Читать книгу The Karen People of Burma: A Study in Anthropology and Ethnology - Harry Ignatius Marshall - Страница 9

Table of Contents

In Chapter I, I referred briefly to the relationship of the Karen dialects to the other languages of Burma and noted the bearing of that subject upon the question of the origin of the people. I adopted the grouping suggested in the last Burma Census (that of 1911), where those dialects are described as forming a Sinitic or Karen group of the Siamese-Chinese sub-family of the Tibeto- Chinese languages. This group comprises three principal branches, namely, the Sgaw, the Pwo (including the Taungthu), and the Bwe, which embraces several minor dialects in the Toungoo and Red Karen country. Some of these latter forms of speech have been very little studied. A few books have been published in Bwe, but at present are superseded by publications in the Sgaw, the Sgaw language was reduced to writing by Dr. Jonathan Wade in 1832, the Burmese alphabet being used in denoting most of the sounds, while certain symbols were employed for such letters as had no equivalent in Burmese. In this way a perfect phonetic alphabet was created.

It may not be out of placed in this connection to point out a few of the marked characteristics of the Karen language. The order of words in the sentence is that of the English, as well as of the Chinese and Tai, namely, subject, predicate, and object. The language is monosyllabic, except in a few instances, some of which are more apparent than real. Each root may be used in any form of speech, that is, 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.

Dr. Wade calls attention to the fact that the Karen often use words in pairs, verbs being paired sometimes merely for the sake of euphony, though generally to give fullness and force to the idea intended. Such pairing of words, whether nouns, verbs, or other parts of speech, invest the Karen language, Dr. Wade thinks, with "a beauty and force of expression unsurpassed perhaps in any other language in the world." These paired words, which are called by the Karen 'father and mother words," may be parsed separately or together according to their position in the sentence. They may consist of two roots having similar meanings, or of a well-known root together with one which by itself has no meaning now commonly understood. Misapprehension is often avoided by the use of paired words. For example, "ni" (with the circumflex tone) means years, and the same syllable (with the long tone) means day. When this monosyllable is carefully pronounced, one does not always catch the difference; but "ni-thaw' unmistakably denotes day, because "thaw" is another designation for this period of time; and "ni-la" cleriy signifies year, the latter syllable meaning literally month. Such compound words may have compound modifiers which, when used with discrimination, give a pleasing finish to the speech.

The Sgaw dialect has six different tones and the Pwo an equal number. The other dialect have various numbers, but not so many and difficult as the tones of the Chinese language.

The Sgaw alphabet consists of twenty-five consonants and ten vowels. One character appears both as a guttural and a consonant. There are no closed syllables in this dialect. The Pwo dialect has three nasal endings which, Dr. Gilmore thinks, are a remnant of the original speech. Evidence in support of this view is supplied by a comparison of the meanings of the single word "hpaw" in Sgaw Karen with the nasal forms expressing the same meanings in Pwo. In the former dialect "hpaw" means one of three things, namely cook, flower, or granary, while in the latter these meaning require the use of three nasal forms as follows; "hpawn, "hpaw," and "hpan." Other roots from the two dialects show a difference of this sort, indicating that the Sgaw has dropped its original nasals.[5-1]

There is no proper relative pronounce in Sgaw. The particle "leu" serves in this capacity, as well as doing duty as quotation marks, a preposition, and a part of every compound prepositions, this last form of speech being one of the characteristics of the language. The reflexive use of the pronoun is a notable idiom in the Sgaw. The demonstrative supplies the place of the definite article. A numerical affix or adjective is employed with every numeral. Each of these affixes is supposed to denote the leading characteristic of the noun to which it refers. Its use is similar to our saying in English "cattle, five head," or "bread, four loaves."

The verb is almost always considered transitive and, if there should be no word that could properly stand as its object, the nominal pronoun "ta" is added to supply it. The verb "to be" takes the objective case. The double negative is used with the verb after the manner of the French and Burmese idiom, "t'--ba" corresponding to the Burmese "m--bu."

The Karen numerals are based on the decimal system not only from one to ten, but also upwards by tens and hundreds to tens of millions. There is, however, a marked peculiarity in the Bwe method of counting from six to nine, six being three couples; seven, three couples-one; eight, four couples, and nine, four couples-one.

The Pwo dialect does not differ materially from the Sgaw in structure, or greatly in vocabulary, as shown by a comparison of the two by Dr. Wade, which indicates that thirteen-fourteenths of the words of the Sgaw and Pwo are from the same roots. For one familiar only with the Sgaw dialect there is difficulty in immediately understanding the Pwo, because the nasals affect the pronunciation of the latter. The Bwe and other Toungoo dialects seem to have nasals and wide variations in tones. They also possess letters that are lacking in the Sgaw, such as g, j, z, and a peculiar dj that is impossible to represent in English letters. The Mopgha have the letter f, which they pronounce highly aspirated.[5-2] The Sgaw have no g, j, v, or z. They have both the aspirated and unaspirated, k, t, and p. Besides these consonants, they have gutturals and combined consonants to which there are no parallels in Western speech.[5-3]

Although in the early days the Karen had no written language, it is not to be inferred that they were without a literature. On the contrary, a large quantity of bard literature was handed down orally from generation to generation, being taught by certain elders to the youths who were arriving at maturity, in order that they might transmit it in turn without change to those coming after them. This literature comprises probably more than two hundred tales, legends, and mythical stories. A large proportion of these are in the nature of beast tales or fables, such as are found in India, European, and Africa. Some of the myths and legends are in the form of verse and were formerly recited at length at funerals and on other festal occasion, or were sung to the accompaniment of the harp. There are also the epics containing the "Y'wa" legends. Finally, a considerable amount of wise instruction is contained in the numerous short sayings, Proverbs, and riddles that have survived. Fragments of the shorter and longer poems, chanted at funerals, have been quoted in the chapter on Funeral Customs, and some of the tales and myths have been referred to or paraphrased in other portions of this work. Further presentation and discussion of the Karen literature is reserved for a future study.

A Karen Belle {Thought not particularly handsome, many of the Karen maidens are very attractive.}