Naw Win and Karen

Naw Win, our Karen language teacher in
Chiang Mai.

After the unexpected trip back to the US for the funeral of Marcia’s parents, we made our way back to Chiang Mai. After a day or two of rest and general catch-up, we tried to live up to the expectations of full time study of the Karen language. Generally, that meant three hour sessions with our teacher, Naw Win, followed by as many hours as we could manage of writing stories in Karen and working on remembering vocabulary and sentence structure. We did day trips and meetings related to the Irrigation Project and the general mission work as well so it was just “sort of” full time but as much as our language-burned-out brains could handle.

Karen study was a struggle for us but it was not any fault of Naw Win. She was a first class Christian and person and Marcia and I both admired her greatly. She was small in stature but a giant in her faith and life. Born and educated in Burma, she had pretty decent, though long neglected, English as well text book, native, Sgaw Karen skills for both reading and writing. We were fortunate she was available to teach us.

Like many Christian Karen, Naw Win had a missionary spirit and a calling to work with her own people. So, after nursing training, she traveled to Thailand eventually staffing a Baptist medical clinic in the Musikee (the upper watershed of the Mae Chaem River) area. The Musikee area had many Karen villages and became one of the centers of Baptist work with a number of strong churches and church leaders. Naw Win, providing the only medical care in the whole area at the time, as well as working in the church, was an important part of that growth. Single her whole life, she adopted at least one son who likewise, grew to become a leader within the Karen Baptist Churches of Thailand heading up a large boarding school in the Musikee area.

Naw Win had retired by the time we took her on as a Karen teacher but she was still active in the church and community. She pushed us pretty hard in the Karen classes and could certainly cover a lot more in three hours than we could digest in the rest of the day. Karen was also difficult in that there were regional accents and variations. Since we were traveling all around the Karen areas, we would encounter lots of variations and wouldn’t understand.

The biggest variation was Burmese Karen vs Thai Karen. The first Karen Christians were from Burma, the first educated Karen were from Burma, the Karen alphabet was put in writing by missionaries in Burma using the Burmese script and the Bible was first translated into Karen in Burma using Burmese Karen. Therefore, Burmese Karen was considered formal and “proper” Karen and as missionaries, it was deemed best that we learn the Burmese style. Unfortunately, virtually no one we encountered spoke the Burmese style. Afterall, we were in Thailand!

But even if we had tried to learn Thai style Karen, just which Thai style would that have been? In the Mae Sariang area they had one accent while in the Musikee area, they had another. For example, the number 5 is “yae” in Mae Sariang but pronounced “zae” in Musikee. I recall being told that sometimes, accents or dialects might vary from one side of a mountain to the other or be different on one side of a river compared to the other side. Throw in some variations by people with a Pwo Karen background vs a Sgaw Karen background, some regional slang, idioms, and personal styles, all while chewing a good wad of betel nut, and we had a hard time understanding.

At the same time, the Karen themselves seemed to generally understand what we said. Being native speakers and hearers, they could adapt to variations better than we could. Eventually, since I had to do a fair bit of public speaking in Karen, I got to the place where I could preach in Karen as long as I had some time to prepare. I was and remain, not very eloquent in Karen (or English for that matter) but understandable. Most Thai Karen however, also understood a good bit of Thai, so if I got in a pinch, I could throw in a Thai word or phrase and it would be OK. As for listening and comprehending, we still have issues and alas, can get lost in Karen conversations pretty easily.

The last 10 years of our mission work was based in the US working with Karen (and other) former refugees from Burma that had been resettled in the US. Being from Burma, they spoke the Burmese style Karen which was OK, but using Thai words in a pinch was no longer helpful. It was Karen or nothing. The good part of that was that my Karen skills improved quite a lot over the last 10 years of our mission career. Too bad though, it took so long to happen.