Pa'O language
Karenic language
title: "Pa'O language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["karenic-languages", "pa'o-people"] description: "Karenic language" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pa'O_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Karenic language ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Pa'O |
| altname | Taungthu |
| nativename | ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ |
| image | Pa'O literature.jpg |
| imagealt | Pa'O manuscript |
| imagecaption | Pa'O manuscript |
| states | Myanmar |
| ethnicity | Pa'O |
| speakers | |
| date | 2000–2017 |
| ref | e26 |
| familycolor | Sino-Tibetan |
| fam2 | Tibeto-Burman |
| fam3 | Karenic |
| fam4 | Northern Karenic |
| script | Burmese script (Pa'O alphabet) |
| Karen Braille | |
| iso3 | blk |
| glotto | paok1235 |
| glottorefname | Pa'o Karen |
| minority | Myanmar |
| :: |
| name = Pa'O | altname = Taungthu | nativename = ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ | image = Pa'O literature.jpg | imagescale = | imagealt = Pa'O manuscript | imagecaption = Pa'O manuscript | states = Myanmar | ethnicity = Pa'O | speakers = | date = 2000–2017 | ref = e26 | familycolor = Sino-Tibetan | fam2 = Tibeto-Burman | fam3 = Karenic | fam4 = Northern Karenic | script = Burmese script (Pa'O alphabet) Karen Braille | iso3 = blk | glotto = paok1235 | glottorefname = Pa'o Karen | minority = Myanmar The Pa'O language (also spelled Pa-O or Pa-oh; , ); ), sometimes called Taungthu, is a Karenic language spoken by close to 900,000 Pa'O people in Myanmar.
The language is primarily written using a Mon-Burmese script devised by Christian missionaries, and many of the materials now available for it on the Internet derive from Christian missionary involvement, although most of the Pa'O are generally reported to be Buddhists.
The language is also referred to by the exonyms "Black Karen" and "White Karen", both of which are terms originally based on traditional clothing colours used in contrast to "Red Karen" (Karenni), also of Myanmar. While most of the community resides in Myanmar, a small number reside on the Thai side as early as 1837.
Dialects
There are two dialects of Pa'O from the towns of Taunggyi and Thaton. These are also called Highland Pa'O or Northern Pa'O for the Taunggyi dialect and the Lowland Pa'O or Southern Pa'O for the Thaton dialect. The Taunggyi Pa'O dialect has many borrowings from its neighbouring Shan language and remained more isolated from the influence of the Burmese language compared to the Thaton dialect. Speakers of the two dialects can have issues with intelligibility leading many to switch to Burmese for easier communication.
The southern dialect features 24 phonemes in comparison to the 20 phonemes of the north. The additional phonemes that the southern dialect features are , , and . The d͡ʒ phoneme, however, only appears in the loan word for wheat (/d͡ʒoʊn/) - taken from Burmese ဂျုံ.
There is an additional dialect found in Mae Hong Son province called the Huay Salop dialect. It differs from the Taunggyi dialect, for example, in replacing the /y/ vowel with /ʉ/ or /ə/.
Phonology
The following tables display the phonological features of the northern Pa'O (Taungthu) language:
In addition to these simple phonemes, Pa'O also has five "secondary phonemes" that are used as syllable medial: /-j-/, /-l-/, /-r-/, /-w-/ and /-lw-/. For example, /lá/ (to fall); /ljá/ (to be hot) and /lwá/ (a saw). Some dialects use /-rw-/ rather than /-lw-/
Consonants
::data[format=table]
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | Plosive | voiceless | aspirated | voiced | Fricative | Nasal | Trill | Approximant | lateral | central |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
- and can occur as final consonants. Stops may also be heard as unreleased .
Vowels
Pa'O has nine cardinal vowels and two glide vowels (diphthongs) as shown in the table below. However, this is a standardization from all Pa'O regional dialects; in reality, the vowel inventories of the various dialects have a much wider range in diversity, including additional cardinal vowels, diphthongs, nasal vowels, and glottal vowels.
::data[format=table]
| Front | Central | Back | High | High-mid | Mid | Low-mid | Low | Glided |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| :: |
Tonemes
Pa'O has four phonemic tones: high, high falling, mid and low. Syllables with a coda, can only have the High or Low tones and the presence of a coda can chance the realised tone contours of the High and Low tones. Pa'O also has two types of intonation contours: a rising and a falling contour characterised by the pitch of the last syllable or the intonation phrase.
Grammar
The structure of a Pa'O word is typically monosyllabic. In its rarer disyllabic or trisyllabic words, the stress is placed on the last syllable. Pa'O syllables follow a C(C)(C)Vᵀ or C(C)Vᵀ(C) structure and can be classed into pre-syllables, major syllables and minor syllables.
The Pa'O language features serial verb construction where several verbs are used consecutively as part of a single clause. Like other Karenic languages, Pa'O mostly restricts this serialisation to the nucleus forbidding the object from being inserted in between serialised verbs. This may be due to historical Tibeto-Burman verb-final word order, but research remains limited on Pa'O historical linguistics.
Pa'O also uses secondary verbs which change meaning when used with other main verbs and do not follow the general pattern in verb serialisation. The specific grammatical syntax of certain secondary verbs is a unique difference between Pa'O and other Karenic languages. For example, the word blk (to hit) occurs towards the end of a serialisation in Pa'O while it occurs preverbally in S'gaw Karen. These differences may have developed from influence from Burmese, such as with the word blk (to give) while some secondary verbs are directly borrowed from Burmese like the world blk (to endure).
Writing system
Pa'O is written using a modified version of the Mon-Burmese script. Below are the consonant letters in Pa'O; additional letters in the Burmese letter inventory are used to transcribe Pali.
::data[format=table title="Pa'o consonants"]
| :: |
::data[format=table title="Tone markers"]
| :: |
References
References
- Boote Cooper, Alys. (2018). "Secondary Verbs in Pa-O: A Preliminary Study". Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society.
- (3 October 2015). "Pa-oh ပအိုဝ်း - Word List".
- (9 October 2015). "Pa-oh ပအိုဝ်း - Writing System".
- "Pa-O in Myanmar (Burma)".
- "Pa'o Religious and Literary Manuscripts {{!}} Southeast Asia Digital Library".
- "Karen". Yale University.
- Thanamteun, Orranat. (2000). "A Phonological Study of Pa-O (Taungthu) at Ban Huay Salop, Tambon Huay Pha, Muang District, Mae Hong Son Province". Mahidol University.
- Shintani, Tadahiko. 2020. ''The Pao language: its Taunggyi and Kokareit dialects''. Linguistic survey of Tay cultural area (LSTCA) no. 131. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
- Nishida, Tatsuo. (1967). "Notes on the Pao Language in Burma: A preliminary Study of the Southern Pao Pa'an dialect.". Journal of the Linguistic Society of Japan.
- Thanamteun, Orranat. (2000). "A phonological study of Pa-O (Taungthu) at Ban Huay Salop, Tambon Huay Pha, Muang district, Mae Hong Son province". Mahidol University.
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