Eastern Pwo language
# Eastern Pwo language

Eastern Pwo or Phlou, (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 | Nasal | m | | n | | ɲ | | |
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiceless | p | t̪ | t | tɕ | | k | ʔ |
| Plosive/ Affricate | aspirated | pʰ | | tʰ | tɕʰ | | kʰ | |
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiced | b | | d | | | | |
| Plosive/ Affricate | implosive | (ɓ) | | (ɗ) | | | | |
| Fricative | voiceless | | | | ɕ | | x | h |
| Fricative | voiced | | | | | | ɣ | ʁ |
| Trill | Trill | | | r | | | | |
| Approximant | central | w | | | | j | | |
| Approximant | 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 | Back |
| - | - | - | - | - |
| High | i | ɨ | ɯ | u |
| Near-high | ɪ | | ʊ | ʊ |
| High-mid | e | | ɤ | o |
| Low-mid | ɛ | | ɔ | 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 | Eastern Pwo Karen | Eastern Pwo Karen |
| - | - | - | - |
| Number | 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 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 (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).

