55th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages
and Linguistics (ICSTLL-55), Kyoto University
September 15th - 18th, 2022

Lekwaikaw: A new “ancient” writing
system of Karen
Atsuhiko KATO
Keio University

Lekwaikaw (/lèʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/ or /lìʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/ in Sgaw Karen)
is a script of Karen that began to be known around theyear 2000. It is believed by some Karens to be theancient script of the Karen people. The purpose of thispresentation is the following two points.
(1) To show the correspondence between the system of
Lekwaikaw and the phonological system of Sgaw
Karen (the Hpa-an dialect).
(2) To examine whether Lekwaikaw is truly an ancientscript.

2

Three most commonly used Karen scripts

3

Buddhist Pwo Karen Script (created by Karen Buddhist monks probably during the period between
the late 18c and the first half of the 19c.)
Generally known as Eastern Pwo Karen Script (see Kato 2021a)
4Christian Pwo Karen Script (created by American Baptist missionaries in 1840s)
Generally known as Western Pwo Karen Script (see Kato 2021a, 2022)5

Christian Sgaw Karen Script (created by an American Baptist missionary
Jonathan Wade in 1830s)
Generally known as Sgaw Karen Script6

Other Karen scripts used within limited
communities

7

Romanized Sgaw Karen Alphabet (created by a Protestant missionary around
1930, and developed by a French Roman Catholic missionary Joseph
Seguinotte, around 1950; see Seguinotte [2007])
It is mainly used by the Roman Catholic Karens living in Thailand.
8

Letalanyah: Buddhist Sgaw Karen Script (created by a Sgaw Karen monk probably around 1960)
It is used by Buddhist Sgaw Karens in Karen State, Myanmar. It will be often referred to in thispresentation because this script seems to have been consulted in the creation of Lekwaikaw. This
writing system will be discussed in Kato (forthcoming) “Letalanyah: A Buddhist writing system of
Sgaw Karen.” Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 54.
9The Leke script used by followers of the Leke religion, which worships Maitreya. It is one of the Eastern Pwo
Karen writing systems (cf. Stern 1968; Kato 2021a, 2022). It was created in the 1840s (Kelly 2018).

The Leke altar (left) and a
Leke priest (right). (Photos
taken by Kato in 1994)

10

Thus, Karen has a wide variety of scripts.
Womack (2005: 3) points out:
“Karen scripts have served as markers ofdifference―regional, linguistic, sectarian, andpolitical―between disparate, and sometimes
antagonistic, Karen groups.”

11

There are several scripts in the Karenic
languages that are believed to haveexisted in ancient times.

12

Karen plate found around 1870 in present-day Kayah State, Myanmar.
Cited from Kelly (2018).
13

The basic letter table of an “ancient” script of Sgaw
Karen. I happened to get this copy around the year
2000. However, no details are available. The red circles
indicate the basic letters of this script. Their phonetic
values and letter names are indicated above and below
each letter in Christian Sgaw Karen Script.

14

Lekwaikaw (Lae Kae Kaw, Lae Kwe Kaw, Lae Kwekor )Lekwaikaw (/lèʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/ or /lìʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/ in Sgaw Karen)
I became aware of the existence of this letter through this introductory
textbook given to me by Mr. Yuzo Uda, a Journalist, around 2000.
15

After realizing the existence of this script, I have asked some Karen intellectuals about it. And I got the following
information from them: (1) It is a script which was once used by the Karen people in the past; (2) It has recently beenused by the disciples of the Buddhist monk Myainggyingu Sayadaw (�မိုင်�ကီးငူဆရာေတာ် in Burmese; official name, U
Thuzana ဦးသုဇန) (1947‒2018); and (3) This script can be used to write both Sgaw Karen and Pwo Karen.
่ - Kwekor Karen script Story”, uploaded by the YouTube
According to the YouTube Video titled “ประวัตอิ กั ษรกะเหรียง
Channel “jolerhba jungmaipo”, Lekwaikaw was the writing system that was once used by Karen people prior to
2,300 BC, and it was recovered and revealed by Myainggyingu Sayadaw �မိုင်�ကီးငူဆရာေတာ်. (URL of the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pjJq1txXo)
The name of this script is spelled variously in Latin script as Lae Kae Kaw, Lae Kwe Kaw, Lae Kwekor, etc., but inthis presentation it is spelled Lekwaikaw. In Sgaw Karen it is pronounced /lèʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/ or /lìʔkwɛ̀kɔ̀/, which means“ancient primitive literature”.

16

Method
I learned Lekwaikaw by watching videos from the following two channels:(1) “jolerhba jungmaipo”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4N6LetXptM4PMnHWt57yqA (Registered on Jul 30, 2012)(2) “Phaw Lar Lar channel”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZi9akDKSPUcJAS762cvhiw (Registered on Oct 01, 2020)
In the videos uploaded by the YouTube channel of (1), the example sentences from a textbook (Anonymous 1988; see
Slide 17) of Letalanyah, i.e., Buddhist Sgaw Karen Script, which I also own, are written in Lekwaikaw, so I was able
to easily grasp the relationship between the writing system and the pronunciation of Sgaw Karen.
Not only Sgaw Karen but also Pwo Karen can be written using Lekwaikaw. Since Lekwaikaw seems to have been
first developed for writing Sgaw Karen, this presentation will discuss how to write Sgaw Karen.
Lekwaikaw, used to write Sgaw Karen, reflects the phonological system of the Hpa-an dialect. The Hpa-an dialect is adialect spoken in the area centered on Hpa-an (see Slide 18), the capital of Karen State, and including Hlaingbwe andKawkareik.
17

A text of Letalanyah (ေလလ်တလဒ်ညသ်)Burmese title: ဗုဒဘ� ာသာစေကာကရင် သူငယ်တန်းဖတ်စာ
Sgaw Karen title: ဗုဒဘ� ာသာပကညံဖိုေလလ်မယ်လို
အခံေတ�ဒ်

[Bhuddhist Sgaw Karen Primary Reader].
Publisher: ဦးေစာသင်းလ�ငိ ် (သထံ�ု မို�), Printing:ေဒါ် စိန�် � ဲွ (တာေမွ ၊ ရင်ကနု )် , 1988.

18

Locations of Hpa-an and Myainggyingu

Myainggyingu

19

Myainggyingu Sayadaw �မိုင်�ကီးငူဆရာေတာ် (U Thuzana ဦးသုဇန), who is believed tohave recovered and revealed Lekwaikaw.
Scanned from a video uploaded by the YouTube channel “Kloh Htoo Baw Channel”
URL of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmBQRfKQdRI
20

Inscriptions have been made using Lekwaikaw:

A Sgaw Karen inscription written in Lekwaikaw (in Myainggyingu Special Region, Karen State, Myanmar)
Scanned from a video uploaded by the Facebook channel “Morning Star”
URL of the video: https://www.facebook.com/100816694625419/videos/2593185394279634

21

Lekwaikaw is also used in song videos:

Lekwaikaw
Letalanyah
Scanned from a video uploaded by the YouTube channel ‘Karen Music Media’Video title: Karen Music Media 2015 Saw Sa Moo Ya Ei May Ka Yaw -Official MVGSC
URL of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLMosbnHnxg

22

I learned Lekwaikaw by watching these videos:

Scanned from a video uploaded by the YouTube channel ‘jolerhba jungmaipo’
Video title: เรียนรูภ้ าษากะเหรี่ยง 5 (บทเรียนตัวอย่าง) -Sgaw Karen Kwekor literatures
URL of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTIW-HxdIdg&t=31s
23

I learned Lekwaikaw by watching these videos:

Scanned from a video uploaded by the YouTube channel ‘Phaw Lar Lar channel’
Video title: ေလကွယေ် ကာ် ကာခိကေန
ု့ငသီးအထိ(၅) ေ�ကာင်း
URL of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lwFeKH3QK824

Phonemic system of the Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen• To discuss a writing system, it is necessary to consider the phonemic system of
the language it represents. First, the syllable structure of the Hpa-an dialect can be
represented as follows:

C1(C2)V(ʔ)/(T)• ‘C’ stands for a consonant, ‘V’ for a vowel, and ‘T’ for a tone. C1 is an
initial consonant and C2 is a medial consonant.
• The syllable-final consonant /-ʔ/ can also be seen as an inherent feature ofchecked tones. In this study, /-ʔ/ is considered to be a syllable-final
consonant as well as an inherent feature of checked tones.

25

Table 1: Tones in the Hpa-an dialect
Kato (forthcoming)

Kato (2021b)

à

[41]

low-falling tone

à

[11]

low-level tone

ā

[33]

mid-level tone

ā

[33]

mid-level tone

á

[44]

high-level tone

á

[55]

high-level tone

â

[51]

high-falling tone

â

[51]

falling toneàʔ [11~21] low-checked toneàʔ [11]

low-checked toneāʔ [33]

mid-checked toneáʔ [44]high-checked toneəatonicə

atonic• The description of Sgaw Karen tones given in Kato (2021b) unintentionally
mixed features of the Delta dialect. It needs to be revised as in the left table
Kato, Atsuhiko (forthcoming) “Letalanyah: A Buddhist writing system of Pwo(Kato, forthcoming).
Karen.” Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 54.

• The only vowel that can appear in atonic syllables is /ə/.
26

Table 2: Initial consonants in the Hpa-an dialect proposedby Kato (forthcoming)
Bilabial Dental Alveolar Palatal
Voicelessunaspirated
stops/affricates
Voicelessaspirated
stops/affricates
Voiced stops

p

ʔ

c

k

ph

th

ch

kh

b

d

m

Semivowelsw

LateralTrill

Glottalt

Voicelessfricatives
Voicedfricatives
Nasals

θ

Velar

ɡ
ɕ

z
n

ɲ
j

l
r

x

h

ɣ

ɦ

ŋ

• /ɡ/ and /z/ appear only in loanwords from
Burmese and Pali. /ŋ/ usually appears in Burmese
and Pali loanwords, but it also appears in a few
indigenous words.
• /b/ and /d/ are implosives: [ɓ] and [ɗ]. /ɡ/ is anegressive [ɡ]. /b/ and /d/ are often pronouncedwith egressive [b] and [d] in Burmese and Paliloanwords.
• Kato (2021b) set up /s, sh/ separately from /c,ch/. However, [s] and [sʰ] in the Hpa-an dialect
are considered free variants of /c/ [ʨ] and /ch/[ʨʰ], respectively.
• /θ/ is [t̪ ~ t̪θ ~ θ]. /r/ is [r ~ ɹ].

27

Table 3: Possible combinations of C1 and C2 in the Hpa-an dialect(Kato, forthcoming)
C1

C2

p

θ

t

k ph

th

kh b

d

c ch x

m

n

ɲ

ŋ

j

l

r

w +

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

l

+

r

+

j

+

+

+

ɣ +

+

+

+

Examples:

+

+
+

+

+

+

+

+
+

+

+
+

+

+

+

/thwî/‘dog’/plà/‘forgive’/krə̄ʔ/ [krə̄ʔ~kɹə̄ʔ] ‘ought, should’/phjá/‘shop, market’/pɣā/ [pɣā~pɰā] ‘person’28

Table 4: Open rhymes in the Hpa-an dialect proposed by Kato (forthcoming)• These rhymes are realized as follows: /-i/ [i],/-e/ [e], /-ɛ/ [ɛ], /-ɨ/ [ɨ], /-ə/ [ə], /-a/ [ä], /-ɯ/ [(ə)ɯ̞],/-u/ [u], /-o/ [o], and /-ɔ/ [ɔ̞].
i

ɨ

ɯ

u

e

ə

o

ɛ

a

ɔ

• The vowel /ɯ/ in Kato (2021b) has beenchanged to /ɨ/. The reasons are as follows: (1) As
Sarvestani (2018: 65) correctly pointed out, thisvowel is phonetically [ɨ]; and (2) A separate
vowel phoneme /ɯ/ needs to be set up.
• The phoneme /ɯ/ as opposed to /ɨ/ or /ə/ has neverbeen proposed in previous studies. However, /ɯ/ is
set up here for the following reasons: (1) Many native
speakers recognize [ɯ] as a different sound from [ɨ]or [ə]; and (2) These are distinguished in Letalanyah
and Lekwaikaw. Examples of /ɯ/ are: /lɯ́/ ‘at; from;to’ (a preposition; emphatic variation of /lə́/), /θɯ̂/‘surely’ (a sentence-final particle), /ɦɯ́/ ‘you know?’(a sentence-final particle), and /hɯ́/ ‘hey!’ (aninterjection).
29

Table 5: Stopped rhymes in the Hpa-an dialect proposed by Kato (forthcoming)

iʔ

ɯʔ

uʔ

eʔ

əʔ

oʔ

ɛʔ

aʔ

ɔʔ

• These rhymes are realized as follows: /-iʔ/ [i̞ʔ],/-eʔ/ [e̝ʔ], /-ʔɛ/ [ɛʔ], /-əʔ/ [əʔ], /-aʔ/ [äʔ],/-ɯʔ/ [ɯ̞ʔ], /-uʔ/ [u̞ʔ], /-oʔ/ [o̞ʔ], and /-ɔʔ/ [ɔʔ].
• Unlike in the open syllables, there is no opposition
between /ɨ/ and /ɯ/. There is only the rhyme /-ɯʔ/.
(Kato’s [2021b] transcription of the rhyme /-ɯʔ/ has
not been changed to /-ɨʔ/ since it is pronounced [ɯʔ],not [ɨʔ].)30

How does Lekwaikaw correspond to the phonemic system?
• Although Lekwaikaw looks very odd, it has an abugida system similar to thesurrounding indic writing systems.
• Lekwaikaw has 38 basic letters. These basic letters represent the initial consonants.
These letters correspond to the basic letters of Letalanyah, except one.
• Lekwaikaw has nine vowel symbols.
• Lekwaikaw has six tone symbols.

31

The table of basic letters(from the textbook given
to me by Mr. Yuzo Uda)

32

A version that I
reworked oncomputer

33

This table shows the correspondence between the basic letters and initial consonants.
Bracketed in parentheses are the corresponding Letalanyah spellings.

/k-/
(က)

/kh-/
(ခ)

/ɡ-/
(ဂ)

/c-/
(စ)

/ch-/
(ဆ)

/p-/
(ပ)

/x-/

)

/ŋ-/
(င)

/z-/
(ဇ)

/z-/
(ဈ)

/ɲ-/
(ည)

/ph-/
(ဖ)

/b-/
(ဗ)

/b-/
(ဘ)

/m-/
(မ)

/j-/
(ယ)

/ɕ-/
(�ှ)

/r-/
(ရ)

/w-/
(ဝ)

[f-]

/n-/
(န)

/th-/
(ထ)

/d-/
( )

/d-/
(ဒ)

/d-/
(ဓ)

/θ-/
(သ)

/b-/
( )

/t-/~/d-/(ဋ / )

/m-/
(မ)

/l-/
(လ)

/h-/
(ဟ)

/ɣ-/
( )

/l-/
(ဠ)

/th-/
(ဌ)

/ɦ-/
( )

/ʔ-/
(အ)

/n-/
(ဏ)

/t-/
(တ)

(

34

Notes on the basic letters• Circled letters are only used for loanwords
from Burmese, Pali, or English.
•/m-/ is only used for the morpheme /m�/̀ ‘day’.

• , read as /t-/ or /d-/, is used for the retroflex
stop ṭ for Pali words, or the frequently appearing
Sgaw Karen word /dô/ ‘big; very’.
• Pali words or borrowings from Pali are written using
letters corresponding to those of Letalanyah, whose
writing method of Pali is the same as the Burmese
transcribing system of Pali. However:- There found no equivalent of Pali ဃ gh.
Maybe is used for Pali ဃ; and,- There found no equivalents of Pali ဍ ḍ and ဎ ḍh.
It is unknown how these Pali sounds are written.

35

(Some of the vowels are represented
by combinations of these symbols, asin (7), (9), and (11).)

Vowel symbols‒There are nine symbols:
(1)

/e/

/i/
(7)

(8)

/ɯ/

/ɛ/
(9)

/u/

/ɨ/

/ə/

/a/

)( )

(

(10)

/o/

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

(11)

/ɔ/

(12)

/ɔ/

/i/

• (11) and (12) are bracketed because they are used to write Pali words. (11) is used for the Pali o, and (12)for the Pali short i.
36

Tone symbols‒There are six symbols.

(1)

v̀

v̄

v́

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

v̂

v̀ʔ

v̄ʔ

• Atonic syllables are indicated by the absence of a tone symbol.

37

Let us take the basic letter representing the initial consonant /k-/, i.e., , as an
example and see how all the rhymes are written. Bracketed in parentheses are thecorresponding Letalanyah spellings.
The vowel /i/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kì/

/kī/

/kí/

/kî/

/kìʔ/

/kīʔ/

(ကီသ)်(ကီယ)်(ကီး)(ကီတ)်(ကီလ)်(ကီဒ)်

38

The vowel /e/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kè/

/kē/

/ké/

/kê/

/kèʔ/

/kēʔ/

(ေကသ်)(ေကယ်)(ေကး)(ေကတ်)(ေကလ်)(ေကဒ်)

39

The vowel /ɛ/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kɛ̀/

/kɛ̄/

/kɛ́/

/kɛ̂/

/kɛ̀ʔ//kɛ̄ʔ/(ကဲသ)်(ကဲယ)်(ကဲ)(ကဲတ)်(ကဲလ)်(ကဲဒ)်

40

The vowel /ɨ/
(1)

(6)

( )( )
(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/k�/̀

/kɨ̄/

/k�/́

/kɨ̂/

(ကုသ)်(ကုယ)်(ကုး)(ကုတ)်

(/k�ʔ̀ /)(/kɨ̄ʔ/)(ကုလ)်(ကုဒ)်

• (5) and (6) do not exist phonologically, but do exist as spellings.

41

The vowel /ə/
(1)

(7)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kə̀/

/kə̄/

/kə́/

/kə̂/

/kə̀ʔ//kə̄ʔ//kə/(ကးသ်)(ကးယ်)(ကး)(ကးတ်)(ကးလ်)(ကုးဒ်)(က)• (7) is an atonic syllable. The vowel /ə/ is the only vowel that appears in an atonic
syllable. Atonic syllables are indicated by the absence of a tone symbol.
42

The vowel /a/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kà/

/kā/

/ká/

/kâ/

/kàʔ/

/kāʔ/

(ကသ်)

(ကယ်)

(ကား)

(ကတ်)

(ကလ်)

(ကဒ်)

43

The vowel /ɯ/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kɯ̀/

/kɯ̄/

/kɯ́/

/kɯ̂/

/kɯ̀ʔ/

(ကံသ
ု )်

(ကံယ
ု )်

(ကံ)ု

(ကံတ
ု )်

(ကံလ
ု )်

/kɯ̄ʔ/
(ကံဒ
ု )်

44

The vowel /u/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kù/

/kū/

/kú/

/kû/

/kùʔ/

/kūʔ/

(ကူသ)်(ကူယ)်(ကူ)(ကူတ)်(ကူလ)်(ကူဒ)်

45

The vowel /o/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kò/

/kō/

/kó/

/kô/

/kòʔ/

/kōʔ/

(ကိသ
ု )်

(ကိယ
ု )်

(ကိ)ု

(ကိတ
ု )်

(ကိလ
ု )်

(ကိဒ
ု )်

46

The vowel /ɔ/
(1)

(6)

(5)

(4)

(3)

(2)

/kɔ̀/

/kɔ̄/

/kɔ́/

/kɔ̂/

/kɔ̀ʔ//kɔ̄ʔ/(ကံသ)်(ကံယ)်(ကံ)(ကံတ)်(ကံလ)်(ကံဒ)်

(ေကာလ်)(ေကာဒ်)47

Medial consonants

(3)

(2)

(1)

(4)

(5)

/pw-/

/pl-/

/pr-/

/pj-/

/pɣ-/

(ပွ)

(ပၠ)

(ြပ)

(ပျ)

(ပှ)

• Circled symbols represent each medial consonant.
• Symbol (4) combined with the basic letter for /k-/ represents /c-/ (not /ky-/, which is not present in Sgaw
Karen). It is used for loanwords from Burmese that has the spelling <ky->.
48

Special letters representing certain frequently used words(There is no corresponding Letalanyah letters.)/nê/ ‘that; topic marker, etc.’/wī/ ‘to end; after Ving’49

Sample words and sentences/tàxítàlā/‘beauty; culture’
50Sample words and sentences。

/lɛ̄ lɯ́ có/gotoschool‘(I) went to school.’51

Sample words and sentences。

/nā, māyou do

cá nê

like

that

təɣē/
don’t

‘You, please don’t do like that.’52

Is Lekwaikaw really an ancient script?
From what has been discussed so far, it can be said that Lekwaikaw reflects thephonological system of present-day Sgaw Karen (the Hpa-an dialect) in a very
precise way. Next, let us consider whether Lekwaikaw is really an ancient script.
If it is an ancient script, it should reflect older features of the Karenic languages.
We will consider this issue from the following two perspectives:(1) Notation of tones(2) Notation of stops

53

Notation of tones
Studies by Haudricourt (1946, 1953, 1975) revealed that four tones (*Tone 1, *Tone 2, Tone 2‘,
and *Tone 3) can be reconstructed in Proto-Karen. They are reflected in modern Pwo Karen and
Sgaw Karen as shown in the table (The phonetic values of the tones are those of the Hpa-an
dialects for both Pwo and Sgaw. See Kato [2018] for an account of how Haudricourt
reconstructed proto-tones.)。
*Tone 1

*Tone 2*Tone 2’

Pwo

Sgaw

Pwo

Sgaw

Pwo

*B

Low-level [11]Mid-level [33]Mid-level [33]Low-falling [41]*M

Low-level [11]High-level [55]High-level [55]High-falling [51]High-level [55]*H

Falling [51]High-level [55]High-level [55]High-falling [51]High-level [55]

*Tone 3’
Sgaw

Pwo

Sgaw

High-level [55]Low-checked [11ʔ]High-level [44]Low-level [11]Mid-checked [33ʔ]High-level [44]Low-level [11]Mid-checked [33ʔ]

However, Lekwaikaw’s tonal notation accurately reflects the six-tone system of a modern Sgaw
Karen dialect, rather than the four-tone system of Proto-Karen.

54

Notation of stops
The same studies by Haudricourt (1946, 1953, 1975) show that the Proto-Karen voiced stops *b,*d, *j, *ɡ changed to /p, t, c, k/ in Sgaw Karen and /ph, th, ch, kh/ in Pwo Karen as the tones
split (see also Kato [2018]). In Lekwaikaw, however, stops derived from the Proto-Karen voiced
stops are written with the symbols representing voiceless sounds. For example:/kò/ ‘hot’/pū/ ‘inside’

Pwo Karen form: /khʊ̄/ ‘hot’
Thus, Proto-Karen had *ɡ.

Pwo Karen form: /phə̀ɴ/ ‘inside’
Thus, Proto-Karen had *b.

The notation of stops accurately reflects the phonetic values of modern Sgaw Karen.

55

On Lekwaikaw’s authenticity

Given the notation of tones and stops, Lekwaikaw cannot be considered to be anancient script. As already discussed, Lekwaikaw accurately reflects thepronunciation of present-day Sgaw Karen. It is unlikely that an ancient script
would accurately reflect the phonological system of a modern language.

56

Why does Lekwaikaw accurately reflect the phonological system of presentday Sgaw Karen?
Lekwaikaw is a writing system that accurately reflects the phonological system of thepresent-day Hpa-an dialect of Sgaw Karen. Thanks to its accurate phonological reflection,
this script can properly serve as a writing system for Sgaw Karen. This accuracy can be
attributed to the following reasons.
(1) Given the fact that the vowel /ɯ/ is notated separately from /ɨ/ or /ə/, it is likely that thecreator of Lekwaikaw consulted Letalanyah.
(2) Letalanyah, as will be pointed out in Kato (forthcoming), was probably createdreferring to Christian Sgaw Karen Script. As a writing system of the Hpa-an dialect,
Letalanyah is even more elaborate than the highly systematic Christian Sgaw Karen
Script because it has a notation for the vowel /ɯ/.
(3) The highly systematic nature of Lekwaikaw can be attributed to its having inherited thesystem of Letalanyah.

57

Conclusion
Lekwaikaw is a writing system that accurately reflects the phonological system ofpresent-day Sgaw Karen (the Hpa-an dialect). In addition, we cannot see any characteristicsof the Karenic languages of older times in its system. Therefore, we can conclude that thischaracter is a modern creation. This creation can be characterized as one of the movementsthat Kelly (2018) noted as those that promoted indigenous writing systems in ethnic
minorities of Southeast Asia.
Although this script is certainly a modern creation, I do not think we should disrespect
the effort that created it. In contemporary Myanmar, the Karen people face extremely
difficult cultural and political challenges. Under such circumstances, it would not be
surprising if some cultural creation including the creation of a new script occurred for theenhancement of ethnic consciousness. Moreover, creation of Lekwaikaw may be interpreted
as an attempt to resolve the problem that the various current Karen scripts have been“markers of difference” as pointed out by Womack (2005). When we consider how
Lekwaikaw was created, we need to keep in mind the complicated circumstances in which
the Karen people are placed. Of course, we must keep an eye on the situation because thecreation of a new script could become a new source of conflict.
58

References

Anonymous (1988) Burmese title: ဗုဒဘ� ာသာစေကာကရင် သူငယ်တန်းဖတ်စာ / Sgaw Karen title: ဗုဒဘ� ာသာပကညံဖိုေလလ်မယ်လို အခံေတ�ဒ် [Bhuddhist
Sgaw Karen Primary Reader]. Publisher: ဦးေစာသင်းလ�ိင် (သထံ�ု မို)� , Printing: ေဒါ် စိန�် �ဲွ (တာေမွ ၊ ရင်ကုန)် .
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1946) Restitution du karen commun. BSLP 42.1: 103–11. (Reprinted: Haudricourt 1972, 131–40.)
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1953) A propos de la restitution du karen commun. BSLP 49.1: 129–32. (Reprinted: Haudricourt 1972, 141–45.)
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1972) Problèmes de Phonologie Diachronique. Paris: SELAF.
Haudricourt, André-Georges (1975) Le système des tons du karen commun. BSLP 70.1: 339–43.
Kato, Atsuhiko (2018) How did Haudricourt reconstruct Proto-Karen tones? Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies
49: 21–44.
Kato, Atsuhiko (2021a) Pwo Karen writing systems. Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 52: 23–55.
Kato, Atsuhiko (2021b) Typological profile of Karenic languages. (In) Paul Sidwell and Mathias Jenny (eds.) The Languages and Linguisticsof Mainland Southeast Asia, pp. 337–367. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kato, Atsuhiko (2022) Pwo Karen writing systems 2: Western Pwo Karen. Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies 53:
23–57.
Kato, Atsuhiko (forthcoming) Letalanyah: A Buddhist writing system of Sgaw Karen. Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic
Studies 54.
Kelly, Piers (2018) The art of not being legible: Invented writing systems as technologies of resistance in mainland Southeast Asia. Terrain
70: 1–24.
Sarvestani, Karl Reza (2018) Aspects of Sgaw Karen phonology and phonetics. PhD. dissertation at State University of New York at Buffalo.
Seguinotte, Joseph, SCJ (2007) Pgaz K’Nyau Dictionary. Bangkok: Windows on the World.
Stern, Theodore (1968) Three Pwo Karen scripts: A study of alphabet formation. Anthropological Linguistics 10.1: 1–39.
Womack, William Burgess (2005) Literate networks and the production of Sgaw and Pwo Karen writing in Burma, c.1830-1930. PhD.
dissertation at SOAS, University of London.

59

。

တသ်ဘုၠံ ဒ်ဒတို ်မဒ်။တၢ ်ဘျုးဒိၣမ
် း.

Lekwaikaw

Letalanyah
Christian Sgaw/tà blɯ̄ʔ dô māʔ/‘Thank you very much!’60