Eastern Pwo language
Eastern Pwo or Phlou, () is a Karen language spoken by over a million people in Burma and by about 50,000 in Thailand, where it has been called "Southern Pwo". It is not intelligible with other varieties of Pwo. A script called Leke was developed between 1830 and 1860 and is used by members of the millenarian Leke sect of Buddhism. Otherwise a variety of Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created a Thai alphabet which is in limited use. Phonology. The following displays the phonological features of two of the eastern Pwo Karen dialects , Pa'an and Tavoy: Tones. Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo: Alphabet. History. The script used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is heavily derived from the Mon script and the Burmese script. The Eastern Pwo Karen numeric symbols have been proposed for encoding in a future Burmese Unicode block. Decimals. Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai's decimal word, "chut", (Karen: ကျူဒၲ, ကျူ(ဒၲ); 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 (/) would be "luh puh thuh puh" (လ်ုပုံသိုငၲ့ပုံ) and three over one, three-"oneths" (/) would be "thuh puh luh puh" (သိုငၲ့ပုံလ်ုပုံ).