Burmese-English+differences

Differences Between Karen and English:

There are 33 symbols in the alphabet.

There are 12 vowels.



There are problems with the way words are pronounced in Burmese and the way they're spelled. Even within the same publication, there may be different spellings of the same word, due to the "discrepancy between orthography and pronunciation." Burmese is not written with a sequence of letters left to right. Symbols for vowels can be before, above, below or on the right of the initial consonant. Spaces separate phrases and not words. Chart found here

Unlike English, Karen is mainly monosyllabic, except in a few instances. Each root may be used in any form of speech, including, as noun, adjective, verb, or adverb, by the addition of the proper particle or in combination with other roots. Each syllable has a signification of its own and a grammatical relation to one or more of the other syllables in every compound part of speech.good website on language differences

Tone and pitch are also used to distinguish between words that would sound identical. This concept would seem strange to someone who speaks English, but others may find the English concept of two different meanings for one word strange. The verb is placed between the subject and the object in Karen which is unusual Tibeto-Burman languages. Information taken from here