Talk:Karen people
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[edit] rm of History section
I removed the following passage, whose expression is rather too POV for inclusion here; the information contained therein needs to be sourced, referenced, and re-written in a more encyclopaedic tone:
- During WWII the British approached the Karen and proposed that in exchange for their assistance and aid against the Burmese, when the war ended they would be named as a specific tribe people who deserved an area (state) of land for themselves. However, when the war ended, the British made a list of native people along the Thailand/Burma border who deserved land named specifically for the tribe, yet they forgot to name the Karen as one of the peoples. Therefore, the Burmese turned their anger against the Karen for their betrayal, so the Karen sought protection in across the border of Thailand. The Thai, however, do not see the Karen as people deserving of Thai citizenship, so when they are caught, they are sent back to the center of Burma... where the Karen villages are pillaged and the people brutally murdered by the Burmese Army. As of now the Karen people attempt to survive in the remote areas on border between Thailand and Burma, struggling to survive the attacks by the Burmese Army and evade discovery by the Thai border police. They live lives haunted by murder, rape, and replacement. They do not have a country to call their own, as the Burmese will kill them if they are found and the Thai will not accept them, and there are too many people to count hiding, establishing horrible negotiations with the Thai border police in order to survive. There are thousands of people whose births have never been recorded and whose deaths have never been documented. There is an entire race of people living in rancid conditions without any real evidence that they even exist.
--cjllw | TALK 06:45, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Suppression of religion
Since ethnic cleansing had already been mentioned without objection, I've added a sentence referring to the suppression of religion by the Burmese government, with citation. I also added to the external references links to reports by the State Dept.
[edit] Language classification
While some older groupings had Karenic as its own branch in Sino-Tibetan, it is now considered to belong to the Tibeto-Burman group. Also, the claim that Karen and Bai are the only Sino-Tibetan languages with SVO order is false on its face—see almost any SInitic language for a counterexample. Ergative rlt 00:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] SVO and influence
While an independent innovation of SVO order is possible, all sources on the Karen languages that I've seen give either Mon and Tai contacts as a likely source for that order, or do not speculate at all on its origin. A source for scholars of Karen who support independent innovation would be useful. Also, note that traditional histories of a language do not necessarily have anything to do with the history of the language as theorized or determined by linguists. Ergative rlt 01:34, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
