Pa'O language

The Pa'O language (also spelled Pa-O or Pa-oh; Pa'o Karen: ပအိုဝ်ႏဘာႏသာႏ, listen^ⓘ); Burmese: ပအိုဝ်းဘာသာ), sometimes called Taungthu, is a Karen language spoken by close to 900,000 Pa'O people in Myanmar.

The language is primarily written using a Burmese script alphabet devised by Christian missionaries, and many of the materials now available for it on the Internet derive from Christian missionary involvement, although most of the Pa'O are generally reported to be Buddhists (without real statistics, etc.).

The language is also referred to by the exonyms "Black Karen" and "White Karen", both of which are terms used in contrast to "Red Karen" (Karenni), also of Myanmar.

Dialects include Taunggyi and Thaton.

The following displays the phonological features of the Pa'O (Taungthu) language:

• /p, t, k, ʔ/ and /m, n, ŋ/ can occur as final consonants. Stops may also be heard as unreleased [p̚, t̚, k̚].

Pa'O is written using a modified version of the Mon-Burmese script. Below are the consonant letters in Pa'O; additional letters in the Burmese letter inventory are used to transcribe Pali.