Eastern Pwo orPhlou,(Pwo Eastern Karen:ဖၠုံ, ဖၠုံယှိုဝ်,^[1]ဖၠုံဘာႋသာ့ဆ်ုခၠါင်, ဖၠုံဆ်ုခၠါင်^{[citation needed]},Burmese:အရှေ့ပိုးကရင်) is aKaren language spoken byEastern Pwo people and over a million people inMyanmar and by about 50,000 inThailand, where it has been calledSouthern Pwo. It is not intelligible withother varieties of Pwo, with which it shares 63 to 65%lexical similarity.^[1] The Eastern Pwo dialects share 91 to 97% lexical similarity.^[1]

A script calledLeke was developed between 1830 and 1860 and is used by members of the millenarian Leke sect of Buddhism. Otherwise, a variety ofMon-Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created aThai alphabet that is in limited use.

• Kayin State andTanintharyi Region: long contiguous area near the Thai border^[1]
• Bago Region:Bago andToungoo townships^[1]

The following displays the phonological features of two of the eastern Pwo Karen dialects, Pa'an and Tavoy:

• Post-alveolar affricates /tɕ,tɕʰ/, are realized as fricatives [s,sʰ], among some formal dialects.
• /t̪/ when pronounced slowly is phonetically realized as a dental affricate [t̪θ].
• Voiced plosives /b,d/ are pronounced as implosives [ɓ,ɗ] only in the Pa'an dialect.
• /h/ does not exist in the Tavoy dialect.
• /j/ may tend to be slightly fricativized [ʝ] when preceding front vowels.
• /r/ may also be realized as a tap [ɾ].

• /ɪ/ does not occur after a /w/ sound.
• /ɪ,ʊ,ɛ,ɔ/ are merged with /i,u,e,o/ in the Tavoy dialect.^[3]

Four tones are present in Eastern Pwo:

• Pa’an (Inland Eastern Pwo Karen,Moulmein)^[1]
• Kawkareik (Eastern Border Pwo Karen)^[1]
• Tavoy (Southern Pwo Karen)^[1]

The alphabet used for Eastern Pwo Karen language is inMon-Burmese script.

The Eastern Pwo alphabet contains 36 letters, including 3 unique to the language (in gold), and one shared with Mon.^[4]

The Eastern Pwo Karen numeric symbols have beenproposed for encoding in a futureBurmese Unicode block.

• The number zero,ploh plih (ပၠဝ်ပၠေ), 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 (ဆီ့) denotes 10, any number from 1 to 9beforechi can be interpreted as "of ten(s)", so 20 would bene chi.Pong (ဖင်ႋ) denotes 100, any number from 1 to 9beforepong can be interpreted as "hundred(s)", so 200 would bene pong. Similarly, the same rule applies to thousand,muh (မိုင့်); ten-thousand,lah (လာ); and hundred-thousand,loud/thein (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋ).
• Numbers after the hundred-thousands (millions and above) are prefixed withthay (သိင်ႋ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would beloud/thein luh chi (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would beloud/thay ne chi (လုဂ်/သိင့်ၮီ့ဆီ့),hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would beloud/thay luh pong (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဖင်ႋ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would beloud/thay luh lah (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုလာ), "hundred thousand of ten thousands".

Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai'sdecimal word,chut, (Karen: ကျူဒ်, ကျူ(ဒ်); Thai: จุด; English: and, dot). For example, 1.01 isluh chut ploh plih luh (လ်ု ပၠဝ်ပၠေလ်ု).

Fractions are formed by sayingpuh (ပုံႉ) after the numeratorand the denominator. For example, one-third (¹/₃) would beluh puh thuh puh (လ်ုပုံသိုင့်ပုံ) and three over one, three-"oneths" (³/₁) would bethuh puh luh puh (သိုင့်ပုံလ်ုပုံ).

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