နအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါ
na oh hsoo oh klay ah?
The phrase "how are you?" in Karen is နအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါ (na oh hsoo oh klay ah?).
This is a common greeting used to ask someone about their current well-being.
How do you pronounce it?
na oh hsoo oh klay ah?
Did you know?
- In many Karen communities, instead of asking 'how are you', it is more common to ask if someone has 'eaten rice' yet, which serves the same social function.
- The Sgaw Karen script used to write နအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါ was developed by American Baptist missionaries in the 19th century based on the Burmese alphabet.
- While နအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါ is used for well-being, Sgaw Karen and Pwo Karen are distinct languages, meaning the phrase may be completely unrecognizable to a speaker of the other group.
Example conversation
Two friends meet on the street.
- ကေကေ Kay Kayနအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါ စောစောna oo soo oo cha eh Saw SawHow are you, Saw Saw?
- စောစော Saw Sawယအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့၊ တဘျီမ့ၢ်နအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ဧါya oo soo oo cha, ta bye mae na oo soo oo cha ehI am fine, and how are you?
- ကေကေ Kay Kayယအိၣ်ဆူၣ်အိၣ်ချ့ ပှဲၤya oo soo oo cha pweeI am very well.
- စောစော Saw Sawတၢ်မုၣ်မုၣ်လီၤta mu mu leeThat is good.
