There are a few arbitrary characters in Sgaw Karen that are not formally taught but commonly used in writing and speech. The two most frequent are ဒ် (used to mean “as/like,” as in ဒ်ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်အသိး “like the earth,” or in intergorrative prounoun such as ဒ်လဲၣ် “what”) and မ် (used to express “may” as in မ်နကထံၣ်န့ၢ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤ “may you find help”). ဒ် has the same sound as ဒံ, and မ် as မီၤ—these forms are different spellings with the same sound.

Although both ဒ် and မ် contain the mark ်, this symbol is not used as an independent character in Sgaw Karen. It is informally known as a curve mark or တခွဲၣ်ခံ. This mark is not official when being taught in a formal setting or added to the Karen alphabets. It is just a great tool to use when spelling out letter by letter. When spelling this character may be useful part of the spelling as the spelling may be individual character rather than a part of the character. It exists only as part of other characters or tones, such as ၣ်, ်, ာ်, and ၢ်.

Uncommon Combinations with Double Consonants 

The Karen language has several unwritten rules that can sound unusual—even to native speakers—when not used correctly. One area where this happens is in uncommon or irregular combinations of characters. These combinations involve consonants, consonant clusters (double consonants), and tone markers. It is important to remember that the consonant is always the foundation of any combination; the consonant comes first, followed by the remaining characters.

Let’s take a closer look at some uncommon combinations involving consonants and consonant clusters.

By uncommon, we mean combinations that are not proper spelling. Because double consonants share the same sound as their main consonants, pairing them together becomes redundant. Most words rely on contrasting sounds rather than duplicated ones. The first few examples show how duplicating the sound of the main consonant leads to combinations that are not used in Sgaw Karen. See the examples below: 

Punctuation

The Sgaw Karen language does not have its own formal punctuation system. Most punctuation marks—such as quotation marks, parentheses, commas, dashes, and periods—are borrowed from English. The dash is commonly used in dates (e.g., ၁၁-၂၆-၂၀၂၂) or as a bullet point. In writing, marks such as the exclamation point, semicolon, colon, and question mark are generally not used. 

Spacing

Spacing is used only to separate paragraphs in Sgaw Karen writing. It is never used within a sentence or between the syllables of a word. See paragraph below for example. 

ဖဲတၢ်ကံၢ်စုအမုၢ်နံၤတုၤဃီၤဒီးတၢ်ကစးထီၣ်မူးလီၤန့ၣ်,ဒီးတချုးမိၢ်ပၢ်နွံဒူၣ်ဒီးပှၤဂီၢ်မုၢ်ကံၢ်စုဒံးဘၣ်န့ၣ်ဖိမုၣ်ဖိခွါ၁၄ဂၤလၢအဃုထၢတ့ၢ်ဝဲတဖၣ်ဘၣ်လဲၤကံၢ်ဆိဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ.ဝံၤမးမိၢ်ပၢ်နွံဒူၣ်ဒီးကမျၢၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ်ကံၢ်က့ၤဝဲန့ၣ်လီၤ.မုၢ်မဆါတနံၤအံၤဖဲတၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤတၢ်ကံၢ်စုအနံၤန့ၣ်အိၣ်ဒီးမိၢ်ပၢ်ဖံဖုအတၢ်သိၣ်လီၤသီလီၤဖိလံၤ,သူၣ်က့သးပှၢ်,သရၣ်သမါအတၢ်ကတိၤလီၤတၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. 

Numbers

Just like in English, Sgaw Karen uses the numbers zero through nine. These digits are the same as Burmese numerals in written form; only the pronunciation differs. The number zero uses the same character—and the same sound—as the consonant ၀. 

Sentence Snytax

Sentence snytax is similar to English langauge. Normally Sentence follow this patterns: subject, verb, object, with some exceptions.

စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိ (Saw Too goes to school.)

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) 

Sometimes, a sentence may include the closing particles to indicate the type of sentences it implies. The closing particle လီၤ indicates a statement, တက့ၢ် for a command, or ဧါ to signal a question or expectation of a response. 

လီၤ (closing particle) 

စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိလီၤ (Saw Too goes to school.)

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) လီၤ(closing particle) 

တက့ၢ် (closing particle) 

စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိတက့ၢ် (Saw Too goes to school.)

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) တက့ၢ်(closing particle) 

ဧါ (closing particle) 

စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိဧါ? (Saw Too goes to school.)

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) ဧါ(closing particle) 

Sentence Snytax 

The sentence can be structured with adverbial modifiers at the beginning, middle, or end. When placed at the beginning, the modifier comes first. In the middle, it follows the subject or verb it modifies. At the end, it typically appears after the object and before the final particles. 

Beginning of the senence

အါတက့ၢ်စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိလီၤ (most of the time, Saw Too goes to school. )

အါတက့ၢ်(most of the time) စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) လီၤ(closing particle) 

Middle of the sentence 

စီၤထူအါတက့ၢ်လဲၤဆူကၠိလီၤ (Saw Too, most of the time, goes to school. )

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) အါတက့ၢ်(most of the time) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) လီၤ(closing particle) 

End of the sentence

စီၤထူလဲၤဆူကၠိအါတက့ၢ်လီၤ (Saw Too goes to school most of the time. )

စီၤထူ (Saw Too) လဲၤဆူ(goes to) ကၠိ(school) အါတက့ၢ်(most of the time) လီၤ(closing particle) 

Some sentences can follow a different subject-verb-object pattern, especially in questions. Typically, the interrogative pronoun is placed at the end, while the possessive pronoun appears at the beginning.

နမံၤဒ်လဲၣ်  (What is your name? ) - န (Your) မံၤ(name) ဒ်လဲၣ်(what) 

နအိၣ်ဖဲလဲၣ် (Where do you live? ) - န (You) အိၣ်(live) ဖဲလဲၣ်(where) 

နမၤမနုၤလဲၣ် (What are you doing? ) - န (You) မၤ(doing) မနုၤလဲၣ်(what) 

Active Voice vs. Passive Voice

Here are some example of passive and active voices in a sentence. For a native speaker, sentence does not have active or passive tone. They may see that as a sentence with arrangment but worded differently. Active or passive will not make a difference in the language because both will have the same implication. 

Simple vs. Compound Sentence

Simple sentences follow the basic structure of subject-verb-object and can stand alone as complete thoughts. In contrast, compound sentences require two independent clauses to form a single, cohesive sentence. 

Introduction

Most Karen speakers do not use parts of speech as a framework for understanding how the language works or how its components are formed. Therefore, this explanation introduces how parts of speech are organized in the language. The main parts of speech are as follows: Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Verbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Interjections, and Particles. 

Noun

Spacing is used only to separate paragraphs in Sgaw Karen writing. It is never used within a sentence or between the syllables of a word. See paragraph below fKaren nouns, like those in other languages, can be classified into categories such as common and proper nouns, countable and uncountable nouns, abstract and concrete nouns, as well as plural and singular nouns. Nouns can also have prefixes and suffixes, and some may appear in compound or couplet forms to provide a complete meaning.

Common vs Proper Nouns 

The main difference between a common noun and a proper noun lies in their classification, which is often indicated by prefixes or suffixes. A proper noun typically has a prefix or suffix before or after the root word, while a common noun does not have either a prefix or a suffix. In some cases, proper nouns may also include a suffix at the end of the word. In rare instances, both a prefix and a suffix may be used interchangebly, appearing both before and after the noun.  

Noun mentioned above, ကစၢၢ်စံယိၣ်, the prefix classifier ကစၢၢ် can be moved to the end as a suffix (စံယိၣ်ကစၢၢ်) and still retain the same meaning. However, this is not possible for all proper nouns (e.g. သူမှဲကျိ, can not have a prefix ကျိသူမှဲ it will not retain the same meaning), as some cannot be altered in this way. Overall, in certain cases, proper nouns may take either a prefix or a suffix. Please see the following examples of proper nouns that can have both a prefix and a suffix. 

A proper noun is formed by combining a common noun with a specific name. In some cases, the first(prefix) or last part (suffix) of a proper noun is combined with a common noun. For example, in the name ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤ (KawThooLei), "ကီၢ်" (Kaw), meaning "Country/Land," is the common noun, while "သူလ့ၤ" (Thoo Lei) is the specific name of the country, making it a proper noun. 

Concrete vs Abstract Nouns 

A concrete noun does not have a prefix or suffix; it consists only of the root word. For example, the word car (in formal Karen, သိလ့ၣ်, or in informal Karen, ကါ) remains unchanged by any prefix or suffix classifier. On the other hand, an abstract noun typically has two components: a prefix followed by a root word, which is usually derived from a verb. In some cases, a formal proper noun may have the root word in a compound form. 

For example, the abstract noun love (တၢ်အဲၣ်) consists of the prefix တၢ်, which indicates a noun, and အဲၣ်, which is the verb form of "to love." Additionally, the noun can also be written in its complete form as တၢ်အဲၣ်တၢ်ကွံ, where the second part of the compound, တၢ်ကွံ, is used to complete the noun. Normally, the second part of the compound does not carry any independent meaning; it simply forms part of the verb following the first တၢ်. In this case, "to love" can be written as either အဲၣ် (the shortened form) or အဲၣ်တၢ်ကွံတၢ် (the complete verb form). The complete verb noun in compound form typically requires the addition of a second တၢ်, though in some cases, it may not. For the verb noun love, it is a special case where a second တၢ် is required. See the table below for examples of concrete and abstract nouns, and for cases where the complete form of the verb does not require a second တၢ်. 

Please refer to the table below for examples of concrete and abstract nouns. The main difference between a concrete and an abstract noun is that an abstract noun typically starts with the prefix တၢ်, (e.g. တၢ်သ့တၢ်ဘၣ် skills/talents) while a concrete noun contains only the root word without any prefix or suffix, (e.g. ထိၣ်ဒ့းဘိ pencil). Both concrete and abstract nouns, in their formal forms, can also appear in compound or couplet structures to complete their meaning. 

Singular vs Plural Nouns  

Singular and plural nouns use specific suffixes. Singular noun suffixes depend on the type of noun. If the noun refers to an animal, the singular suffix ဒု is used; if it refers to a person, the suffix ဂၤ is used. These suffixes are known as numeral classifiers. Similar to other prefixes and suffixes, numeral classifiers indicate the type of noun and work together with numbers to show whether a noun is singular or plural.

In most cases, plural nouns use တဖၣ်, which functions similarly to the English plural ending “-es.” Plural forms can be created either by adding တဖၣ် to the end of the noun or by placing a number before the numeral classifier. Irregular plural forms do not apply in this case. See the examples below for different methods of forming singular and plural nouns. 

Singular noun: 

A pencil = ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိတဘိ

ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိ = pencil, တ = one, ဘိ = numeral classifier for pencil

So, ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိတဘိ literally means “one pencil.”

Plural noun with appendent (တဖၣ်) method: 

Pencils = ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိတဖၣ်

ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိ = pencil, တဖၣ် = plural marker

So, ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိတဖၣ် means “pencils.”

Plural noun with numeral method: 

Three pencils = ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိသၢဘိ

ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိ = pencil, သၢ = three, ဘိ = numeral classifier for pencil

So, ထိၣ်ဒံးဘိသၢဘိ means “three pencils.”

Most singular and plural nouns come with their own numeral classifiers, and some classifiers are generic, meaning that different nouns can share the same numeral classifier. 

Numeral classifiers are usually suffixes because they typically appear at the end of a noun. They modify the noun by indicating the type of object, kinds of living beings, and the category it belongs to. For example, for nouns such as leaves, sheets, fish, blankets, or other thin flat objects, the numeral classifier ဘ့ၣ် is used. One fish is expressed as ညၣ်တဘ့ၣ်, and two fish are expressed as ညၣ်ခံဘ့ၣ်.

Here is a short list of common numeral classifiers to know: