ABSTRACT
There are many people in Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand who are known as Karen. Most of these people live in Burma. There are other people in this area who do not call themselves Karen but who are called by Karen by various peoples for sometimes divergent reasons. Warned by the Burmese in about 1825 that the British were fierce and dangerous, Karen in the Tavoy (Dawei) area took evasive action in ways that showed they knew how to stay hidden. One of the first to suggest that Karen was a Tibeto-Burman language was the outstanding epigraphist, G.H. Luce. Burmese publications, however, and citing Luce’s earlier writings, state that Karen is a Tibeto-Burman language. They are joined by the American linguists, James Matisoff and David Solnit, who see Karennic and Burman both as part of the Tibeto-Burman family. New trends in what might be called Karen studies in Thailand developed with the growing strength of the environmentalist movement in the 1980s.
