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The Western Pwo alphabet (Pwo Western Karen: ၦဖျိၩ့ၡိအလံၬခၪ့ထံၭ /pə pʰloúɴ ɕô ʔə leiʔ kʰàɴ tʰeiʔ/) is an abugida used for writing Western Pwo language. It was derived from the Burmese script in the early 19th century, and ultimately from either the Kadamba or Pallava alphabet of South India. The Western Pwo alphabet is also used for the liturgical languages of Pali and Sanskrit.

History

The Christian Pwo Karen Script is used as the writing system for Western Pwo. This script was originally created by Baptist missionaries for Eastern Pwo language. Western Pwo and Eastern Pwo differ considerably in terms of phonology. However, when the missionaries started using this script for Western Pwo language, they did not make any changes to the script. They only changed the readings according to the regular phonological correspondences. In addition to showing the correspondence between orthography and phonology.

The most widely used writing systems for Pwo Karen dialects are the Buddhist Pwo Karen Script and the Christian Pwo Karen Script, both of which have an abugida system. The Christian Pwo Karen Script was created in the 1840s by American Baptist missionaries, including Wade, Mason, and Brayton. This script is called the Christian Pwo Karen Script or the Mission script. The Christian Pwo Karen Script was created based on the Christian S'gaw Karen Script, which was created by Wade in the 1830s using symbols in the Burmese script. In the early stage of the Christian Pwo Karen Script, there were some novel innovations not seen in the Christian Sgaw Karen Script, such as the use of Roman letters and the juxtaposition of basic letters and vowel signs. However, these innovations seem to have caused problems in reading and writing.

Therefore, it was modified by the early 1850s to be closer to the method of Christian Sgaw Karen Script. the Christian Pwo Karen Script system fits very well with the phonological system of the Hpa-an dialect, an Eastern Pwo Karen dialect and even better with the presumed phonological system of the Hpa-an dialect of the 19th century. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that the Christian Pwo Karen Script was created based on the phonological system of the 19th-century Hpa-an dialect. Although the Christian Pwo Karen Script was created for Eastern Pwo language, it later came to be used as the script for Western Pwo Karen spoken in the Ayeyarwady Delta. It is not known precisely when Western Pwo language was first written in the Christian Pwo Karen Script. But, it is certain that an attempt to write Western Pwo language in the Christian Pwo Karen Script had already been made at a very early stage in the Christian Pwo Karen Script history, that is, at the beginning of the 1850s.

Today, the Christian Pwo Karen Script is mostly regarded as a Western Pwo language writing system by the Karens, because Eastern Pwo language speakers mainly use the Buddhist Pwo Karen Script and the Christian Pwo Karen is mainly used by Western Pwo language speakers. Moreover, in Western Pwo language speaking areas, the Christian Pwo Karen has also become increasingly popular among Buddhists over the last 20 to 30 years. Books written by Buddhist monks, such as ၥမံၫ့မုပျၩ့ /θəmèiɴ mɯ̂ pláɴ/ (2005)—a collection of commentaries on the Dharma of Buddhism—have also been published in this script. Therefore, we can safely say that this script is now establishing itself as an orthography of Western Pwo language.

Alphabet

The current version of Western Pwo alphabet is modified by Rev Durlin Lee Brayton (1808-1900).

Vowels

Like S'gaw Karen alphabet, Western Pwo alphabet doesn't have independent vowels. The ten vowel signs (Pwo Western Karen: လံၬလူၥီၫ) are as follows:

• The symbol for the vowel /-a/ is ါ. This symbol is written only when the tones are unmarked.
• ဲ represents both /-ɛ/ and /-ai/. The script does not distinguish between the two vowels.
• ီ represents both /-ɔ/ and /-au/. The script does not distinguish between the two vowels.

Consonants

The Western Pwo alphabet is characterised by the circular letter forms of the Mon-Burmese script. It is an abugida, all letters having an inherent vowel /ə/. Vowels are represented in the form of diacritics placed next to the consonants. It is written left to right. There are 26 consonants (Pwo Western Karen: လံၬမ့ၬဖျိၪ့). The following table provides the letter, the syllable onset in IPA and the way the letter is referred to in Western Pwo language:

• ည didn't include at the original Western Pwo Alphabet. At that time, /ɲ/ was written as နၠ. Today, this is found in အနၠါမုနံၩ /ʔə ɲâ mɯ̂ ní/ 'Tuesday'.
• ၦ was included in the original Western Pwo alphabet. ၦ is a special character that is used to write the prefix ၦ /pə-/ denoting a human being.

Consonant letters may be modified by one medial diacritic (Pwo Western Karen: လံၬအီၪဒံၩ့), indicating an additional consonant before the vowel. These diacritics are:

• Christian Pwo Karen script ျ /-l-/ and ၠ /-j-/ are identical in shape to ျ /-j-/ and ၠ /-l-/ in the Buddhist Pwo Karen Script, but the relationship between the letters and sounds is inverse. The usage of the Christian Pwo Karen Script is based on that of the Christian S'gaw Karen Script, whereas the usage of the Buddhist Pwo Karen Script is based on that of the Mon Script.
• When ၠ is combined with က as in ကၠ, it is pronounced as /tɕ-/, not /kj-/. And ခၠ, နၠ are pronounced as /tɕʰ-/ and /ɲ-/ respectively.

Tone

The tones are indicated by tone markers (Pwo Western Karen: လံၬထီးနဲၪ့) at the end of the syllable. In the absence of any marker, the default is the falling tone.

Syllable rhymes

The horizontal columns are arranged according to the tone symbols, and the vertical columns are arranged according to the vowel symbols (plus the nasalization symbol). No instances have been found for some combinations of rhyme and tone. Syllable rhymes of Western Pwo alphabet, used with the letter က as a sample.

These are only used to represent Burmese loanwords or those from other languages that have entered via Burmese.

Numerals

A decimal numbering system is used, and numbers are written in the same order as Hindu–Arabic numerals.

The digits from zero to nine are: ၀၁၂၃၄၅၆၇၈၉ (Unicode 1040 to 1049). The number 1945 would be written as ၁၉၄၅. Separators, such as commas, are not used to group numbers.

Zero to nine

Spoken Western Pwo language for one may be က /kə/.
In some dialect, when quantifiers or other numbers are preceded, နံၫ is pronounced as /ní/, ၥၧၫ့ as /θə́ɴ/, ဎူၫ as /xú/ and ခွံၫ as /kʰwí/.
In some dialect, နွ့ၫ is pronounced as /nwì/. When quantifiers or other numbers are preceded, နွ့ၫ is pronounced as /nwé/ or /nwí/.

Ten to a million

Borrowed from Burmese (Burmese: ရာ (IPA: [jà]).
Borrowed from Burmese (Burmese: ထောင် IPA: [tʰàʊɰ̃]).
Borrowed from Mon language (Mon: လက် /lɔk/).
Borrowed from Mon language (Mon: ကိုတ် /kɒt/).

Punctuation

There are two primary break characters in Western Pwo: comma and full stop.

Unicode

Myanmar script was added to the Unicode Standard in September 1999 with the release of version 3.0.

The Unicode block for Myanmar is U+1000–U+109F:

References

1. ^ Kato, Atsuhiko (March 2022). "Pwo Karen writing systems 2: Western Pwo Karen". Keio University (53): 23–57.
2. Brayton, Durlin Lee (1845). A Primer of the Pgho or Sho, Karen Language. Moulmein: American Baptist Mission Press.
3. ^ Duffin, Charles Harry (1913). A Manual of the Pwo Karen Dialect. Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press.
4. ^ Purser, W. C. B. (William Charles Bertrand); Tun Aung, Saya (1922). A comparative dictionary of the Pwo-Karen dialect : Pwo Karen-English. Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press.
5. ^ Lun, Nai Sac (2019). A Mon-Burmese Dictionary. USA.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

• Mon–Burmese script
• Karen language
• Writing systems without word boundaries