Eastern Pwo language

Distribution

• Kayin State and Tanintharyi Region: long contiguous area near the Thai border
• Bago Region: Bago and Toungoo townships

  Phonology

Consonants

• Post-alveolar affricates //, are realized as fricatives , among some formal dialects.
• // when pronounced slowly is phonetically realized as a dental affricate .
• Voiced plosives // are pronounced as implosives only in the Pa'an dialect.
• // does not exist in the Tavoy dialect.
• // may tend to be slightly fricativized when preceding front vowels.
• // may also be realized as a tap .

  Vowels

• // does not occur after a // sound.
• // are merged with // in the Tavoy dialect.

  Tones

Dialects

• Pa’an
• Kawkareik
• Tavoy

  Alphabet

History

• The number zero, ploh plih, means "of no value".
• The number zero is not used in day-to-day life and mostly exists in writing only. People are taught to use the Burmese numeric system instead, including zero.
• Chi denotes 10, any number from 1 to 9 before chi can be interpreted as "of ten", so 20 would be ne chi. Pong denotes 100, any number from 1 to 9 before pong can be interpreted as "hundred", so 200 would be ne pong. Similarly, the same rule applies to thousand, muh ; ten-thousand, lah ; and hundred-thousand, thay.
• Numbers after the hundred-thousands are prefixed with thay, hundred thousand. For example, one million would be thay luh chi, "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would be thay ne chi , hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would be thay luh pong, "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would be thay luh lah, "hundred thousand of ten thousands".

  Decimals

Fractions