S’gaw , S'gaw Karen , or S’gaw K’Nyaw , commonly known as Karen , is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by the S'gaw Karen people of Myanmar and Thailand . A Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family , S'gaw Karen is spoken by over 2 million people in Tanintharyi Region , Ayeyarwady Region , Yangon Region , and Bago Region in Myanmar, and about 200,000 in northern and western Thailand along the border near Kayin State. It is written using the S'gaw Karen alphabet , derived from the Burmese script , although a Latin-based script is also in use among the S'gaw Karen in northwestern Thailand.
35-722: Various divergent dialects are sometimes seen as separate languages: Paku in the northeast, Mopwa (Mobwa) in the northwest, Wewew, and Monnepwa. The S’gaw, commonly known as the Karen language belongs to the Karenic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family . The S'gaw language has been used as the official language in the Kayin State of Myanmar and of the Karen National Union (KNU) organization who have waged
70-466: A consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract , except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are [p] and [b], pronounced with the lips ; [t] and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue ; [k] and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h] , pronounced throughout the vocal tract; [f] , [v], and [s] , pronounced by forcing air through
105-419: A syllable : The most sonorous part of the syllable (that is, the part that is easiest to sing ), called the syllabic peak or nucleus , is typically a vowel, while the less sonorous margins (called the onset and coda ) are typically consonants. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and CVC, where C stands for consonant and V stands for vowel. This can be argued to be the only pattern found in most of
140-1460: A Karen tone box to help understand Karenic tonal diversity and classify Karenic languages. It is similar to William Gedney's Tai tone box ( see Proto-Tai language#Tones ). The tone box contains diagnostic words for use during field elicitation. Water [*tʰi] Branch [*pʰaŋ] Flower [*pʰɔ] Chicken [*sʰan] Sleep [*m̥i] Die [*tʰi] Star [*sʰa] Leaf [*l̥a] Fingernail [*m̥i] Fire [*m̥e] Give [*pʰe] Bitter [*kʰa] Bone [*kʰri] Child [*pʰo] Right [*tʰwe] Spicy [*hɛ] Take [*pʰi] Pus [*pʰi/mi] Sky [*m̥oʔ] Iron [*tʰaʔ] Pig [*tʰɔʔ] Skin/bark [*pʰeʔ] Shoot [v] [*kʰaʔ] Dark [*kʰeʔ/kʰuʔ] Silver [*rɔn] Ginger [*ʔeŋ] Rabbit [*tɛ] Navel [*te] Spear [*pan] White [*pwa] Egg [*ti] Cheek [*pu] Liver [*sɨn] Eat [*ʔam] Left [*se] Be at, exist [*ʔɔ] Paddy [*pɨ] Blow/howl [*ʔu] Head [*klo] Hand [*su] Breathe [*sa] Many [*ʔa] Alcohol [*siʔ] Wing [*teʔ] Heart [*saʔ] Call/shout [*kaʔ] Near [*pɔʔ] Nest [*bwe] Tongue [*ble] Person [*bra] Name [*min] Drunk [*mun] Red [*le] Sun [*mɤ] Stone [*loŋ] Snake [*ru] Arrow [*bla] Old [humans] [*bra] Hot [*go] Sun [*mɤ] Stone [*loŋ] Snake [*ru] Arrow [*bla] Old [humans] [*bra] Hot [*go] Monkey [*zoʔ] Eye/face [*meʔ] Brain [*nɔʔ] Intestines [*breʔ] Rib [*rɤʔ] Deep [*jɔʔ] The Karen alphabet consist of 25 consonants, 9 vowels, 5 tones and 5 medials. The Karen alphabet
175-559: A combination of these features, such as "voiceless alveolar stop" [t] . In this case, the airstream mechanism is omitted. Some pairs of consonants like p::b , t::d are sometimes called fortis and lenis , but this is a phonological rather than phonetic distinction. Consonants are scheduled by their features in a number of IPA charts: Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced , to the left are voiceless . Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. The recently extinct Ubykh language had only 2 or 3 vowels but 84 consonants;
210-544: A consonant that is very similar. For instance, an areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k has become palatalized in many languages, so that Saanich for example has /tʃ/ and /kʷ/ but no plain /k/ ; similarly, historical *k in the Northwest Caucasian languages became palatalized to /kʲ/ in extinct Ubykh and to /tʃ/ in most Circassian dialects. Symbols to
245-416: A narrow channel ( fricatives ); and [m] and [n] , which have air flowing through the nose ( nasals ). Most consonants are pulmonic , using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of ejectives , implosives , and clicks . Contrasting with consonants are vowels . Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than
280-401: A vowel. The word consonant may be used ambiguously for both speech sounds and the letters of the alphabet used to write them. In English, these letters are B , C , D , F , G , J , K , L , M , N , P , Q , S , T , V , X , Z and often H , R , W , Y . In English orthography , the letters H, R, W, Y and the digraph GH are used for both consonants and vowels. For instance,
315-474: A vowel. He divides them into two subcategories: hēmíphōna ( ἡμίφωνα 'half-sounded'), which are the continuants , and áphōna ( ἄφωνος 'unsounded'), which correspond to plosives . This description does not apply to some languages, such as the Salishan languages , in which plosives may occur without vowels (see Nuxalk ), and the modern concept of "consonant" does not require co-occurrence with
350-537: A war against the Burmese government since early 1949. A Bible translation was published in 1853. S'gaw is spoken in the Ayeyarwady delta area, in the Ayeyarwady, Bago, Kayin, and Rangon Regions. S’gaw speakers are frequently interspersed with Pwo Karen speakers. S'gaw dialects are: Paku is spoken in: Paku dialects are Shwe Kyin, Mawchi, Kyauk Gyi, Bawgali, the names of which are based on villages. Mobwa
385-494: A word starts with a vowel syllable, use the vowel carrier "အ" which is silent in order to write words that start with vowel. In Shraw 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 of voice, the meaning varying according to the tone in which it is pronounced. even tone When one consonant follows another with no vowel sound intervening,
SECTION 10
#1732783812171420-431: Is a (perhaps allophonic) difference in articulation between these segments, with the [j] in [ˈjɛs] yes and [ˈjiʲld] yield and the [w] of [ˈwuʷd] wooed having more constriction and a more definite place of articulation than the [ɪ] in [ˈbɔɪ̯l] boil or [ˈbɪt] bit or the [ʊ] of [ˈfʊt] foot . The other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, segments articulated as consonants but occupying
455-570: Is less common in non-rhotic accents.) The most frequent consonant in many other languages is /p/ . The most universal consonants around the world (that is, the ones appearing in nearly all languages) are the three voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , and the two nasals /m/ , /n/ . However, even these common five are not completely universal. Several languages in the vicinity of the Sahara Desert , including Arabic , lack /p/ . Several languages of North America, such as Mohawk , lack both of
490-665: Is one of the Kayan languages belonging to the Kakhaung subgroup. It is spoken only in one village. Kadaw is spoken in Kayah State , and has nasalized vowels but no final nasal consonants . It has more Burmese than Shan influence. Thamidai is yet another Karenic language. Below is a classification of the Karenic languages by Hsiu (2019) based on a phylogenetic analysis of Shintani's published lexical data. The results support
525-757: Is spoken in 9 villages at the western foot of the Thandaung Mountains in Thandaung township, Kayin State . There are also some in Taungoo township, Bago Region . Mobwa dialects are Palaychi (Southern Mobwa) and Dermuha (Southern Mobwa). Karen people in the Andaman Islands : S'gaw Karen is also spoken in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , Union Territory of India . The total population in
560-473: Is transitional between the northern and central groups. The languages with the most speakers are Sgaw, Pwo and Pa’o. Manson (2011) classifies the Karen languages as follows, with each primary branch characterized by phonological innovations: The classifications of Geker, Gekho, Kayaw, and Manu are ambiguous, as they may be either Central or Southern. Shintani Tadahiko (2012:x) gives the following tentative classification, proposed in 2002, for what he calls
595-520: The Chinese languages , Sino-Tibetan languages have a subject–object–verb order. This is likely due to influence from neighboring Mon and Tai languages . Because they differ from other Tibeto-Burman languages in morphology and syntax, Benedict (1972: 2–4, 129) removed the Karen languages from Tibeto-Burman in a Tibeto-Karen branch, but this is no longer accepted. A common geographical classification distinguishes three groups: Kayan (Padaung)
630-520: The Sino-Tibetan languages . The Karen languages are written using the Karen script . The three main branches are Sgaw (commonly known as Karen), Pwo and Pa'O . Karenni (also known as Kayah or Red Karen) and Kayan (also known as Padaung) are a branch of Karen languages. They are unusual among the Sino-Tibetan languages in having a subject–verb–object word order; other than Karen, Bai and
665-517: The Taa language has 87 consonants under one analysis , 164 under another , plus some 30 vowels and tone. The types of consonants used in various languages are by no means universal. For instance, nearly all Australian languages lack fricatives; a large percentage of the world's languages lack voiced stops such as /b/ , /d/ , /ɡ/ as phonemes, though they may appear phonetically. Most languages, however, do include one or more fricatives, with /s/ being
700-831: The "Brakaloungic" languages, of which Karen is a branch. Individual languages are marked in italics. However, at the time of publication, Shintani (2012) reports that there are more than 40 Brakaloungic languages and/or dialects, many of which have only been recently reported and documented. Shintani also reports that Mon influence is present in all Brakaloungic languages, while some also have significant Burmese and Shan influence. The Kayan languages are spoken in Kayah State , southern Shan State , and northern Karen State . There are four branches according to Shintani (2016), namely Kangan ("lowland dwellers"), Kakhaung ("highland dwellers"), Lawi ("South"), and Latha ("North"). Nangki (sometimes called Langki), documented in Shintani (2016),
735-426: The 80-odd consonants of Ubykh , it lacks the plain velar /k/ in native words, as do the related Adyghe and Kabardian languages. But with a few striking exceptions, such as Xavante and Tahitian —which have no dorsal consonants whatsoever—nearly all other languages have at least one velar consonant: most of the few languages that do not have a simple /k/ (that is, a sound that is generally pronounced [k] ) have
SECTION 20
#1732783812171770-583: The Andamans is about 2000 people, living in eight villages in the Mayabunder and Diglipur tehsils of the North and Middle Andaman district : The S'gaw Karen language has at least 3 dialects. They are mutually intelligible to each other; however, there may be words that sound unfamiliar to one another. The following displays the phonological features of present S'gaw Karen: Ken Manson (2009) proposed
805-574: The Congo , and China , including Mandarin Chinese . In Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/ , and spelled that way in Pinyin . Ladefoged and Maddieson call these "fricative vowels" and say that "they can usually be thought of as syllabic fricatives that are allophones of vowels". That is, phonetically they are consonants, but phonemically they behave as vowels. Many Slavic languages allow
840-700: The alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, the sound spelled ⟨th⟩ in "this" is a different consonant from the ⟨th⟩ sound in "thin". (In the IPA, these are [ð] and [θ] , respectively.) The word consonant comes from Latin oblique stem cōnsonant- , from cōnsonāns 'sounding-together', a calque of Greek σύμφωνον sýmphōnon (plural sýmphōna , σύμφωνα ). Dionysius Thrax calls consonants sýmphōna ( σύμφωνα 'sounded with') because in Greek they can only be pronounced with
875-641: The labials /p/ and /m/ . The Wichita language of Oklahoma and some West African languages, such as Ijo , lack the consonant /n/ on a phonemic level, but do use it phonetically, as an allophone of another consonant (of /l/ in the case of Ijo, and of /ɾ/ in Wichita). A few languages on Bougainville Island and around Puget Sound , such as Makah , lack both of the nasals [m] and [n] altogether, except in special speech registers such as baby-talk. The 'click language' Nǁng lacks /t/ , and colloquial Samoan lacks both alveolars, /t/ and /n/ . Despite
910-449: The letter Y stands for the consonant/semi-vowel /j/ in y oke , the vowel /ɪ/ in m y th , the vowel /i/ in funn y , the diphthong /aɪ/ in sk y , and forms several digraphs for other diphthongs, such as sa y , bo y , ke y . Similarly, R commonly indicates or modifies a vowel in non-rhotic accents . This article is concerned with consonant sounds, however they are written. Consonants and vowels correspond to distinct parts of
945-484: The most common, and a liquid consonant or two, with /l/ the most common. The approximant /w/ is also widespread, and virtually all languages have one or more nasals , though a very few, such as the Central dialect of Rotokas , lack even these. This last language has the smallest number of consonants in the world, with just six. In rhotic American English, the consonants spoken most frequently are /n, ɹ, t/ . ( /ɹ/
980-663: The nucleus of a syllable. This may be the case for words such as church in rhotic dialects of English, although phoneticians differ in whether they consider this to be a syllabic consonant, /ˈtʃɹ̩tʃ/ , or a rhotic vowel, /ˈtʃɝtʃ/ : Some distinguish an approximant /ɹ/ that corresponds to a vowel /ɝ/ , for rural as /ˈɹɝl/ or [ˈɹʷɝːl̩] ; others see these as a single phoneme, /ˈɹɹ̩l/ . Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Democratic Republic of
1015-570: The number of letters in any one alphabet , linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs like ⟨ch⟩ , ⟨sh⟩ , ⟨th⟩ , and ⟨ng⟩ are used to extend
1050-490: The overall structure of Shintani's (2012) classification. Luangthongkum (2019) recognizes three branches of Proto-Karen, namely Northern, Central, and Southern, but is agnostic about how the three branches fit together. Note : Western Bwe Karen (Blimaw, Geba) preserves the implosives or preglottalised obstruents ɓ/ʔb and ɗ/ʔd, as well as voiceless sonorants such as hn, hl, and so forth. Reconstructions Vocabulary lists Consonant In articulatory phonetics ,
1085-500: The second consonant is represented by a symbol, which is joined to the character representing the first consonant. The examples of writing the Karen alphabet are: The Karen Latin alphabet has 24 consonants, 9 vowels and 5 tones. The tones are written with alphabetic letters. kh sh th ph Karenic languages The Karen ( / k ə ˈ r ɛ n / ) or Karenic languages are tonal languages spoken by some 4.5 million Karen people . They are of unclear affiliation within
S'gaw Karen language - Misplaced Pages Continue
1120-576: The syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil [ˈbɔɪ̯l] . On the other, there are approximants that behave like consonants in forming onsets, but are articulated very much like vowels, as the y in English yes [ˈjɛs] . Some phonologists model these as both being the underlying vowel /i/ , so that the English word bit would phonemically be /bit/ , beet would be /bii̯t/ , and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/ . Likewise, foot would be /fut/ , food would be /fuu̯d/ , wood would be /u̯ud/ , and wooed would be /u̯uu̯d/ . However, there
1155-651: The trill [r̩] and the lateral [l̩] as syllabic nuclei (see Words without vowels ). In languages like Nuxalk , it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is, or if all syllables even have nuclei. If the concept of 'syllable' applies in Nuxalk, there are syllabic consonants in words like /sx̩s/ ( /s̩xs̩/ ?) 'seal fat'. Miyako in Japan is similar, with /f̩ks̩/ 'to build' and /ps̩ks̩/ 'to pull'. Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features : All English consonants can be classified by
1190-446: The world's languages, and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut: there are syllabic consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the world's languages. One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels , semiconsonants , or glides . On one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but form diphthongs as part of
1225-524: Was derived from the Burmese script as created by the help of the English missionaries around the early 1860s. The Karen alphabet was created for the purpose of translating the Bible into the Karen language. Karen script is written from left to right and requires no spaces between words, although modern writing usually contains spaces after each clause to enhance readability. Vowels can never stand alone and if
#170829