
Number | Eastern Pwo Karen | ||
---|---|---|---|
Numeral | Written | Pronounce | |
0 | ၀ | ပၠဝ်ပၠေ | ပ္လေါဟ်ပ္လိဟ်
ploh plih |
1 | ၁ | လ်ု | လုဟ်
luh |
2 | ၂ | ဏီ့ | ဏီး
nee |
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 currently does not exist in the 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 (ဖငၲ) 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 (မိုငၲ့); ten-thousand, lah (လါ); and hundred-thousand, thay (သိငၲႉ).
- Numbers after the hundred-thousands (millions and above) are prefixed with thay (သိငၲႉ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would be thay luh chi (သိငၲႉလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would be thay ne chi (သိငၲႉဏီ့ဆီ့), hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would be thay luh pong (သိငၲႉလ်ုဖငၲ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would be thay luh lah (သိငၲႉလ်ုလါ), "hundred thousand of ten thousands".
Decimals[]
Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai's decimal word, chut, (Karen: ကျူဒၲ, ကျူ(ဒၲ); 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 (လ်ုပုံသိုငၲ့ပုံ) and three over one, three-"oneths" (3/1) would be thuh puh luh puh (သိုငၲ့ပုံလ်ုပုံ).
References[]
- ^ Eastern Pwo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Kato, Atsuhiko (1995). The phonological systems of three Pwo Karen dialects. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 18. pp. 63–103.
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