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

No. 6
Government have ruled (laid down an order) that whoever kills a man must die by hanging, but when the
Burman King was reigning, he ordered that a man's life was priced at Rs 300. At that time poor people were
much oppressed but they had to shut their eyes and bear it. Though a man did a very wicked deed, if he was
able to pay money, because the Officials received bribes (presents), they would hush up the fault. And if they
killed a man, they did not hang him as the English do, they would have him trod to death by an elephant,
hack him to death, throw him into the water and drown him. Burmese Officials had no pity. In olden
times they would get a child and place him in a rice-pounder and tread him to death.
ၦဒိၪလဖၪ အီၪက့ ၪ လၩ့ယူၭအလူ လၧၦလၧအမၩၥံ ၫၦၡၩအၥၭ ကဂၩလါလါ ဘၪ ဆၧစၧၩ့ၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫလီၫ. လါနၫ့ ထီးဒီၩ့ဂိၩအစဎွၩပၨၩ့ဆၧအခၫ,
အဝ့ ၫအီၪက့ ၪလၩ့အလူ ၦကဂၩအၥၭမၧၫ့အဎွ ့ၩစ့ ၩၥၧၫ့ဖး (ၥၧၫ့ယၩ) အခၫနီၪ ၦၡၪ့ဖိၪၥံ ၪလဖၪဘၪ ဆၧမၩအၧၩ့မၩနၭဝ့ ၫအၪနၭလ့ ၬ လါနၫ့ အဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪ
ဘၪ ဘံ ၪ့မ့ ၬထိၭဝ့ ၫဒၪလီၫ. ၦအ့ ၪမၩ ဆၧအၧၩ့ဖၭဒိၪ လါနၫ့ အ့ ၪဖ့ ၪလၫ့စ့ ၩနၧၩ့တၭ မွဲလၧၦဒိၪၥံ ၪလဖၪ န့ဘၪ လါဆီၫ့အကၠ ီၩ့ မၩဘံ ၭမၩဘၧၩ့ခွ ံ ၬ
ဆၧမၩၥံ ၫနီၪလီၫ. ဒဲအ့ ၪအဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪ မၩၥံ ၫ ၦၡၩနီၪ စၧၩ့ၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫဘဲၫ ၦအံ ၩ့ဂလံၭဖိၪၥံ ၪ မၩဝ့ ၫအၥိၭအ့ ၬ. ယဲးၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫဒဲကဆၫ့, ကျီၪ့ၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫ ဒဲ ခွ ံ ၬလၩ့ခွ ံ ၬဝ့ ၫ
လၧထံၫကျၩ လၩ့အု ၭၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫ ဘဲၫနီၪလီၫ. ဒီၩ့ဂိၩအၦဒိၪၥံ ၪနီၪ အဆၧယၫ့ၥၭ အီၪအ့ ၬ. လၧဖျိၩ့လံၩလံၩ အဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪ မၩန့ ဖိၪၥၪအီၪက့ ၪဝ့ ၫ လၧမီးဖၧၩ့
ယဲးၥံ ၫဝ့ ၫလီၫ.
No. 7
Honoured Sir,
I respectfully beg to place these few lines before you. I am very desirous of entering the Police Department and
herewith send all the certificates of character, which I have obtained. A perusal of these will show that I am
careful and painstaking in all work entrusted to me, and that I bear a good character. I am at present working
on the Railway and I get a salary of Rs 50 a month, but I wish to get the appointment of Head Constable on
Rs 65 a month. If your Honour will be so kind as to give me the appointment I ask for, I will carry out my
duties to your entire satisfaction.
Your obedient servant.
ဆၧယူၭယၪ့အဖၧၩ့ကဆါဧ့
ယအၪ့ကံ ၩ့ လၧယကအီၪက့ ၪလၩ့ဆၧချဲၩ့ၡၩဘီၩ့ လၧနမ့ ၬယၫလီၫ. ယမိနု ၬဘၪယၥၭလၧပလံၭဖၧၩ့ နၭနၭလ့ ၬ ဒဲ ယၥိၫ့စိၩ လံၬယီၩ
ကယဲယလဲၬမၬလၧအဘၪဆဲၫ့ ယတခ့ ၬပဝၭ လၧယန့ဘၪဝဲၩယူၭနီၪလီၫ. အ့ ၪနဖီ ဆၧယီၩလဖၪတၭ, အဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪကဒု ၭနဲၪ လၧယမၩဆၧ လၩ့ထံးလၩ့ဆ့ ၭ
ဒဲ ထံၫထံၫဆၭဆၭ ကယဲဒၪ ဆၧမၩ လၧအလၩ့ဘၪယၧၩလဖၪနီၪ ဒဲ လၧယတခ့ ၬပဝၭ ဂ့ ၩမၬလီၫ. ဘိၩ့ယီၩ ယမၩဆၧ လၧလဲၪ့မ့ ၪလခီၫ ဒဲ ယန့ဘၪ
ယလံၩ့လၩကဘံ ၪ့ ၅၀ ဘၭ. လါနၫ့ ယမိန့ဘၪယၥၭလၧ ယၪဇဝိၬအလး လၩကဘံ ၪ့ ဎူၫဆံ ၫယဲဘၭ နီၪလီၫ. ကဆါအ့ ၪယၫ့ၥၭ ဘၪယၧၩ ဒဲ
ဖ့ ၪလၫ့ယၧၩ အလးလၧယအၪ့ကံ ၩ့ယီၩ ယကမၩ ဆၧမၩလဖၪ လၧနၥု ၪ့မံ ၫ့ၥၭမံ ၫ့ ကိၭမံ ၩ့ဒ့ ၭလီၫ.
နခ့ ၫနၡၩလၧအခိၭနၪနလူ.
No. 8
Before the English took this country, the Burmese Officials oppressed the Karens very much. When the English
took this country, the Karens lived very happily. When the English went to Upper Burma to fight there, many
dacoites sprang up in Lower Burma. The Karens then roused themselves and helped the English. They got guns
from the Officials, and being (armed) like that, they helped with all their might and caught a large number of
dacoits. But now the guns which they obtained to carry, the Officials have recalled them all.
ၦခိၪလၩဘွၩၥံ လဖၪ လချုၭန့ဒံၭဘၪ ခးယီၩ ဒီၩ့ဂိၩအၦဒိၪၥံ ၪလဖၪ မၩအၧၩ့မၩနၭ ၦဖျိၩ့ၥံၪလဖၪ နၭနၭလ့ ၬလီၫ. ထီးခိၪလၩဘွၩၥံ ၪလဖၪ မၩန့ ခးယီၩ
ၦဖျိၩ့ၥံ ၪ အီၪမု ၬအီၪၡူၪ နၭနၭလ့ ၬလီၫ. ထီးခိၪလၩဘွၩၥံ ၪလဖၪ လ့ ၩထၪ့ဒု ၭ ခးဒီၩ့ဂိၩထၭလခီၫအခၫ ခးဒီၩ့ဂိၩလၬလခီၫနီၪ ထမျၬၥံၪ အီၪထၪ့
အၪအၪလ့ ၬလီၫ. ထီးနီၪလဖၧၫ့ ၦဖျိၩ့ၥံ ၪ ဂဲထု ၪ့ မၩဆၧၩ့ ခိၪလၩဘွၩၥံ ၪလဖၪ. အဝ့ ၫၥံ ၪန့ဘၪ ကျီၩ့ၥံ ၪ လၧၦဒိၪၥံ ၪအအီၪဒဲ ဘဲၫအဖျီၪထၪ့ဝ့ ၫအၥိၭနီၪ
မၩဆၧၩ့ လူၬဂဲးလူၬဘၭ ဒဲ ဖီၪ့န့ ထမျၬဖိၪၥံ ၪတဘျုၭဂၩလီၫ. အ့ ၪမွဲဘိၩ့ယီၩ ကျီၩ့ၥံ ၪ လၧအဝ့ ၫန့ဘၪဆိၬဝ့ ၫနီၪ ၦဒိၪၥံ ၪလဖၪမၩန့ထဲၩ့ ထီးအလူၬလီၫ.
No. 9