Art. III.—Short Vocabulary of Red Karen

Extract

The subjoined list of words is founded mainly on those of B. H. Hodgson, but certain omissions and additions have been made, with the object of showing only those words in common use which experience teaches are not easily altered or changed in the times of “storm and stress” through which most of the wilder tribes of Burma are passing, or which they have undergone at some previous stage of their history. In few parts of the world, indeed, has tribal conflict been more incessant than amongst the Mongoloid hillmen of S.E. Asia, or the conditions more favourable for the disintegration of old and the formation of new languages and dialects,—hence the multiplication of the latter so frequently remarked on by philologists.