A script called Leke was developed between 1830 and 1860 and is used by members of the millenarian Leke sect of Buddhism. Otherwise, a variety of Mon-Burmese alphabets are used, and refugees in Thailand have created a Thai alphabet that is in limited use.
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 9 beforechi can be interpreted as "of ten(s)", so 20 would be ne chi. Pong (ဖင်ႋ) denotes 100, any number from 1 to 9 beforepong can be interpreted as "hundred(s)", so 200 would be ne 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 with thay (သိင်ႋ), hundred thousand. For example, one million would be loud/thein luh chi (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဆီ့), "hundred thousand of tens"; two million would be loud/thay ne chi (လုဂ်/သိင့်ၮီ့ဆီ့), hundred thousand of two tens; ten million would be loud/thay luh pong (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုဖင်ႋ), "hundred thousand of hundreds"; one billion would be loud/thay luh lah (လုဂ်/သိင်ႋလ်ုလာ), "hundred thousand of ten thousands".
Decimals
Due to the close approximation to Thailand, the Eastern Pwo Karen adopts Thai's decimal word, chut, (Karen: ကျူဒ်, ကျူ(ဒ်); Thai: จุด; English: and, dot). For example, 1.01 is luh chut ploh plih luh (လ်ု ပၠဝ်ပၠေလ်ု).
Fractions
Fractions are formed by saying puh (ပုံႉ) after the numerator and the denominator. For example, one-third (1/3) would be luh puh thuh puh (လ်ုပုံသိုင့်ပုံ) and three over one, three-"oneths" (3/1) would be thuh puh luh puh (သိုင့်ပုံလ်ုပုံ).
↑Kato, Atsuhiko (1995). The phonological systems of three Pwo Karen dialects. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 18. pp.63–103.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
