ထွံ
htwi
The word for dog in Karen is ထွံ (htwi).
ထွံ is a noun used to refer to the dog as an animal.
Meaning: animal (noun)
How do you pronounce it?
The romanization is htwi.
Did you know?
- In some Karen dialects, the word for 'dog' can be used as a harsh insult to imply someone is low-born or lacking character.
- The script used to write ထွံ is derived from the Burmese alphabet but was adapted to fit the unique phonetic sounds of the Karen language.
- Because Karen is a tonal language, changing the pitch of the word ထွံ can completely change its meaning to something entirely unrelated.
Example conversation
A mother and son are looking at a dog in the yard.
- မေမေ May Mayစောဘေ၊ နီၣ် ထွံ အီၤ လၢ ပှဲၤ ထီၤSaw Beh, nee htwan ee la pwe hteeSaw Beh, look at the dog barking.
- စောဘေ Saw Baeထွံ အီၤ လၢ ပှဲၤ ထီၤ မ့ၢ် ဘၣ်htwan ee la pwe htee ma bawThe dog is barking, indeed.
- မေမေ May Mayထွံ အီၤ အိၣ် လၢ ပှဲၤ ထီၤhtwan ee oh la pwe hteeThe dog is in the yard.
- စောဘေ Saw Baeယ အိး ထွံ အါ ဖိya ee htwan ah phiI want a puppy.
