Wp/ksw/ကညီကျိာ်

ကညီကျိာ်
စှီၤ
ပှၤတဝီဖိ	ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤ, ကီၢ်ပယီၤ, ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်
ထူလံၤလၢ	ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်, ကီၢ်ပယီၤ ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်
ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်	ကညီ
ပှၤကတိၤအကျိာ်ခီၣ်ထံး အပှၤနီၢ်ဂံၢ်	(၃) ကကွဲၢ်
ကျိာ်အဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိ	စံၣ်နိ-ထၢၤဘဲၣ်ကျိာ် ကညီကျိာ်တဖၣ် စှီၤ-ဘှဲ ကညီကျိာ်
တၢ်ကွဲးအမၠိ	မၠါမၤလံာ်မိၢ်ပှၢ် ကညီလံာ်မိၢ်ပှၢ် လံာ်ရိမဲးလံာ်မိၢ်ပှၢ် Karen Braille
အဖိးသဲစးပတီၢ်
ကျိာ်အိၣ်ဒီးဖိးသဲစး လၢ	ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤ
ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်ဖိဆံးလၢတၢ်ပာ်ပနီၣ် ကျိာ် လၢ	ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ် ကီၢ်ပယီၤ
ကျိာ်အခိာ်တဖၣ်
ISO 639-2	kar
ISO 639-3	ksw – ခိာ်ပၣ်ဃုာ်တဖၣ် ကစၢ်ဒၣ်ဝဲအခိာ်: ksw – စှီၤ jkp – ပကုး jkm – မိပွါ wea – ဝဲဝီ
Linguist List
Glottolog	sout1554
ကညီကျိာ်တဖၣ်

ကညီစှီၤကျိာ် မ့တမ့ၢ် ညီနုၢ်ကိးအီၤလၢ ကညီကျိာ်န့ၣ်, အံၤမ့ၢ်ဝဲဒၣ် စံၣ်နိ-ထၢၤဘဲၣ်ကျိာ် တကျိာ်လၢဘၣ်တၢ်ကတိာ်အီၤလၢ ကီၢ်ပယီ ဒီး ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကညီကျိာ်အံၤဘၣ်တၢ်ကတိၤအီၤလၢ (၂) ကကွိၢ်ဃၣ်ဃၣ် လၢကီၢ်ပယီၤ တနီသရံၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်, အ့ယါဝၢၤဒံၤကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်, တကူၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်, ဒီး ဘၢကိကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ် န့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ် တကပၤ ပှၤကတိၤ ကညီကျိာ်အိၣ်ဝဲ (၁) ကကွဲၢ်ဃၣ်ဃၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကညီတၢ်ကွဲးလံာ်န့ၣ်ဘၣ်တၢ်သူအီၤလၢ တလၢၤ-ပယီၤလံာ်ကွဲးန့ၣ်လီၤ. မ့မ့ၢ်လၢပှၤကညီဖိလၢကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ် မုၢ်နုာ်ကလံၤစိးတဖၣ်သူဝဲဒၣ် လံာ်ရိမဲးတၢ်ကွဲးန့ၣ်လီၤ.

ကျိာ်ဖးဒ့အိၣ်ဝဲအဃိ တခီၣ်တဘျီန့ၣ် ပှၤပာ်အီၤဒ်ကျိာ်အဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. ပကုးကျိာ်ဖးဒ့ အိၣ်လၢမုၢ်ထီၣ်ကလံၤစိး, မိပွါကျိာ်ဖးဒ့ အိၣ်လၢမုၢ်နုာ်ကလံၤစိး, ဝဲဝီကျိာ်ဖၣ်ဒ့ ဒီး မိနဲပွါကျိာ်ဖးဒ့.

တၢ်စံၣ်စိၤ

ကညီကျိာ်အံၤ ပၣ်ဃုာ်လၢ စံၣ်နိ-ထၢၤဘဲၣ်ကျိာ်ဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိ (Sino-Tibetan language family) အပူၤ ဒီးမ့ၢ်ဝဲ ကညီကျိာ် တကျိာ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကညီစှီၤကျိာ်အံၤ တၢ်သူအီၤလၢ မူဒါကျိာ် (official language) လၢ ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်, ကီၢ်ပယီၤအပူၤ ဒီးသူအီၤလၢ ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢ (KNU) လၢအဝဲသ့ၣ် ဒုးတၢ်ဒီးပယီၤပဒိၣ် လၢတၢ်ပာ်ထီၣ်သးအဂီၢ် စးထီၣ်လၢ ၁၉၄၉ နံၣ် ထီၣ်အခီၣ်ထံးန့ၣ်လီၤ. လံာ်စီဆှံတၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် တၢ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အီၤလၢ ၁၈၅၃ နံၣ်လီၤ. ကညီကျိာ် လံာ်တၢ်ကွဲးလၢအဟဲထီၣ် တလါတဘျီ လၢအမ့ၢ် "ဆၣ်တူၢ်ဂီၤ" (The Morning Star) အံၤ တၢ်ထုးထီၣ်ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အီၤ အဆိကတၢၢ်တဘျီလၢ ၁၈၄၂ နံၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

စးထီၣ်လၢ နံၣ်ယၤဖှိၣ် (၁၉) အပူၤ, ခရံာ်ဖိ ပှၤဆှၢတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်တဖၣ် အတၢ်မၤန့ၣ် ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံး ဒီးအိၣ်တ့ၢ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အရ့ဒိၣ်လၢ စှီၤကညီကျိာ်အဂီၢ်, လီၤဆီဒၣ်တၢ် လၢတၢ်ကွဲးတၢ်ဖး, လံာ်ကွဲးအတၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤ (orthography) ဒီးတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့ အတကပၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.ကၠီန့သ့န် ဝ့ဒ် (Jonathan Wade), လၢအမ့ၢ် အမဲရံကး ခရံာ်ဖိဘျၢထံ ပှၤဆှၢတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်တဂၤန့ၣ်, မ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢတၢ်ပာ်ကဲအီၤလၢ အဝဲကတဲၤထီၣ်ကွဲးနီၣ်ဝဲ စှီၤကညီလံာ်ကွဲး အဆိကတၢၢ်တဘျီလၢ ၁၈၃၁–၁၈၃၂ နံၣ်အပူၤလီၤ. အဝဲစးထီၣ်သူဝဲ တလၢၤ-ပယီၤလံာ်ကွဲး(Mon-Burmese script) ဒီးဆီတလဲအီၤ ဒ်သိးအကဘၣ်လိာ်ဖိးမံ ဒီးကညီစှီၤကျိာ် အတၢ်သီၣ် (phonology) အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.အမဲရံကး ခရံာ်ဖိဘျၢထံ ပှၤဆှၢတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်တဂၤလၢအမ့ၢ် ဖြ့ၣ်စ့း မ့စဲၣ် (Francis Mason) န့ၣ်, မ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢအဆှၢဝဲ စှီၤကညီလံာ်စီဆှံ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအဆိကတၢၢ် အတၢ်မၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. စှီၤကညီလံာ်စီဆှံဒီဘ့ၣ် တၢ်မၤဝံၤအီၤလၢ ၁၈၅၃ နံၣ်အပူၤ ဒီးကဲထီၣ်ဝဲလံာ်လၢ အညီနုၢ်တၢ်ဖးအီၤအါကတၢၢ် ဒီးကဲထီၣ်ဝဲလံာ်လၢအဟဲထီၣ်အဆိကတၢၢ်တဘ့ၣ် လၢစှီၤကညီကျိာ်အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. လံာ်စီဆှံ ဒီးလံာ်တၢ်ကွဲးအဂၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ် မၤစၢၤဝဲဒ်သိး တၢ်ကွဲးတၢ်ပၠး (orthography) ဒီးတၢ်သူကတိၤဖျၢၣ်တဖၣ် ကအိၣ်ဒီး အတၢ်ပာ်ပှဲၤ (standardize) ဒီးကဲထီၣ်ဝဲ အခီၣ်ထံးလၢ တၢ်သိၣ်လိတၢ်ဖးတၢ်ကွဲးအဂီၢ်လီၤ. ခီဖျိလၢလံာ်ကွဲးအသီ ဒီးလံာ်တၢ်ကွဲးလၢအအါထီၣ်တဖၣ်အဃိ, ပှၤဆှၢတၢ်သးခုကစီၣ်တဖၣ်စးထီၣ်ပာ်ထီၣ်ဝဲ ကၠိတဖၣ် ဒီး တၢ်မၤလိလီၢ် (seminaries) တဖၣ် လၢအသိၣ်လိတၢ်ဖးတၢ်ကွဲးလၢ စှီၤကညီကျိာ်, ဃုာ်ဒီး အဲကလံးကျိာ် ဒီး ပယီၤကျိာ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. အဃိ, ပှၤကညီခရံာ်ဖိတဖၣ် အတၢ်ဖးလံာ်ကွဲးလံာ်န့ၣ် ဂုၤထီၣ်ပသီထီၣ်ဝဲ ဒီးစှီၤကညီကျိာ်န့ၣ် ကဲထီၣ်ဝဲကျိာ်လၢ အိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ပာ်ကဲ (prestige) ဒ်သိးတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့ ဒီးတၢ်ဘါအတၢ်မၤအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တကးဒံးဘၣ်, အဝဲသ့ၣ် မၤရဲၣ်မၤကျဲၤဃုာ်ဝဲ လံာ်ကြၣ်မၢ်, လံာ်ခီယ့ၤ ဒီးလံာ်သိၣ်လိတဖၣ် လၢအမ့ၢ်တၢ်ပာ်နီၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်တၢ်ကျၢၤလၢ စှီၤကညီကျိာ်အဂီၢ် လၢညါတဘျီလၢ အတအိၣ်ဒံးဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကျိာ်အတၢ်ပာ်ဖျါတဖၣ်အံၤ တၢ်ဆဲးသူအီၤတုၤဒံးခဲအံၤ လၢတၢ်ဃုသ့ၣ်ညါတၢ်ဂ့ၢ် ဒီးတၢ်သိၣ်လိလၢ ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်အတၢ်ကူၣ်ဘၣ်ကူၣ်သ့ အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. သာသနါသမံၤတဖၣ် လၢအမၤစၢၤလီၤဆီလၢ ကညီစှီၤကျိာ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ် ပၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီး ကၠီန့သ့န် ဝ့းဒ် (Jonathan Wade), ဖြ့ၣ်စ့း မ့စဲၣ် (Francis Mason), ဒီး အဲမလံး ဘဲးလၢး (Emilie Ballard) န့ၣ်လီၤ.

အကလုာ်ကလုာ်

ကညီကျိာ်အံၤ တၢ်ကတိၤအီၤလၢ ထံထၣ်စွ့ အဟီၣ်ကဝီၤ, ပကိကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်, ကညီကီၢ်ဆဲၣ်, ဒီး တကူၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ် တဖၣ်အပူၤလီၤ. ပှၤကတိၤစှီၤကညီကျိာ်ဖိတဖၣ်န့ၣ် ညီနုၢ်အိၣ်သဃဲၤဝဲဒီး ပှၤကတိၤပှၤကညီပှိၢ်ကျိာ် ဖိတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

စှီၤကျိာ်ဖးဒ့တဖၣ်

• မုၢ်ထီၣ် ကညီစှီၤကျိာ်ဖးဒ့ (ဖၣ်အၣ်)
• ကလံၤထံး ကညီစှီၤကျိာ်ဖးဒ့ (ဘျံးဒဝဲၢ်)
• ထံထၣ်စွ့ ကညီစှီၤကျိာ်ဖးဒ့ (ထံထၣ်စွ့)

ပကုးန့ၣ်ပှၤသူအီၤလၢ

• ကလံၤစိး ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်: မုၢ်ထီၣ် တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်
• ကလံၤထံး ကရ့ၣ်နံၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်

ပကုးကျိာ်ဖးဒ့တဖၣ်မ့ၢ်ဝဲ ၡွ့ကၠံၤ, မီခၠံၤ, ကၠီၤကၠံ, ဒီး ဘီကလံၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ.

• ကၠီၤကၠံ ဒီး ၡွ့ကၠံၤ န့ၣ်တၢ်သူအီၤလၢ တီအူကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် လၢ ဘၢကိကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.
• မီခၠံၤ န့ၣ်ပှၤသူအီၤလၢ ကရ့ၣ်နံၣ်ကီၢ်စဲၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ
• ဘီကလံ န့ၣ်ပှၤသူအီၤလၢ ကလံၤစိး ကညီကီၢ်စဲၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ

မိပွါ ကျိာ်အံၤ တၢ်ကတိၤအီၤလၢ (Thandaung) ကီၢ်ဆၣ်, Thandaung ကစၢၢ် အခီၣ်ထံး အိၣ်ဝဲ သဝီ ၉ ဖျၢၤ အပူၤလီၤ. တကးဒံးဘၣ်, ပှၤကတိၤ မိပွါ ကျိာ်ဖိတနီၤန့ၣ် အိၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးဝဲလၢ တီအူ ကီၢ်ဆၣ်ဟီၣ်ကဝီၤ, ပကိကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ် အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤ.

တၢ်ကတိၤကလုၢ်ဖးသီၣ်

တၢ်လၢအဖီလာ်အံၤ ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်ဝဲ ကညီစှီၤကျိာ် အတၢ်သီၣ် (Phonology) အခီၣ်ထံးအခီၣ်ဘး လၢခဲအံၤတစိၤန့ၣ်လီၤ-

လံာ်ခီၣ်ထံအဖျၢၣ်တဖၣ်

ကညီလံာ်ခီၣ်ထံးအဖျၣ်တဖၣ်

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palato- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosive	voiceless	p		t			k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ		tʰ			kʰ
	voiced	b		d
Affricate	voiceless				tʃ
	aspirated				tʃʰ
Fricative	voiceless		θ	s	ʃ		x	h
	voiced						ɣ	ɦ
Nasal		m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Approximant	central	w		ɹ		j
	lateral			l

• တၢ်သီၣ်လၢအမ့ၢ် [sʰ] (aspirated fricative) အံၤ သဝီတဖျၢၣ်ဖျၢၣ် တဒံသိးလီၤသးဘၣ်တန့ၣ်လီၤ.
• တၢ်သီၣ်လၢအမ့ၢ် /θ/ (သ) အံၤ, ပှၤကတိၤအီၤလၢ [θ] (ဒ်အဲကလံး "th") လၢကီၢ်ပယီၤ ဟီၣ်ကဝီၤအါတက့ၢ်အပူၤလီၤ. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်, လၢကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်ကလံၤစိးတကပၤဟီဒု န့ၣ်, ပှၤကတိၤအီၤလၢ [s] (ဒ်အဲကလံး "s") န့ၣ်လီၤ.

တၢ်သီၣ်မိၢ်ပှၢ်တဖၣ်

ခဲန် မဲးစဲၣ် (Ken Manson) (၂၀၀၉) န့ၣ် ပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်ဝဲ "ကညီတၢ်ကလုၢ်အသီၣ်ဒၢ" (Karen tone box) တခါ ဒ်သိးကမၤစၢၤ နၢ်ပၢၢ်စှီၤကညီကျိာ် အတၢ်ကလုၢ် အကလုာ်အါမံၤတဖၣ် ဒီးသိၣ်ဃါနီၤဖး (classify) ကညီကျိာ် အကလုာ်တဖၣ် အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

ကညီတၢ်ကလုၢ်အသီၣ်ဒၢ (မဲးစဲၣ် 2009)

	*A	*B	*B′	*C
Proto-aspirated	1 (III) Water [*tʰi] Branch [*pʰaŋ] Flower [*pʰɔ] Chicken [*sʰan] Sleep [*m̥i] Die [*tʰi]	4 (VI) Star [*sʰa] Leaf [*l̥a] Fingernail [*m̥i] Fire [*m̥e] Give [*pʰe] Bitter [*kʰa]	7 (Va) Bone [*kʰri] Child [*pʰo] Right [*tʰwe] Spicy [*hɛ] Take [*pʰi] Pus [*pʰi/mi]	10 (VIII) Sky [*m̥oʔ] Iron [*tʰaʔ] Pig [*tʰɔʔ] Skin/bark [*pʰeʔ] Shoot [v] [*kʰaʔ] Dark [*kʰeʔ/kʰuʔ]
Proto-voiceless	2 (II) Silver [*rɔn] Ginger [*ʔeŋ] Rabbit [*tɛ] Navel [*te] Spear [*pan] White [*pwa]	5 (VIa) Egg [*ti] Cheek [*pu] Liver [*sɨn] Eat [*ʔam] Left [*se] Be at, exist [*ʔɔ]	8 (V) Paddy [*pɨ] Blow/howl [*ʔu] Head [*klo] Hand [*su] Breathe [*sa] Many [*ʔa]	11 (VIIIa) Alcohol [*siʔ] Wing [*teʔ] Heart [*saʔ] Call/shout [*kaʔ] Near [*pɔʔ]
Proto-voiced	3 (I) Nest [*bwe] Tongue [*ble] Person [*bra] Name [*min] Drunk [*mun] Red [*le]	6 (IV) Sun [*mɤ] Stone [*loŋ] Snake [*ru] Arrow [*bla] Old [humans] [*bra] Hot [*go]	6 (IV) Sun [*mɤ] Stone [*loŋ] Snake [*ru] Arrow [*bla] Old [humans] [*bra] Hot [*go]	12 (VII) Monkey [*zoʔ] Eye/face [*meʔ] Brain [*nɔʔ] Intestines [*breʔ] Rib [*rɤʔ] Deep [*jɔʔ]

လံာ်ခီၣ်ထံး (တလၢၤ-ပယီၤလံာ်ကွဲး)

ကညီလံာ်ခီၣ်ထံး အံၣ် ပၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီး လံာ်မိၢ်ပှၢ် 25 ဖျၢၣ်, တၢ်သီၣ်မိၢ်ပှၢ် 9 ဖျၢၤ, တၢ်သီၣ်ကလုၢ် 5 ဖျၢၣ် ဒီး လံာ်ခၢၣ်သး 5 ဖျၢၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကညီလံာ်အံၤ တၢ်ကွဲးအီၤစးထီၣ်လၢ စ့ၣ်တကပၤ လဲၤဆူ ထွဲတကပၤ ဒီးတလိၣ်ပာ် အဆၢ (spaces) လၢကတိၤဖျၢၣ်တဖျၢၣ် ဒီးတဖျၢၣ်အဘၢၣ်စၢၤဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်, လၢတၢ်ကွဲးခဲအံၤတစိၤအပူၤန့ၣ်, ညီနုၢ်တၢ်ပာ်အဆၢ လၢတၢ်ကတိၤတဆဲး အဝဲၤလီၢ် ဒ်သိးတၢ်ဖးလံာ် ကအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ညီထီၣ်အဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

Grouped consonants

က k (k)	ခ kh (kʰ)	ဂ gh (ɣ)	ဃ x (x)	င ng (ŋ)
စ s (s)	ဆ hs (sʰ)		ၡ sh (ʃ)	ည ny (ɲ)
တ t (t)	ထ hṭ (tʰ)	ဒ d (d)		န n (n)
ပ p (p)	ဖ hp (pʰ)	ဘ b (b)		မ m (m)

Miscellaneous consonants

ယ y (ʝ)	ရ r (r)	လ l (l)	ဝ w (w)	သ th (θ)
ဟ h (h)	အ vowel holder (ʔ)	ဧ ahh (ɦ)

• က has a sound intermediate between k and g; as in g for good
• ခ is the aspirate of က. It is pronounced like kh as heard in the word camp.
• ဂ has no analogue in English or German. See: voiced velar fricative
• ဃ is pronounced like ch in the German bach, or the Scottish loch.
• င is pronounced like ng as heard in sing
• စ has a sound intermediate between s and z.
• ဆ is the aspirate of စ. It has the sound of ssh, as heard in the phrase hiss him.
• ၡ is pronounced like sh as heard in shell
• ည is pronounced like ny as heard in canyon
• တ has a sound intermediate between t and d; say t without air coming out
• ထ is the aspirate of တ. It is pronounced like ht as heard in the word hot
• ဒ is pronounced like d as heard in day
• န is pronounced like n as heard in net
• ပ has a sound intermediate between b and p; say p without air coming out
• ဖ is pronounced like p as heard in pool
• ဘ is pronounced like b in ball
• မ is pronounced like m as heard in mall
• ယ is pronounced like y as heard in backyard
• ရ is pronounced like r as heard in room
• လ is pronounced like l as heard in school
• ဝ is pronounced like w as heard in wonderful
• သ is pronounced like th as heard in thin
• ဟ is pronounced like h as heard in house
• အ as a consonant, has no sound of its own; it is a mere stem to which vowel signs are attached. Vowel carrier
• ဧ is pronounced as a ɦ sound. See: breathy-voiced glottal approximant

Vowels

Vowels can never stand alone and if a word starts with a vowel syllable, use the vowel carrier "အ" which is silent in order to write words that start with vowel.

Vowels

ါ ah (a)	ံ ee (i)	ၢ uh (ə)	ု u (ɯ)	ူ oo (u)	့ ae or ay (e)	ဲ eh (ɛ)	ိ oh (o)	ီ aw (ɔ)

• အ – a in quota
• အါ – a in bad
• အံ – i in mean
• အၢ – German ö in Göthe
• အု – German ü in Glück and Korean Hangul character "ㅡ"
• အူ – u in rule, oo in moon
• အ့ – a in rate
• အဲ – e in met
• အိ – o in note
• အီ – aw in raw

Tones

In S'gaw Karen, every syllable consists of a vowel, either alone, or preceded by a single or double consonant. A syllable always ends in a vowel. Every syllable may be pronounced in six different tones, the meaning varying according to the tone in which it is pronounced.

The number of tones and their pronunciation varies depending on the dialect. Below are the pronunciations of the tones in S'gaw Karen according to Gilmore (1898).

Tones	Description
ၢ် (အၢသံ)	is pronounced with a heavy falling inflection
ာ် (အးသံ)	is pronounced abruptly, at a low pitch
း (ဖျၢၣ်ဆံး)	is pronounced abruptly at an ordinary pitch
ၣ် (ဟးသံ)	is pronounced with a falling circumflex inflection
ၤ (က့ၣ်ဖိ)	is pronounced with a prolonged even tone

• Where no tone is marked, the syllable is pronounced with a rising inflection.

Double consonants

When one consonant follows another with no vowel sound intervening, the second consonant is represented by a symbol, which is joined to the character representing the first consonant.

Medials	S'gaw Karen
ှ hg (ɣ)	ဂ
ၠ y (j)	ယ
ြ r (r~ɹ)	ရ
ျ l (l)	လ
ွ w (w)	ဝ

The examples of writing the Karen alphabet are:

• ခ + ံ → ခံ, pronounced /kʰi/
• လ + ံ + း → လံး, pronounced /li/
• က + ၠ +ိ → ကၠိ, pronounced /kʝo/
• က + ျ +ိ + ၣ် → ကျိၣ်, pronounced /klo/

Alphabet (Latin script)

The Karen Latin alphabet has 24 consonants, 9 vowels and 5 tones. The tones are written with alphabetic letters.Template:Wp/ksw/Citation needed

Consonants

Letter	K k	Hk hk	G g	Q q	Ng ng	C c	Hs hs	Ny ny	T t	Ht ht	D d	N n
IPA	k	kʰ	ɣ	x	ŋ	tʃ	s, sʰ	ɲ	t	tʰ	d	n

Letter	P p	Hp hp	B b	M m	Y y	R r	L l	W w	S s	H h	Ee
IPA	p	pʰ	b	m	j	ɹ	l	w	s	h, ɦ	ɛ	a

• K matches with the English word guard
• Hk matches with the English word car
• G does not have a sound similar to the European languages but matches with the other Karen alphabet of ဂTemplate:Wp/ksw/Clarify
• Q matches with the German word bach
• Ng matches with the English word young
• C matches with the English ch
• Hs has the same sound as S
• Ny matches with the Spanish letter ñ
• T have similar sound with English d but say it without air coming out
• Ht matches with the English word tool
• D have the same sound as English d
• N matches with English N
• P have similar sound to English p but say it without air coming out
• Hp matches with English p
• B matches with English b
• M matches with English m
• Y matches with English y
• R matches with English r
• L matches with English l
• W matches with English w
• S matches with English s; same sound as Hs
• H matches with English h
• EH has no analogue in the European languages
• AH has no analogue in the European languages

Vowels

Vowels	A a	E e	I i	O o	U u	AI ai	EI ei	AU au	OO oo
IPA	a	ə	i	o	ɨ/ɯ	ɛ	e	ɔ	u

• A matches with the Italian a
• E matches with the English word rust; uh
• I matches with the Italian i
• O matches with the Spanish o
• U matches with the Korean romanization eu
• AI matches with the English word sell
• EI matches with the name Jay
• AU matches with the English word fault
• OO matches with the English word cool

Tones

Tones	V v	J j	X x	F f	Z z

• av or ă – high mid tone
• aj or à – middle of the sound
• ax or â – low tone; low voice in a short time
• af or ä – high-pitched tone
• az or ā – even tone

Grammar

In terms of linguistic typology, S'gaw Karen is an isolating language with scarce bound morphology and where most syllables can occur as independent words. The word order is subject–verb–object, which differs from other Tibeto-Burman languages, most of which are verb final.

Nouns and noun phrases

S'gaw Karen nouns are intrinsically neutral as to number, gender, and definiteness. Plural reference is achieved by using the plural marker တဖၣ် /təpʰà/.

Like many East and Southeast Asian languages, S'gaw Karen uses classifiers to count objects expressed by count nouns, and measure words to quantify substances expressed by mass nouns.

S'gaw Karen has two demonstratives, အံၤ /ʔi/ 'this' and န့ၣ် /nè/ 'that', which follow the noun or the classifier phrase, if present.

Verbs and verb phrases

S'gaw Karen distinguishes between intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive verbs. Transitive and ditransitive verbs require one and two objects, respectively, while intransitive verbs do not take objects. As an isolating language, S'gaw Karen lacks case inflection in nouns. The function of a noun is determined by its position in the clause; generally, subjects precede the verb while objects follow it.

S'gaw Karen verbs do not inflect for tense or aspect; instead, these grammatical categories are expressed using separate words.

Perfect aspect is expressed by the particle လံ /lí/, which indicates a change in the situation.

Prospective aspect is indicated by က /kə-/, which precedes the verb. Sentences with က are often translated using the future tense in English.

To negate a verb, the verb prefix တ /tə-/ and the final particle ဘၣ် /bà/ are used.

S'gaw Karen makes extensive use of verb serialization to express various grammatical meanings, such as causativity and benefaction.

Causative events, where a subject causes an object to perform an action or be in a state, are expressed using one of the verbs မၤ /mā/ 'make, cause' or ဒုး /dɨ/ 'let, have (someone do something)' before the main verb. Which verb to use depends on whether or not the causer has direct and full control over the action; if not, and the causee has some control, ဒုး is used (indirect causation), otherwise မၤ is used (direct causation).

Benefaction refers to the performance of actions for someone's sake. In S'gaw Karen, benefactive clauses contain the verb န့ၢ် /ne/ 'get', which follows the main verb or verb compound.

Pronouns

S'gaw Karen personal pronouns are distinguished according to person and number, except for the third person, which sometimes has the same form for the singular and the plural. Additionally, all pronouns are gender-neutral; for example, the third-person pronoun အ /ʔə-/ has the meanings 'he, his', 'she, her', 'it, its', 'they, their'. Below is a table showing the subject/possessive forms (ယ 'I; my', etcetera) and object forms (ယၤ 'me', etcetera) of the pronouns.

S'gaw Karen personal pronouns

Person	Singular		Plural
	Subject/ possessive	Topic/object	Subject/ possessive	Topic/object
First person	ယ (jə-)	ယၤ (jā)	ပ (pə-)	ပှၤ (pɣā)
Second person	န (nə-)	နၤ (nā)	သု (θɨ́)	သု (θɨ́)
Third person	အ* (ʔə-)	အီၤ* (ʔɔ̄)	အ** (ʔə-)	အီၤ** (ʔɔ̄)

* The form အဝဲ /ʔəwɛ́/ is also used.

** The form အဝဲသ့ၣ် /ʔəwɛ́θè/ is also used.

Prepositions

S'gaw Karen uses prepositions to indicate things such as the location, source, goal, or instrument of an action or situation. The most common S'gaw Karen prepositions are လၢ /lə/ 'at, to, from', ဖဲ /pʰɛ́/ 'at', ဆူ /sʰú/ 'to', ဒ် /di/ 'like, as', and ဒီး /dɔ/ 'with'.

When the source or goal of an action is a person, the locational word အိၣ် /ʔò/ is used.

External links

• S'gaw Karen Grammar Template:Wp/ksw/PD-notice
• S'gaw Karen Dictionary
• S'gaw Karen Bible Archived 2020-04-29 at the [[|wp/ksw/Wayback Machine]][[|Category:wp/ksw/Webarchive template wayback links]]
• S'gaw Karen Picture Bible
• SEAlang Library S'gaw Karen Dictionary
• Drum Publication Group
• Free Anglo-Karen Dictionary
• Drum Publication Group—Online S'gaw Karen language materials. Includes an online English – S'gaw Karen Dictionary.
• Karen Teacher Working Group—Several Karen fonts available for download.