The Pwo Karen language is one of the main groups of the
Karen languages
The Karen () or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some 4.5 million Karen people. They are of unclear affiliation within the Sino-Tibetan languages. The Karen languages are written using the Karen script. The three main branches a ...
, alongside the
S'gaw Karen language
S'gaw Karen or S'gaw K'nyaw, commonly known simply as Karen, is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the S'gaw Karen people of Myanmar and Thailand. A Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, S'gaw Karen is spoken by over 2 million ...
and
Pa'O. The Pwo Karen language contains four different dialects, which are at best marginally mutually intelligible:
*
Eastern Pwo (code: kjp)
*
Western Pwo (code: pwo)
*
Northern Pwo (code: pww)
*
Phrae Pwo
Phrae Pwo, or Northeastern Pwo, is a Karen language spoken in Phrae, Lampang, and Chiang Rai provinces of Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country i ...
(code: kjt)
The people who speak the language are referred to by many names, notably "Pwo Karen" or simply "Karen". The people call themselves Ploan Sho. The Pwo Karen people have lived in the eastern part of
Burma
Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and ha ...
for centuries, and in the western and northern parts of
Thailand
Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
for at least seven or eight centuries. The population of “Pwo karen” is 1,525,300 in Myanmar.
The
endonym
An endonym (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...
is ''Phlou'' or ''Ka Phlou'' , meaning "human beings".
References
*Dawkins, Erin and Audra Phillips. 2009
''A sociolinguistic survey of Pwo Karen in Northern Thailand''. Chiang Mai: Payap University.
*Phillips, Audra. 2009
''Lexical Similarity in Pwo Karen'' In PYU Working Papers in Linguistics 5, Audra Phillips (ed.). Chiang Mai, Thailand: Payap University Linguistics Department.
*Kato, Atsuhiko. 2009
''A basic vocabulary of Htoklibang Pwo Karen with Hpa-an, Kyonbyaw, and Proto-Pwo Karen forms'' Asian and African Languages and Linguistics 4:169-218.
Karenic languages
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