Pa'O language

Pa'O (also called Taungthu or 'Black Karen') is a tonal Karenic language of the Sino-Tibetan family, spoken by the Pa'O people — the second-largest ethnic group in Myanmar's Shan State after the Shan. It is used mainly in southern Shan State, with communities in Kayin and Mon States and across the border in northern Thailand (Mae Hong Son); around 860,000 speakers. Like other Karen languages, Pa'O has subject–verb–object (SVO) word order — unusual within Sino-Tibetan, where most Tibeto-Burman languages are SOV — a feature attributed to long contact with neighbouring Mon and Tai languages. It is written mainly in the Burmese (Mon-Burmese) script, with a Latin-based orthography from the Christian missionary tradition also in use, and has two main dialects: Highland/Northern (Taunggyi) and Lowland/Southern (Thaton). Note: publicly documented Pa'O vocabulary with IPA transcription is limited, so the forms shown here are best-effort and await native-speaker verification.