Eastern Pwo language

• 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 • Post-alveolar affricates //, are realized as fricatives [], among some formal dialects. • // when pronounced slowly is phonetically realized as a dental affricate []. • Voiced plosives // are pronounced as implosives [] only in the Pa'an dialect. • // does not exist in the Tavoy dialect. • // may tend to be slightly fricativized [] when preceding front vowels. • // may also be realized as a tap []. Vowels • // does not occur after a // sound. • // are merged with // in the Tavoy dialect. Tones Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo: ==Dialects==

• Pa’an (Inland Eastern Pwo Karen, Moulmein) • Kawkareik (Eastern Border Pwo Karen) • Tavoy (Southern Pwo Karen) == Alphabet ==

The alphabet used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is in Mon-Burmese script. Letters The Eastern Pwo alphabet contains 36 letters, including 3 unique to the language (in gold), and one shared with Mon. Numerals The Eastern Pwo Karen numerals were encoded in the Myanmar Extended C Unicode block in Unicode v16.0 in 2024. • 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, loud/thein (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋ). • Numbers after the hundred-thousands (millions and above) are prefixed with thay (သိင်ႋ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would be loud/thein luh chi (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would be loud/thay ne chi (လုဂ်/သိင့်ၮီ့ဆီ့), hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would be loud/thay luh pong (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဖင်ႋ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would be loud/thay luh lah (လုဂ်/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). == References ==