| Eastern Pwo | |
| Also Known As: | ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်, |
| States: | Myanmar, Thailand |
| Ethnicity: | Pwo Karen people |
| Speakers: | 1,050,000 |
| Date: | 1998 |
| Ref: | e25 |
| Familycolor: | Sino-Tibetan |
| Fam2: | Tibeto-Burman |
| Fam3: | Karenic |
| Fam4: | Pwo |
| Script: | Mon-Burmese script (various alphabets) Leke script, Thai script |
| Iso3: | kjp |
| Glotto: | pwoe1235 |
| Glottorefname: | Pwo Eastern Karen |
| Notice: | IPA |
Eastern Pwo or Phlou,(ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်,<ref name=Ethnologue/> {{Citation needed span|ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်|date=July 2024, 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.[1] The Eastern Pwo dialects share 91 to 97% lexical similarity.[1]
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.
The following displays the phonological features of two of the eastern Pwo Karen dialects, Pa'an and Tavoy:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular/ Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /m/ | pronounced as /n/ | pronounced as /ɲ/ | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate | voiceless | pronounced as /p/ | pronounced as /t̪/ | pronounced as /t/ | pronounced as /tɕ/ | pronounced as /k/ | pronounced as /ʔ/ | |
| aspirated | pronounced as /pʰ/ | pronounced as /tʰ/ | pronounced as /tɕʰ/ | pronounced as /kʰ/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /b/ | pronounced as /d/ | ||||||
| implosive | (pronounced as /ɓ/) | (pronounced as /ɗ/) | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | pronounced as /ɕ/ | pronounced as /x/ | pronounced as /h/ | ||||
| voiced | pronounced as /ɣ/ | pronounced as /ʁ/ | ||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /r/ | |||||||
| Approximant | central | pronounced as /w/ | pronounced as /j/ | |||||
| lateral | pronounced as /l/ | |||||||
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | pronounced as /i/ | pronounced as /ɨ/ | pronounced as /ɯ/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Near-high | pronounced as /ɪ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | |||
| High-mid | pronounced as /e/ | pronounced as /ɤ/ | pronounced as /o/ | ||
| Low-mid | pronounced as /ɛ/ | pronounced as /ɔ/ | |||
| Low | pronounced as /a/ | ||||
Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo:
| Tones | ||
|---|---|---|
| v́ | pronounced as /˦/ | |
| v̄ | pronounced as /˧/ | |
| v̀ | pronounced as /˨/ | |
| v̂ | pronounced as /˥˩/ | |
The alphabet used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is in Mon-Burmese script.
ka(pronounced as //kaˀ//) | kha(pronounced as //kʰaˀ//) | ga(pronounced as //gaˀ//) | gha(pronounced as //kʰaˀ//) | ṅa(pronounced as //ŋa̰ˀ//) | ca(pronounced as //ca̰ˀ//) | |
cha(pronounced as //cʰa̰ˀ//) | sa(pronounced as //sa̰//) | sa(pronounced as //sa̰ˀ//) | ña(pronounced as //ñaˀ//) | ṭa(pronounced as //taˀ//) | ṭha(pronounced as //tʰaˀ//) | |
ḍa(pronounced as //ɗaˀ//) | ḍha(pronounced as //ɗʰaˀ//) | ṇ(pronounced as //na̰//) | ta(pronounced as //taˀ//) | tha(pronounced as //tʰaˀ//) | da(pronounced as //da̰ˀ//) | |
dha(pronounced as //tʰa̰ˀ//) | na(pronounced as //na̰ˀ//) | pa(pronounced as //pa̰ˀ//) | pha(pronounced as //pʰa̰ˀ//) | ba(pronounced as //ba̰ˀ//) | bha(pronounced as //bʰa̰ˀ//) | |
ma(pronounced as //ma̰ˀ//) | ya(pronounced as //ya̰ˀ//) | ra(pronounced as //ra̰ˀ//) | la(pronounced as //la̰ˀ//) | wa(pronounced as //wa̰ˀ//) | sa(pronounced as //sa̰ˀ//) | |
ha(pronounced as //ha̰ˀ//) | la(pronounced as //la̰ˀ//) | a(pronounced as //ʔaˀ//) | ba(pronounced as //ɓaˀ//) | hha(pronounced as //ŋga̰ˀ//) | ghwa(pronounced as //ŋghɛ̀ˀˀ//) |
| Eastern Pwo Karen | ||||
| Numeral | Written | Pronounce | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | ၀ | ပၠဝ်ပၠေ | ပ္လေါဟ်ပ္လိဟ် ploh plih | |
| 1 | ၁ | လ်ု | လုဟ်luh | |
| 2 | ၂ | ဏီ့ | ဏီး née | |
| 3 | ၃ | သိုငၲ့ | သုဟ် thuh | |
| 4 | ၄ | လီႉ | လီးLee း lee | |
| 5 | ၅ | ယဲါ | ယေဟ် yeh | |
| 6 | ၆ | ၰူ့ | ဟု hu | |
| 7 | ၇ | နိူဲ့ | နွေ့ယ်nwey | |
| 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 |
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 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).