The Karen languages are tonal languages spoken by some three million Karen people

Karen people

The Karen or Kayin people , are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma . The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people...

. They are of unclear affiliation within the Tibeto-Burman languages

Tibeto-Burman languages

The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Chinese members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken thoughout the highlands of southeast Asia, as well as lowland areas in Burma ....

. The Karen languages are written using the Burmese script. The three main branches are Sgaw, Pwo

Pwo Karen languages

The Pwo Karen languages are the second largest group of the Karen languages.There are four languages in this branch: Eastern Pwo Karen, Northern Pwo Karen, Western Pwo Karen, and Phrae Pwo Karen. They are not mutually intelligible....

, and Pa'o. Karenni (also known Kayah or Red Karen) and Kayan (also known as Padaung) are related to the Sgaw branch. They are almost unique among the Tibeto-Burman languages in having a subject–verb–object word order; other than Karen and Bai, Tibeto-Burman languages feature a subject–object–verb order. This is likely due to influence from neighboring Mon

Mon language

The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Burma and Thailand. Mon, like the related language Cambodian—but unlike most languages in Mainland Southeast Asia—is not tonal. Mon is spoken by more than a million people today. In recent years, usage of Mon has...

 and Tai languages

Tai languages

The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages are a branch of the Tai–Kadai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Burma's Shan language;...

. The languages are also considered unusual for not having any Chinese influence.

Classification

Because they are linguistically conservative in many ways, Benedict (1972) removed the Karen languages from Tibeto-Burman in a Tibeto-Karen family, but this no longer seems justified.

The internal structure of the family is as follows:

• Pa’o
• Pwo (Eastern
  Eastern Pwo language
  Eastern Pwo, or Phlou, is a Karen language spoken by over a million people in Burma and by about 50,000 in Thailand, where it has been called Southern Pwo. It is not intelligible with other varieties of Pwo....
  
  , Northern, Western, Phrae Pwo)
• Sgaw–Bghai
  • Bghai: Lahta, Padaung
    Padaung language
    Padaung or Padaung Karen, also known as Kayan, is a Karen language of Burma....
    
     (Kayan), Bwe (Bghai), Geko, Geba
  • Brek (Bwe)
  • Kayah: Eastern Kayah, Western Kayah, Yintale, Manumanaw
  • Sgaw: Sgaw
    S'gaw Karen language
    S'gaw, also known as S'gaw Karen and S'gaw Kayin, is a Karen language spoken by over one million S'gaw Karen people in Burma, and 200,000 in Thailand. S'gaw Karen is spoken in Tanintharyi Region's Ayeyarwady Delta, Yangon Division, Bago Division and Kayin State. The two main dialects of S'gaw Karen...
    
    , Paku Karen, Mopwa

External links

• Free Anglo-Karen Dictionary, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0801341p.pdf
• Anglo-karen Grammar http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks09/0900201p.pdf
• S'gaw Karen bible http://www.myanmarbible.com/bible/SgawKaren/html/index.html
• Kawthoolei, meaning ‘a land without evil’, is the Karen name of the land of Karen people. An independent and impartial media outlet aimed to provide contemporary information of all kinds — social, cultural, educational and political
• Karenpeople.org, a non-profit web portal
  Web portal
  A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
  
   on the Karen peoples
• Karen.org, The website of the Karen National League of Bakersfield, California
  Bakersfield, California
  Bakersfield is a city near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in Kern County, California. It is roughly equidistant between Fresno and Los Angeles, to the north and south respectively....
  
  
• Drum Publication Group, Sgaw Karen language materials available free online. Includes an online English - Sgaw Karen Dictionary.
• http://www.kwekalu.net, The only Karen language news outlet online based in Mergui/Tavoy District of Kawthoolei