Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 55 (2024), 25-48

An analysis of Lae Kwekaw,
an “ancient” Karen script*
Atsuhiko Kato

Abstract
Lae Kwekaw (/lèʔ kwɛ̀kɔ̀/ or /lìʔ kwɛ̀kɔ̀/ in Sgaw Karen) is a Karen script that began to be known
around the year 2000. Some Karens believe it to be an ancient script. The main purposes of thisarticle are as follows: (1) to show the correspondence between the system of Lae Kwekaw andthe phonological system of Sgaw Karen (the Hpa-an dialect) and (2) to examine whether Lae
Kwekaw is truly an ancient script. In addition, it is suggested that Lae Kwekaw can be considered
as a variation of the Indic script.

1. Introduction
Karen uses a variety of scripts. Even if limited to just the Sgaw Karen and Pwo
Karen, who are the Karen people in the narrowest sense, there are three widely usedwriting systems: (1) the Christian Sgaw Karen script, which is the most widely known
Karen script, created by the American Baptist missionary Rev. Jonathan Wade; (2) the
Buddhist Pwo Karen script, which is a notable writing system in that it was created by
the Karen people themselves (see Kato [2021a]); and (3) the Christian Pwo Karen
script, which was also created by American Baptist missionaries (see Kato [2021a],[2022a]). Moreover, scripts used in more limited communities include: (4) the* This article is based on a presentation by Kato (2022b) at the 55th International Conferenceon Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics, held at Kyoto University. This is probably the
first study to examine Lae Kwekaw linguistically. I would like to thank William Womack,
Wolfgang Behr, Ben Mitchell, and Yuan Meng for providing me with valuable informationand suggestions after the presentation.
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Buddhist Sgaw Karen script called “Letalanyah” (see Kato [2023]); (5) the Leke
script, a Pwo Karen script generally known as the Chicken Scratch script, which isused by Leke followers worshipping Maitreya (see Stern [1968] and Kelly [2018a]);and (6) the Romanized Sgaw Karen alphabet, which is mainly used by Roman
Catholic Karens living in Thailand (see Seguinotte [2007]). For the shapes of thesescripts, see Kato (2022b).
In around 2000, another Karen script with a unique shape became known. It iscalled Lae Kwekaw. It was spelled “Lekwaikaw” by Kato (2022b); however, in thisarticle, the spelling “Lae Kwekaw” is used based on Mitchell (m.s.). This script isbelieved by some Karen people to be an ancient Karen script from thousands of years
ago. According to them, Lae Kwekaw was recovered and revealed by U Thuzana(Burmese ဦးးသုုဇန) (1947‒2018), a Sgaw Karen Buddhist monk, generally known asး ဆူ ရာာတော်�်�). U Thuzana led the
Myainggyingu Sayadaw (Burmese မြို�ု�င််ကြီး��ငူ

Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization, whose armed wing was called the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (commonly known in its abbreviation as DKBA),
when it separated from the Karen National Union in 1995. After the separation of the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization, he created a liberated area for Karen
Buddhist refugees in a village called Myainggyingu in Hlaingbwe Township, Karen
State, the Union of Myanmar. Since then, this area has developed into a kind of “holycity”. For more information on U Thuzana’s activities, see Gravers (2001). Recently,
Lae Kwekaw has achieved some degree of popularity, centered in Myainggyingu.
This article has two main purposes. The first is to show the relationship between
Lae Kwekaw and the phonology of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen. Lae Kwekaw
has two versions: one for writing Sgaw Karen (Sgaw Karen Lae Kwekaw) and one for
writing Eastern Pwo Karen (Pwo Karen Lae Kwekaw). This article deals with aversion of Sgaw Karen. This is because it is this version that I have been able tolinguistically analyze, and perhaps because this version was “recovered” first. The
second purpose is to examine whether Lae Kwekaw is a true ancient script.
Before moving on to the main issues, let us briefly discuss the name of the script,
Lae Kwekaw. Lae Kwekaw is pronounced /lèʔ kwɛ̀kɔ̀/ or /lìʔ kwɛ̀kɔ̀/ in Sgaw Karen.
It is most often pronounced /lèʔ kwɛ̀kɔ̀/ in the vicinity of Hpa-an District, which― 26 ―

contains Hpa-an (the capital of Karen State) and Myainggyingu. /lèʔ/ means writing,document, or book. This form regularly corresponds to the Eastern Pwo Karen form/lái/ and Western Pwo Karen /leiʔ/ and thus can be reliably traced back to the protolanguage stage of Sgaw and Pwo. I believe that in old times it was borrowed from the
Mon word လိိက်် <lik> (< Sanskrit/Pali lekha) meaning “written matter” (Shorto 1962:184). However, I still have no precise information on the etymology of the “Kwekaw”
part of the name. Three possibilities are presented below.1
First, Rev. Wade’s dictionary (Wade 1849: 101) gives the third definition of theitem ကွဲၢ််�� � (written in the Christian Sgaw Karen script; read as /kwɛ̀̀/ in the Hpa-an
dialect) as “3. with the word for book prefixed, a record, or history”. In the three lines
below this definition, the dictionary goes on to give the subentry လံာ််��ကွဲၢ်�်� � (/lèʔ kwɛ̀̀/ in
Hpa-an), saying that it has the same meaning as the third definition of ကွဲၢ််�� ;� that is,according to Wade, /lèʔ kwɛ̀/ means “record” or “history”. Furthermore, the word /kɔ̀/means “country”. Thus, Lae Kwekaw as a whole might mean “a record of the country”.
Second, in the same dictionary, Wade (1849: 891) lists လံာ််��ကွဲၢ်�်� � as a main entry andsays that it has the same meaning as လံာ််��ကွီၢ်�်� � (read as /lèʔ kwɔ̀̀/ in Hpa-an) of “a written
code of laws” (ibid.). If this is the case, then the name Lae Kwekaw as a whole mightmean “the written code of laws of the country”.
Third, according to Gravers (2001: 14), in the 1930s, a leader called Phu Gwe
Gow emerged among the Karen people. Phu means “grandfather”, and thus the core
part of his name is Gwe Gow. “Kwekaw” might possibly be named after him. Kwekaw
and Gwe Gow differ in Roman spelling but may be identical in Sgaw Karen.
Furthermore, Gravers (2012: 347) suggests that the word Gwe “has a symbolic
meaning with reference to a specific place (and persons)”.
These three possibilities are the only ones that exist. Further clarification would
require finding and interviewing the person who first used the appellation “LaeKwekaw”, but since this has not been possible thus far, I have included these
explanations here to serve as a reference.
1
The discussion of the etymology of Lae Kwekaw owes much to information obtained
from personal communications with William Womack. I would like to express my gratitude
to him.
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Regarding the rest of this article, in Section 2 the study method is explained.
Section 3 presents the phonological system of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen,which was discussed in Kato (2023). Section 4 describes the relationship between thesystem of Lae Kwekaw and the phonology of Sgaw Karen. Section 5 presents Sgaw
Karen sentences written in Lae Kwekaw. Section 6 argues that Lae Kwekaw cannot
be considered an ancient script from the perspective of historical linguistics, andSection 7 suggests that Lae Kwekaw can be considered a variation of the Indic script.

2. Study method
I first became aware of Lae Kwekaw around 2000, when Yuzo Uda, a journalist,
gave me a textbook of the script. Subsequently, I did not pay particular attention to it,
but a few years ago, I found that Lae Kwekaw was attaining a certain degree of
popularity in Karen State and planned to study it in 2020. However, due to Covid-19
pandemic and Myanmar’s political instability, this plan could not be implemented.
Despite these difficulties, I was able to learn the Lae Kwekaw system during 2021–
2022 while still in Japan, by referring to videos on the two YouTube channels shownin (i) and (ii).
(i) “jolerhba jungmaipo”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4N6LetXptM4PMnHWt57yqA (Registered on
Jul 30, 2012; last accessed on Nov 10, 2023)(ii) “Phaw Lar Lar channel”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZi9akDKSPUcJAS762cvhiw (Registered on
Oct 01, 2020; last accessed on Nov 10, 2023)
Fortunately, many example sentences from a Letalanyah textbook2 (Anonymous
1988) that I used in my analysis of Kato (2023) were used in the videos uploaded tochannel (i). Thus, I could easily understand the correspondence between Lae Kwekaw
2

The Buddhist Sgaw Karen script is called Letalanyah, as is mentioned in Section 1.
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and the phonology of Sgaw Karen by contrasting Letalanyah and Lae Kwekaw. The
discussion in this article is based on the knowledge I gained from this study.

3. Phonology of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen
Lae Kwekaw reflects the sounds of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen. It is closely
related to the Moulmein dialect described by Jones (1961). In this section, thephonological system of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen discussed by Kato (2023)
is briefly presented. For details on the phonetic realization of each phoneme and theco-occurrence restrictions between phonemes, see Kato (2023).3 The Hpa-an dialect
is a dialectal group spoken around Hpa-an, the capital of Karen State, Myanmar. The
dialect spoken in Hlaingbwe Township, where Myainggyingu is located, is also
considered to belong to this group.
3.1. Syllable structure
The syllable structure of the Hpa-an dialect can be represented as C1(C2)V(ʔ)/(T), where C1 is the initial consonant, C2 is the medial consonant, V is the vowel, ʔ isthe glottal stop that appears at the end of a syllable, and T is the tone that covers theentire syllable. The bracketed elements are optional. Furthermore, the -V(ʔ) part iscalled the rhyme.
3.2. Tones
As shown in Table 1, there are six tones in the Hpa-an dialect. There are also
atonic syllables, where only the rhyme /-ə/ appears. As discussed by Kato (2023),
there are two possibilities for the phonological status of the glottal stop at the end of
low-checked and mid-checked tones: It could be an intrinsic feature of the tones or asyllable-final stop. I tentatively consider this glottal stop as both an intrinsic feature of
the tones and a syllable-final stop.

3
Note that the phonetic description of Sgaw Karen given in Kato (2021b) was correctedin Kato (2023).
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Table 1: Tones in the Hpa-an dialectà[a41]
low-falling toneā[a33]
mid-level toneá[a44]high-level toneâ[a51]
high-falling toneàʔ [aʔ11~21] low-checked toneāʔ [aʔ33]
mid-checked toneəatonic3.3. Initial and medial consonants
The simple onsets consisting only of C1 are listed in Table 2. There are a total of
27 phonemes that can occur as a simple onset.

Table 2: Simple onsets in the Hpa-an dialect
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal
Voicelesspθ
tc
unaspirated stops
Voiceless aspirated ph
th
ch
stops
Voiced stopsbd
Voicelessɕ
fricatives
Voiced fricativesz
NasalsmnɲSemivowelswjLateral
l
Trill
r

Velar
k

Glottal
ʔ

kh
ɡ
x
ɣ
ŋ

h
ɦ

The phonetic values of the simple onsets are as follows: /p-/ [p], /θ-/ [t̪ ~t̪ θ~θ], /t-/[t], /c-/ [tɕ~s], /k-/ [k], /ʔ-/ [ʔ], /ph-/ [pʰ], /th-/ [tʰ], /ch-/ [tɕʰ~sʰ], /kh-/ [kʰ], /ɓ-/ [ɓ~b],/ɗ-/ [ɗ~d], /ɡ-/ [ɡ], /ɕ-/ [ɕ], /x-/ [x], /h-/ [h], /z-/ [z], /ɣ-/ [ɣ], /ɦ-/ [ɦ], /m-/ [m], /n-/ [n],/ɲ-/ [ɲ], /ŋ-/ [ŋ], /w-/ [w], /j-/ [j~ʝ], /l-/ [l], and /r-/ [r~ɹ]. The hyphen following eachphoneme indicates the initial consonant.
Next, the phonemes that can appear as C2 are /-w-/ [w], /-l-/ [l], /-r-/ [r~ɹ], /-j-/[j~ʝ], and /-ɣ-/ [ɣ~ɰ]. The hyphens on both sides of each phoneme indicate a medialconsonant. The possible combinations of C1 and C2 are presented in Table 3.
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Table 3: Possible combinations of C1 and C2 in the Hpa-an dialect
C1
p θ t k ph th kh b d c ch x m n ɲ ŋ
w + + + + + + ++ + + + + + + +C2 l ++ ++ ++r + + + + + + +
+ +
+
j +
+
+
+
ɣ +
+
+
+ +
+

j

l

r

+

+

+

3.4. Rhymes
As mentioned in 3.1, the rhyme has a structure that can be represented as “-V(ʔ)”.
Rhymes can be divided into two types: open rhymes without the syllable-final /-ʔ/ andstopped rhymes with /-ʔ/.
There are 10 open rhymes, as shown in Table 4.
Table 4: Open rhymes in the Hpa-an dialect
i
ɨ
ɯ
u
e
ə
o
ɛ
a
ɔ
These rhymes are realized as follows: /-i/ [i], /-e/ [e], /-ɛ/ [ɛ], /-ɨ/ [ɨ], /-ə/ [ə], /-a/[ä], /-ɯ/ [ɯ̞], /-u/ [u], /-o/ [o], and /-ɔ/ [ɔ̞~ɒ]. The hyphen before each symbol indicatesthat it represents the rhyme as a whole.
There are nine stopped rhymes, as shown in Table 5. These rhymes appear whena glottal stop is present at the end of a syllable. As stated in Section 3.2, a glottal stopat the end of a syllable may also be an intrinsic feature of a checked tone.
Table 5: Stopped rhymes in the Hpa-an dialect
iʔ
ɯʔ uʔ
eʔ
əʔ
oʔ
ɛʔ
aʔ
ɔʔ
These rhymes are realized as follows: /-iʔ/ [i̞ ʔ], /-eʔ/ [e̝ ʔ], /-ɛʔ/ [ɛʔ], /-əʔ/ [əʔ],― 31 ―

/-aʔ/ [äʔ], /-ɯʔ/ [ɯ̞ʔ], /-uʔ/ [u̞ʔ], /-oʔ/ [o̞ʔ], and /-ɔʔ/ [ɔʔ].

4. Lae Kwekaw and the phonological system of Sgaw Karen
This section discusses the correspondence between the system of Lae Kwekaw
and the phonological system of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen. The following
discussion demonstrates that Lae Kwekaw is a highly systematic script.
As discussed in Section 6, Lae Kwekaw can be considered a recent creation rather
than an ancient script. Lae Kwekaw’s creator(s) likely consulted the Letalanyahsystem, as is discussed by Kato (2023), in creating this script. The reason for thisassumption is that Lae Kwekaw has commonalities with Letalanyah in the following
respects: (1) There are basic letters for /b/ (C27; see the tables below) and /d/ (C23) in
Sgaw Karen, aside from the basic letters for Pali /b/ (C13) and /d/ (C24) (probably
because /b/ and /d/ in Sgaw Karen are implosives [ɓ] and [ɗ]). (2) There is a notation
for /ɯ/ (V07) among the closer back vowels, aside from those for /ə/ (V05), /ɨ/ (V04),
and /u/ (V08) (the Christian Sgaw Karen script uses the symbol for the vowel /ə/ toindicate /ɯ/). (3) The vowel /ɯ/ (V07) is indicated by combining the symbols for /ɨ/(V04) and /ɔ/ (V10). (4) The symbol for /u/ (V08) is formed by adding a line to thesymbol for /ɨ/ (V04). (5) The vowel /o/ (V09) is indicated by the combination of thesymbol for /ɨ/ (V04) and that for the Pali vowel /i/ (V12). Therefore, in the following
explanations, the Letalanyah symbol corresponding to the Lae Kwekaw symbol will
be presented, if it exists, for convenience of comparison. I believe that Lae Kwekaw
owes its systematicity to Letalanyah.
4.1. Initial consonants
Lae Kwekaw uses an abugida system in which syllables are expressed by placing
a letter representing the initial consonant in the center and adding various symbols
around it. In an abugida system, letters representing the initial consonants areimportant because they form the basis for attaching other symbols. In this article,
letters representing the initial consonants are referred to as basic letters.

― 32 ―

Table 6 lists the basic letters of Lae Kwekaw and their sound values.4 For ease of
discussion, each letter is assigned a number beginning with “C”. The table used forteaching Lae Kwekaw in Karen State arranges basic letters in the order shown in
Table 6. The order of the letters is similar to that of the Indic scripts until the third line,
after which it differs. However, the reason for this remains unclear.
Table 7 shows the basic letters of Letalanyah corresponding to each Lae Kwekaw
Table 6: Basic letters of Lae Kwekaw

4
The basic letters and symbols for Lae Kwekaw in this article were created using Paint
3D. Ben Mitchell is currently working on a proposal to encode Lae Kwekaw in the Universal
Character Set. I hope to see Lae Kwekaw fonts available in the near future.
― 33 ―

Table 7: Correspondences between the basic letters of Lae Kwekaw and Letalanyah

basic letter and Romanization in the Burmese transcription system of the Library ofCongress. The corresponding basic letters of Letalanyah are given in the following
video from the YouTube channel shown in (i) of Section 2.
	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n4Bed73Ab4&t=148s (last accessed on
Nov 10, 2023)
The basic letters that are not attached to Romanization are unique to Letalanyah.
(C20) has no equivalent Letalanyah letter.
The following are notes on the basic letters:― 34 ―

● Among the basic letters, (C03), (C08), (C09), (C13), (C14), (C20), (C24), (C25),(C28), (C33), (C34), and (C37) are, in principle, used only for words borrowed fromforeign languages, including Burmese, English, and Pali.
● (C09), (C25), and (C14) are used to denote the Pali voiced aspirated stops /jh/, /dh/,and /bh/, respectively.
● (C04) is the letter for /x-/ in Sgaw Karen but is also used to represent /gh/ in Pali.
● (C28), (C34), (C37), and (C33) are letters representing the Pali retroflexes /ṭ/, /ṭh/,/ṇ/, and /ḷ/, respectively. There appear to be no letters for the Pali retroflexes /ḍ/ and/ḍh/, but perhaps /ḍ/ is written by using (C23) for the Sgaw Karen /d-/ [ɗ~d]. It is
unclear how /ḍh/ is written.
● (C20) is used to denote [f] in English and other languages. I currently see no needto set up /f/ as a phoneme in Sgaw Karen; however, this may become necessary in the
future.
● Sgaw Karen /d-/ is usually written with (C23), but the word /dô/ meaning “big;much” is written with (C28) (see (12) in Section 5). Thus, (C28) may represent /d-/ inexceptional cases.
● Both (C15) and (C29) represent /m-/. I assume that two letters are provided for /m-/to distinguish the homonyms. Among words beginning with /m-/, /mɨ/̀ , which means“sun; day”, is written with the basic letter only, without a vowel or tone sign.
4.2. Medial consonants
The medial consonants /-w-/, /-l-/, /-r-/, /-j-/, and /-ɣ-/ are written as shown in(M1) to (M5) in Table 8. The basic letter (C11), representing the initial consonant /p-/,is used as an example. The symbols for the medial consonants are circled by dottedlines. The symbol for /-l-/ in Letalanyah is not designated in the Library of Congress
Burmese transcription but is transliterated as “pl-” here. In addition, the symbol for/-ɣ-/ should be represented by “h” in the Library of Congress system, but “pH-” isused here to avoid being identical to (C12).

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Table 8: Medial consonants

Note that the loanwords from Burmese originally written as ကျျ <ky-> or ကြ�<kr-> in Burmese are pronounced /c-/ following the Burmese pronunciation, but that
this consonant is represented without using the basic letter (C06) for /c-/, but with the
combination of (C01) for /k-/ and (M4) for /-j-/; for example, /có/ “school” (< Burmeseကျော�ာ�င်းး� /cáuɴ/) (see the last word in (2), in Section 5).

4.3. Vowels and tones
Table 9 shows how the vowels are written. A basic letter is placed inside a squaredrawn with a dotted line. The vowel notation of Lae Kwekaw is characteristic in that,like Letalanyah, it has a particular way of representing /ɯ/. The Christian Sgaw Karen
script, the most common writing system for Sgaw Karen, has no symbol for /ɯ/,which is represented by the symbol for /ə/. The bracketed symbols (V11) and (V12)
are used to represent the Pali vowels /o/ and /i/.
Table 9: Vowels― 36 ―

Table 10 shows how tones are written. In Lae Kwekaw, the glottal stop at the endof a syllable is treated as an intrinsic feature of a tone. Thus, there are six tone symbols.
Of the six tone symbols, those for plain tones, i.e., tones without a glottal stop, areplaced to the right of the basic letter (T1 to T4), and those for checked tones, i.e., tones
with a glottal stop, are placed to the left of the basic letter (T5 and T6). Atonic
syllables, in which the only vowel that can appear is /ə/, are indicated by the absenceof a tone symbol (see (ə7) in Table 15).
Table 10: Tones

Tables 11 through 20 show how the symbols for vowels and tones are combined,taking the basic letter (C01) representing /k-/ as an example. The spellings (ɨ5) and(ɨ6) in Table 14, as well as their phonemic equivalents, are bracketed because /-ɨʔ̀ / and/-ɨ̄ ʔ/ do not exist phonologically but do exist as spellings.
Table 11: The vowel /i/

Table 12: The vowel /e/― 37 ―

Table 13: The vowel /ɛ/Table 14: The vowel /ɨ/Table 15: The vowel /ə/Table 16: The vowel /a/― 38 ―

Table 17: The vowel /ɯ/Table 18: The vowel /u/Table 19: The vowel /o/Table 20: The vowel /ɔ/― 39 ―

4.4. Special letters
Lae Kwekaw has at least two special letters representing certain frequently used
words, as shown in (S1) and (S2) in Table 21. /nê/ is a topic marker, and /wī/ is aparticle meaning “after V-ing”. Letalanyah has no special spellings corresponding tothese letters; thus, the Letalanyah spellings in the table are simple, indicating thesepronunciations.
Table 21: Special letters

5. Sample words and sentences
As discussed thus far, Lae Kwekaw is a highly systematic script that accurately
represents Sgaw Karen’s phonemes. Sample sentences are shown in (1)–(14). These
were taken from the videos uploaded to the YouTube channel given in (i). They haveno contextual relationship with each other. The period in Lae Kwekaw is a small circleof the same shape as that in the Japanese writing system.
(1)
tàxítàlā
‘beauty; culture’
(2)
lɛ̄
lɯ́
có
go
to
school‘(I) went to school.’	Note: The preposition /lɯ́́/ is written as လၢၢ /lə́́/ in Christian literature, but in Lae
Kwekaw it is written with a spelling that reflects the pronunciation in the modern― 40 ―

Hpa-an dialect. The Letalanyah spelling for this word is လုံံ� /lɯ́́/.
(3)
nā,
mā
cá
nê
təɣē
2SG dolike that don’t‘You, please don’t do like that.’
	Note: The standard expression meaning “like that” is /dīʔ nê/, and is written in
Sgaw Karen Christian script as ဒံးး�န့ၣ်�်� , while in the modern Hpa-an dialect thephrase /cá nê/ is frequently used and written as such in Lae Kwekaw (and also in
Letalanyah: စား�းနေေတ််).
(4)
thí
kəlàʔ
water boil
‘The water is boiling.’
(5)
lū
médú
chase bravely‘Chase (him) bravely.’(6)
nè tàbû
lí
get benevolence PFV‘(He) received benevolence.’(7)kɔ̄ʔ nə pánêcall 2SG father that
‘Call your father.’	Note: The spelling ကိးး� in the Christian Sgaw Karen script for the verb meaning― 41 ―

“call” reflects the pronunciation /kōʔ/, while in the modern Hpa-an dialect, it ispronounced /kɔ̄̄ʔ/, and the spelling of Lae Kwekaw represents this pronunciation,
as well as that of Letalanyah ကော�ာဒ််.
(8)ɣēlə̀ʔkətə̀ʔgood perfectly‘(It) is perfectly good.’(9)kɛ́pəwɛ́ lə̀ʔlí
become ours complete PFV‘Now (it) is completely ours.’(10)kɨ̀mêʔú təɣēburn fire don’t‘Don’t start a fire.’(11)mɨ̂ phó tədûkōʔ bɨ́
maiden one group reap paddy‘A group of maidens are harvesting rice.’	Note: The spelling ကူးး� in the Christian Sgaw Karen script for the verb meaning“reap” reflects the pronunciation /kūʔ/, while the modern Hpa-an dialect
pronounces it /kōʔ/, and the spelling of Lae Kwekaw follows this pronunciation,
as well as that of Letalanyah, ကိုု�ဒ်.်

― 42 ―

(12)
kò
dô
māʔ
hot
much very‘(It) is hot very much.’(13)
bâkɯ̀ʔ pūhit
jailinside“(He) is in jail.”

(14)
hɯ́
mó
ɦɯ̄
hey mother SFP“Hey, Mother!”

6. Ancientness of Lae Kwekaw
Lae Kwekaw is said to be a script possessed by the ancestors of the Karens
thousands of years ago. This section examines this issue from the perspectives of tone
and initial consonants.
First, let us examine the tone. In his reconstruction of Proto-Karen tones,
Haudricourt (1946) argues that the three-tone system in the proto-language—that is,
the system with Tones *1, *2, and *3—evolved in daughter languages under theconditioning influence of the initial consonants, with high (H), mid (M), and low (L)series. Furthermore, Haudricourt (1975) added another tone, represented as *2´ here,
to his original reconstruction. For details on this reconstruction, see Kato (2018).
Table 22 shows how the four proto-tones reconstructed by Haudricourt evolved in
Pwo Karen and Sgaw Karen (both Hpa-an dialects). The L-series for Tone *2´ is left
blank because no reflexes for Tone *2 have been found in the L-series.

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Table 22: Proto-Karen tones and the tones of Pwo Karen and Sgaw Karen
*1
*2
*2´
*3
Pwo
Sgaw
Pwo
Sgaw
Pwo
Sgaw
Pwo
Sgaw
L
à [11]
ā [33]
ā [33]
à [41]
á [55]
àʔ [11ʔ]Mà [11]
á [44]
á [55]
â [51]
á [55]
á [44]
à [11]
āʔ [33ʔ]Hâ [51]
á [44]
á [55]
â [51]
á [55]
á [44]
à [11]
āʔ [33ʔ]Although it has not yet been determined whether Tone *2´ actually existed,
scholars agree that Tones *1, *2, and *3 did. If Lae Kwekaw were a script fromseveral thousand years ago, the notation of tones would distinguish only three (Tones*1, *2, and *3) or four (Tones *1, *2, *2´, and *3). However, Lae Kwekaw uses six
symbols to represent the Sgaw Karen tones (T1 to T6 in Table 10). If Lae Kwekaw
were a genuine ancient script, it would not have used as many as six symbols torepresent the tones. Recall that, although there are as many as five plain tones inSiamese, the Thai script, which reflects older tones, has only three symbols, including
the zero marking, to represent plain tones.
Next, let us consider the notation of initial consonants in terms of voicing. What
was revealed in Haudricourt’s (1946) argument is that the Proto-Karen initial voiced
stops *b, *d, *j, and *ɡ changed to the voiceless aspirated stops /ph-, th-, ch-, and kh-/in Pwo Karen and the voiceless unaspirated stops /p-, t-, c-, and k-/ in Sgaw Karen
when the tones split (see Kato 2018). Thus, when there is a correspondence between
a Pwo Karen voiceless aspirated stop and a Sgaw Karen voiceless unaspirated stop,then Proto-Karen had a voiced stop.
For example, let us consider the words “hot” and “inside”. The forms for “hot” are/khʊ̄/ in Pwo Karen and /kò/ in Sgaw Karen; thus, it can be assumed that thecorresponding Proto-Karen form had an initial consonant *ɡ. In fact, the corresponding
form in Geba, a Karenic language that preserves the Proto-Karen voiced stops, is /ɡō/“hot” (Kato 2008: 270). Similarly, the forms for “inside” are /phə̀ɴ/ in Pwo Karen and/pū/ in Sgaw Karen; thus, it can be assumed that the corresponding Proto-Karen form
had an initial consonant *b. In fact, the corresponding Geba form is /bū/ (Kato 2008:196). If Lae Kwekaw were an ancient script, these words would have been writtenwith letters representing the voiced stops. In reality, however, they are written withletters representing voiceless unaspirated stops in Sgaw Karen Lae Kwekaw; see (15):― 44 ―

(15)		(15a) is written with the letter (C01) representing /k-/ and (15b) with the letter (C11)representing /p-/; these words are used in examples (12) and (13) in Section 5,
respectively. If Lae Kwekaw were an ancient script, (15a) would be written with
(C03) and (15b) with (C13). The Lae Kwekaw notation of stops accurately reflects
modern Sgaw Karen’s phonetic values.
It is clear from the above discussion that when the tones and consonants are
examined, Lae Kwekaw reflects the pronunciation of a modern language rather thanan ancient one. Thus, Lae Kwekaw cannot be considered ancient. In addition, as
discussed in Section 4, Lae Kwekaw accurately reflects the pronunciation of presentday Sgaw Karens. Ancient scripts are unlikely to accurately reflect the phonologicalsystems of modern languages. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Lae Kwekaw
is a modern creation.

7. Concluding remarks
Lae Kwekaw is a highly systematic script that accurately reflects the phonologyof the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen. Therefore, one must be skeptical of the claimthat it is an ancient script. Lae Kwekaw is most likely a modern creation. However,considering the difficult political and cultural situation of the Karens in Myanmar, I
would like to express a certain understanding of the movement to create a new script
for the revitalization of their culture and the enhancement of their ethnic consciousness.
The creation of Lae Kwekaw can be characterized as one of the movements that Kelly(2018a) noted as promoting the indigenous writing systems of the ethnic minorities ofSoutheast Asia.
As mentioned in Section 1, Karen has various scripts, including the Christian
Sgaw Karen script, Buddhist Pwo Karen script, Christian Pwo Karen script, Buddhist― 45 ―

Sgaw Karen script, Leke script, and Romanized Sgaw Karen alphabet (and possibly
others). Lae Kwekaw has been added to this list. Kelly (2018b: 189) described West
Africa as “a fertile zone for the invention of new scripts”. One could say that Karen
society has the same characteristics. However, problems can arise when a culture hasa large number of writing systems. Womack (2005: 3) pointed out that “Karen scripts
have served as markers of difference―regional, linguistic, sectarian, and political―
between disparate, and sometimes antagonistic, Karen groups.” The creation of Lae
Kwekaw has the potential to help revitalize Karen culture and enhance its ethnic
consciousness, but it also has the negative potential to function as a marker ofdifference. We must keep a close eye on how Lae Kwekaw evolves in Karen society
in the future.
Finally, I will discuss Lae Kwekaw’s lineage from a grammatological perspective.
The basic letters and symbols of Lae Kwekaw correspond almost perfectly with thoseof Letalanyah, a variation of the Mon-Burmese script. Thus, it can also be used towrite Pali. Furthermore, the Burmese script can also be replaced by Lae Kwekaw.
Figure 1 shows an image of a sample of Lae Kwekaw from Kato (2021a). In thisarticle, I inferred that this was Sgaw Karen. However, after studying Lae Kwekaw, I
found that it is the Burmese sentence given in (16): This is a kind of slogan that canbe translated as “My innocent brethren, let’s wake up and start laying bricks!”. 5

Figure 1: A Burmese slogan written in Lae Kwekaw( 16)ဖြူ�ူစင််ရိုးး��သားး� သွေး�း�ချျင်းး�များ�း�တို့့� �နိုးး��ကြား�း�တက််ကြွ� အုုတ်ချ် ျပ််သဲဲပွွင့့်�

Here, the Burmese tone symbol ◌းး is written with the Lae Kwekaw tone symbol (T3)in Table 10, and the Burmese tone symbol ့�့ is replaced with (T4). Furthermore, the5
Figure 1 is a scan of one of the documents that I collected in Karen State. However,
unfortunately I cannot recall which document it was.
― 46 ―

Burmese virama ်�် is transliterated with (T1). Thus, Lae Kwekaw has an abugida
system that is compatible not only with Letalanyah but also with the Burmese script.
Furthermore, the shapes of letters and symbols in Lae Kwekaw appear to be similar totheir counterparts in various Indic scripts.6 It is highly likely that the creator(s) of Lae
Kwekaw referenced ancient Indic scripts, including the Brahmi and ancient MonBurmese scripts. Given these characteristics of Lae Kwekaw, I believe that it can beconsidered as a variation of the Indic script. In other words, Lae Kwekaw is one of themost recent developments in Indic scripts, which have continuously evolved from
Brahmi scripts over 2,000 years ago.
Abbreviations
PFV = perfective; SFP = sentence final particle; SG = singular; 2 = second person.
References
Anonymous. 1988. Buddhist Sgaw Karen Primary Reader [Sgaw Karen title: ဗုုဒ္ဒဘာဒ ာသာာ ပကညံံ
ဖိုု� လေ�လ််မယ််လိုု� အခံံတ္ထေ�ေဒ်် / Burmese title: ဗုုဒ္ဒဘာဒ ာသာာ စကော�ာကရင်် သူူငယ််တန်းး� ဖတ််စာာ].
Publisher: ဦးးစော�ာသင်းး�လှိုုင်
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Yangon). (In Sgaw Karen).
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6
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料]. Asian and African Languages and Linguistics 3: 169‒219. (In Japanese).
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