“elephant” in Sgaw Karen
ကဆီ
ka hsaw
elephant
Checked against written sources; not yet confirmed by a native speaker.
“elephant” is written ကဆီ in Sgaw Karen, read in a rough way as ka hsaw. Knyaw helps you read and understand words, not say them out loud. Karen is a tone language, so the English-letter sounds are only a rough help.
This word in a story
ကဆီထံအိၣ်စ့ၢ်ကီးဖဲန့ၣ် ဟးလိၣ်ကွဲးဒီးအီၣ်နီၢ်လါဟ့လီၤ
Hippo was there too, going for a stroll and eating some nice green grass.
from “Why Hippos Have No Hair” →‘ကိညၢ်ဒံး ဆိထူဆိမိၣ်’ ‘ဃီသၣ်လီၤတဲာ်ဘၣ်န့ၣ် ဂ့ၤန့ၢ်ကဆီလီၤတဲာ်ဘၣ်ခိၣ်သၣ်!’
<em>That’s better</em>, thought Chhotu, <em>Better a coconut than an elephant on my head!</em>
from “Playtime” →