Pwo Eastern Karen

Eastern Pwo or Phlou (Pwo Eastern Karen: ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်, ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်, Burmese: အရှေ့ပိုးကရင်) is a Karen language spoken by Eastern Pwo people and over a million people in Myanmar and by about 50,000 in Thailand, where it has been called Southern Pwo. It is not intelligible with other varieties of Pwo, with which it shares 63 to 65% lexical similarity. The Eastern Pwo dialects share 91 to 97% lexical similarity.

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 Mon-Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created a Thai alphabet that is in limited use.

From Wikipedia · Eastern Pwo language · CC BY-SA 4.0