Tag: Kayahli

Last month at a linguistics conference in Yangon, experts called for multilingual education to be made a priority. Here at SDC, we would like to provide our supporters with some background of the history of our Karenni language. The Karenni language has a long history as a spoken language. It is known by many names. It can be called Western Red Karen, Karenni or KayahLi. Kayah refers to the largest ethnic group in Karenni State as well as the language. This language is part of the Tibeto-Burman linguistic family. This is the native tongue of the majority of people in Karenni Refugee Camp 1. It is estimated that there are over 100,000 speakers of KayahLi. The language is spoken in Mae Hong Son province of Thailand and Kayah State, Burma. Many Kayah speakers are now dispersed across a number of countries including Australia, New Zealand, Finland and The U.S.A. There are three different alphabets for KayahLi. The first two are based on Burmese...