Sunkist speaking Karen and S’gaw

This video was recorded by Kevin Holohan in Omaha, Nebraska and features native speaker Sunkist. According to an Ethnologue report in 1983, S'gaw Karen was spoken by 1,280,000 people in Burma/Myanmar. It is a Southern Karenic language of the subgroup Tibeto-Burman belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. Its speakers generally live in Myanmar and Thailand, and has been used as the official language in the Karen National Union organization. S'gaw Karen was historically written in the Latin script but is now written in the Burmese script. The language's status is considered to be at the level of wide communication, where its speakers are widespread, and S'gaw Karen enjoys a presence in church for several Karenic languages. S'gaw Karen is also internally diverse with a northern, southern, and eastern (Pa'an) variety.