A Manual of the Pwo Karen Dialect Author: Charles Harry Duffin * A ...

အဝ့ ၫလၧအကဘၪ အီၪလၧထီၫ့ဖၧၩ့ ဒဲ ဆၧမၩဆီၪ့ဆီၪ့ လၧလၩဎူၫဘံ ၪ့အထးဖၧၩ့လီၫ.
No. 3.
My dear Cousin.
Through God's grace I, my parents, my wife and children are all well; I hope that your family also are happy.
Day before yesterday I heard that Government are going to increase the land-tax and I am sorry that the tax
will fall heavily on you. Have your two children, who go to school, reached the higher standard yet? Tell them
that year by year the work will increase greatly. Has your wife's child been born? Your luck is good, is it not?
Did you derive any profit from the sale of your paddy this year? Other people have all derived benefits.
ယတခွၫၥၭဘီၩ့ဧ့
မွဲလၧယွၩအခိးအတၩအကၠ ီၩ့ ယၧၩဒဲယမိယဖါယဖိၪယမၫၥံ ၪ အီၪဆီၪ့ ဂ့ ၩဘၪစဲၪ ထီးအလူၬလီၫ. ယ ဆိၫ့ နၧၩ ဒဲ နဂံ ၪ့ဖိၪဎၩ့ဖိၪၥံ ၪ
အီၪမု ၬအီၪၡုၫဝ့ ၪဒၪဆ့ ၬလီၫ. လၧတဂၪနံၩ ယနါဂၧၫ့ လၧၦဒိၪၥံ ၪကမၩအၪထၪ့ ဂၪ့ခိၪအခီၩ့တၭ, ယၥၭအု ၭလၧ နဂၪ့ခိၪနီၪ
အခီၩ့ကလၩ့ထ့ ၬအၪအၪလ့ ၬအကၠ ီၩ့လီၫ. နဖိၪခွၫ လၧအလ့ ၩမၩလိၪ လံၬနံၫဂၩနီၪ, မွဲအမၩလိၪ လံၬထီၩ့အဖု ၫဖၭထီၫယူၭဧၪ. လီၩဘၪ အဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪ
လၧလနံၪ့ဘၪလနံၪ့နီၪ ဆၧဖံ ၭဆၧမၩ ကအီၪထၪ့ အၪအၪလ့ ၬလီၫ. အ့ ၪမွဲ နမၫအဖိၪ လၩ့ဖျဲၪယူၭဧၪ. နၧၩယီၩ နဆၧဘိၪ့ဂ့ ၩနၭကၨ. ကနံၪ့ယီၩ
နအၪ့ဆၫ နဘု ၪအထိၬနၫအီၪ ကဆံ ၭဆံ ၭဧၪ. မွဲၦဂူၫဂၩအခိးအတၩ အီၪ ကိၭဂၩဒ့ ၭလီၫ.
No. 4.
My dear mother,
Today about midday I received your letter and I am very glad that you all are so well. I have received an order
from Government to go to Upper Burma to Mogok; I have no wish to go because the cold is very great in that
place; most of the people who go there get fever; besides food is very scarce. I hear that the price of rice is
Rs 16 a basket. I hope that if I ask for an increase of pay, I will get it. Tell my young brother not to be lazy
in his studies; if he is lazy he will certainly repent it afterwards.
ယမိၥၭဘီၩ့ဧ့
ကနံၩယီၩ လ့ ၩဘူၭမု ထု ၪ့ခၫ ယန့ဘၪ နလံၬပရၧၫ့ကဘံ ၪ့တၭ, ယ ၥၭဎွ ံ ၫဒိၪမၬ လၧနၥံ ၪအီၪဆီၪ့ ဂ့ ၩဘၪစဲၪ ထီးအလူၬအကၠ ီၩ့လီၫ. ယဝ့ ၫဒၪ
ယန့ဘၪယူၭ ၦဒိၪအလူ လၧယကဘၪလ့ ၩထၪ့ လၧခးဒီၩ့ဂိၩထၭလခီၫ လၧဝံးမိၩကူၭနီၪလီၫ. ယၥၭအီၪ လၧယကလ့ ၩနးဆံ ၭအ့ ၬ.
မွဲလၧဆၧအလးနီၪအဖၧၩ့, ဆၧဂီးနၭလ့ ၬအကၠ ီၩ့, ၦအ့ ၪလ့ ၩထီၩ့နီၪတၭ, အၪဒၪဆၧဆူၪဂိၬလီၫ. လၧနီၪအမ့ ၬယၫ, ဆၧအၪ့ဆၧအီၩ ၡၩနၭလ့ ၬလီၫ.
ဂူၫဆၫကဒၩ့ ယနါဂၧၫ့ ၦၡၩလီၩဝ့ ၫ, အနံၪ့မွဲ ကဆံ ၫဎူၫဘၭလီၫ. ယဆိၫ့လၧ ယအၪ့ကံ ၩ့အၪထၪ့ ယလံၩ့ကန့ဘၪလီၫ. လီၩဘၪ ယဖု ခွၫနီၪ
ထီးအီၪက့ ၪကၠၧၪ့အၥၭ လၧအဆၧမၩလိၪလဖၪအဖၧၩ့ လဂ့ ၩ. အ့ ၪအီၪက့ ၪကၠၧၪ့အၥၭတၭ, လၧခဲၫ့ထဲၩ့ ကနီၫ့ယါလၩ့ထဲၩ့အၥၭ ၡါမၫလီၫ.
No. 5.
My dear Friend,
I think it will be five months since I received a letter from you. Why don't you write to me? I think it is
because owing to your having got a son you have become proud. As for me, I am now attacked by fever every
day. Sometimes my head aches so much that I am not able to go to my work. In this town there is not much
water. Some persons have to go and draw water from the wells. The water in the big lake is almost completely
finished. If there is another month without rain, it will be hard for the people of the town for drinking water.
Yesterday I heard that a tiger had bitten a Native of India at Hmawbi. Is it true? In another month I intend to
pay you a visit.
ယၥိၭၥၭဘီၩ့ဧ့
ယလန့ဘၪ ဆၧပရၧၫ့လၧနအီၪ, ယဆီၫ့မီၪ့ ကအီၪလၩယဲဘံ ၪ့ယူၭလီၫ. မွဲဘၪနီၪ နလကွ ့ၭန့ဘၪယၧၩ လံၬ လဲၪ. ယဆီၫ့မီၪ့ မွဲလၧနန့ဘၪ
နဖိၪခွၫကဂၩအကၠ ီၩ့ နအီၪက့ ၪထၪ့ထီၫနၥၭလီၫ. ယဝ့ ၫဒၪဘဲၫယီၩ, မွဲလၧ ဆၧဆူၪဂိၬထၪ့ ယၧၩအၪဒၪဆၧ လၩ့ဘူၭ ကိၭနံၩဒ့ ၭ, ဒဲ ဘၪလကၠၪကၠၪ
ယခိၪဎွ ံ ၪယံ ၩ့ နၭနၭလ့ ၬအကၠ ီၩ့ ယလ့ ၩ လၧယဆၧမၩနၧၩ့အ့ ၬ. လၧဝံးဖၧၩ့ယီၩ ထံၫအီၪအၪအၪအ့ ၬ. ၦကနၩ့နၩ့ ဘၪ လ့ ၩဒု ၪ့ထံၫ လၧထံၫဖၧၩ့လဖၪလီၫ.
ထံၫလၧကမၫဖၭဒိၪအဖၧၩ့နီၪ လၩ့ဘူၭလၧအလူၬယူၭလီၫ. အ့ ၪလဆၧၩ့ဘၪတၭ ဆၧကကၪလၧၦဝံးဖိၪၥံ ၪ ကအီၩထံၫအဂးလီၫ. လၧမု ဂၪနံၩ ယနါဂၧၫ့
ဘီၪအဲၪ့ ခိၪလၩၥၧၫ့ကဂၩ လၧဝံးမီၫဘံ ၫနီၪ မွဲၡါမၫဧၪ. အီၪဒီၭ လၩနးဘံ ၪ့ ယၥၭအီၪ ယကလ့ ၩအီၪကွ ့ၩနၧၩလီၫ.