Mon language

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Mon language

The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon

Mon people

The Mon are an ethnic group from Myanmar, living mostly in Mon State, Bago Division, Irrawaddy Delta of present Burma, and along the southern Thai-Myanmar border....
, who live in Burma and Thailand

Thailand

The Kingdom of Thailand is an independent country that lies in the heart of Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Laos and Myanmar, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and Myanmar....
. Mon, unlike most languages in the Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia....
n region, is not tonal

Tonal language

A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. Tone is a Phonology common to many languages around the world . Various Chinese language languages such as Mandarin, Min Nan/Taiwanese Minnan and Cantonese are perhaps the most well-known of such languages....
. Mon is spoken by less than a million people today. In recent years, usage of Mon has declined rapidly, especially among the younger generation. Many ethnic Mon are monolingual in Burmese

Burmese language

The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the government officially recognizes the language as Myanmar in English, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese....
. In Burma, the majority of speakers live in Mon State

Mon State

Mon State is an administrative division of Myanmar. It is sandwiched between Kayin State on the east, the Andaman Sea on the west, Bago Division on the north and Tanintharyi Division on the south, and has a short border with Thailand's Kanchanaburi Province at its south-eastern tip....
, followed by Tanintharyi Division

Tanintharyi Division

Tanintharyi Division , is an administrative Administrative divisions of Burma of Myanmar, covering the long narrow southern part of the country on the Kra Isthmus....
and Kayin State

Kayin State

Kayin State is a administrative divisions of Burma of Myanmar. The capital city is Pa-an....
.

The Mon script is derived from Indian Brahmi script and is the source of the Burmese script.

is an important language in Burmese history.

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Encyclopedia

The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon

Mon people

Thailand

Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia....
n region, is not tonal

Tonal language

Burmese language

Mon State

Tanintharyi Division

Tanintharyi Division , is an administrative Administrative divisions of Burma of Myanmar, covering the long narrow southern part of the country on the Kra Isthmus....
and Kayin State

Kayin State

Kayin State is a administrative divisions of Burma of Myanmar. The capital city is Pa-an....
.

The Mon script is derived from Indian Brahmi script and is the source of the Burmese script.

History

Mon is an important language in Burmese history. Up until the 12th century AD, it was the lingua franca

Lingua franca

A lingua franca is a language systematically used to communicate between persons not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both persons' mother tongues....
of the Irrawaddy valley

Ayeyarwady River

The Ayeyarwady River or Irrawaddy River is a river that flows from north to south of Burma . It is the country's largest river and its most important commercial waterway, with a drainage area of about 158,700 square miles ....
--not only in the Mon kingdoms of the lower Irrawaddy valley but also of upriver Burman

Bamar

The Bamar , are the dominant ethnic group of Burma, constituting approximately 68% of the population. However, there is some speculation that the government has slightly inflated this figure....
kingdom of Pagan

Pagan Kingdom

The Pagan Kingdom is considered to be the first Bamar empire.During the time of the Pyu kingdom, between about 500 and 950, the Bamar, people of the Burmese ethnic group, began infiltrating from the area to the north into the central region of Burma which was occupied by Pyu people that had come under the influence of Mahayana Buddhism f...
(Bagan). Mon, especially written Mon, continued to be the primary language even after the fall of the Mon kingdom of Thaton

Thaton

Thaton is a town in Mon State, in southern Burma on the Tenasserim plains....
to Pagan in 1057. Pagan king Kyanzittha

Kyanzittha

King Kyanzittha also known as Htilein Min was king of Bagan from 1084 to 1113, known for building a large number of temples and religious monuments in Bagan, particularly the Ananda Temple....
(1084-1112) admired the Mon culture, and the Mon language was patronized. The Mon script was the source of the Burmese script created during his reign. Kyanzittha left many inscriptions in Mon. During this period, the Myazedi inscription

Myazedi inscription

Myazedi inscription , inscribed in 1113, is the oldest surviving stone inscription in Burma. "Myazedi" means "jade stupa" , and the name of the inscription comes from a pagoda located nearby.The inscriptions were made in four languages, namely Pyu, Burmese language, Mon language, and Pali, which all tell the story of Prince Rajakuma and King...
, which contains identical inscriptions of a story in Pali

Páli

P?li is a village in Gyor-Moson-Sopron county, Hungary.External links...
, Pyu

Pyu

Pyu refers to a collection of city-states and their Pyu language found in the central and northern regions of modern-day Burma from about 100 BCE to 840 CE....
, Mon, and Burmese on the four sides was carved. However, after Kyanzittha

Kyanzittha

Burmese language

The Burmese language is the official language of Burma. Although the government officially recognizes the language as Myanmar in English, most continue to refer to the language as Burmese....
began to replace Mon and Pyu as lingua franca.

Mon inscriptions from the Dvaravati

Dvaravati

The Dvaravati kingdom existed from the 6th to the 11th centuries. The Kingdom was then absorbed by the growing Lavo and Suphanburi kingdoms. The people of the kingdom used the ancient Mon language, but whether they were ethnically Mon people is unknown....
kingdom's ruins also litter Thailand. However it is not clear if the inhabitants were Mon, a mix of Mon and Malay, or Khmer. Later inscriptions and kingdoms like Lavo were subservient to the Khmer

Khmer Empire

The Khmer Empire was the largest empire of South East Asia based in what is now Cambodia. The empire, which seceded from the kingdom of Chenla, at times ruled over and/or vassalised parts of modern-day Laos, Thailand,Vietnam, Myanmar, and Malaysia....
.

After the fall of Pagan, the Mon language again became the lingua franca of independent Mon kingdom of Hanthawaddy Bago (1287-1539) in the present day Lower Burma

Lower Burma

Lower Burma is a historical region, referring to the part of Burma annexed by the British Empire after the Second Burmese War, which took place in 1852, plus the former kingdom of Arakan and the territory of Tenasserim which the British had taken control of in 1826....
. The language long continued to be prevalent in Lower Burma until the mid-19th century for the region was still mainly populated by the Mon. This changed after the British

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, and other Dependent territory ruled or administered by the United Kingdom , that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries....
captured Lower Burma in 1852, and encouraged immigration to develop Irrawaddy delta

Irrawaddy Delta

The Irrawaddy Delta or Ayeyarwady Delta lies in the Irrawaddy Division, the lowest expanse of land in Burma that fans out from the limit of tidal influence at Myan Aung to the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea, 290 km to the south at the mouth of the Ayeyarwady River....
for farming. The ensuing mass migration of peoples into the region from other areas of Burma as well as India and China relegated the Mon language to a tertiary status.

The language languished during British colonial rule, and has experienced a rapid decline in the number of speakers since the Burmese independence in 1948. With little or no support from successive Burmese governments, the Mon language (especially written Mon) continues to be propagated mostly by Mon monks. The Mon language instruction survives in the Thai-Burmese border inside the Mon rebel controlled areas.

Dialects

Mon has three primary dialects in Burma, coming from the various regions the Mon inhabit. They are the Central (areas surrounding Mottama

Mottama

Mottama, formerly known as Martaban, is a small town in the Thaton district of Mon State, in southern Burma. It is located on the right bank of the Salween River, on the opposite side of Mawlamyaing....
and Mawlamyaing), Bago

Bago

Bago may refer to:*Myanmar**Bago, Burma a city**Bago Division an administrative region*Philippines**Bago City, Negros Oriental**Bago **Bago ...
, and Ye

Ye, Burma

Ye may refer to:*Ye, Ayeyarwady Division*Ye, Mon State...
dialects. All are mutually intelligible. Thai Mon has some differences from the Burmese dialects of Mon, but is almost mutually intelligible.

Script

The Mon script is ancestral to the Burmese script

Burmese alphabet

The Burmese script is an abugida in the Brahmic family used in Burma for writing Burmese language. In addition, various other scripts share some aspect and letters of the Burmese script, though they should not be considered strictly Burmese, including Mon language, Shan language, S'gaw Karen, Eastern and Western Pwo Karen dialects, Geba Kare...
, but utilises several different letters and diacritic

Diacritic

A diacritic is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. The term derives from the Greek language d?a???t???? ....
s that represent phonemes that do not exist in Burmese, such as the diacritic of the medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial Bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...	Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....	Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricatives, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider them to be consonants at all....
Stops Stop consonant A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms....
Fricatives Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...			1
Nasals Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....
Sonorant Sonorant In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means a sound that's "squeezed out" or "spat out" is not a sonorant.... s

¹ is only found in Burmese loans.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

Vocalic register

Unlike the surrounding Burmese and Thai

Thai language

Thai , is the national language and official language language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group....
languages, Mon is not a tonal language

Tone (linguistics)

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning?that is, to distinguish or inflection words. All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation , but not all languages use tones to distingu...
. As in many Mon-Khmer languages, Mon uses a vowel-phonation or vowel-register

In linguistics, a register language, also known as a pitch-register language, is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonology system....
system in which the quality of voice in pronouncing the vowel is phonemic. There are two registers in Mon:

Clear (modal) voice, analyzed by various linguists as ranging from ordinary to creaky
Creaky voice

In linguistics, creaky voice , is a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together; as a result, the vocal folds are compressed rather tightly, becoming relatively slack and compact....
Breathy voice
Breathy voice

Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them....
, vowels have a distinct breathy quality

In the examples below, breathy voice is marked with a grave accent.

Nouns and noun phrases

Singular and Plural

Mon nouns do not inflect for number. That is, they do not have separate forms for singular and plural:

s?t pakaw	mòa	mèa
apple	one	classifier

'one apple'

s?t pakaw	?a	mèa
apple	two	classifier

'two apples'

Classifiers

Like many other Southeast Asian languages, Mon has classifiers

Classifier (linguistics)

A classifier, in linguistics, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify a noun according to its meaning.Classifier systems should not be confused with noun classes, which often categorize nouns in ways independent from meaning, such as according to morphology ....
which are used when a noun appears with a numeral. The choice of classifier depends on the semantics of the noun involved.

kaneh	mòa	tan?ng
pen	one	classifier

'one pen'

chup	mòa	tan?m
tree	one	classifier

'one tree'

Sentences

Affirmative sentences

The ordinary word order for sentences in Mon is Subject-Verb-Object, as in the following examples

?oa	ran	hau	toa	ya.
I	buy	rice	completive	affirmative

'I bought rice.'

Nyeh	t??	paton	k?	?ua	pàsa	?engloit
3rd	plur	teach	to	1st	language	English

'They taught me English.'

Questions

Yes-no questions are shown with a final particle ha

?è	?ìa	p?ng	toa	ya	ha?
you	eat	rice	com	aff	q

‘Have you eaten rice?’

Wh-questions show a different final particle, rau. The interrogative word does not undergo wh-movement

Wh-movement

Wh-movement is a syntax phenomenon found in many languages around the world, in which interrogative words show a special word order. Unlike ordinary phrases, such wh-words appear at the beginning of an question....
. That is, it does not necessarily move to the front of the sentence:

Tala Ong	kratkraw	mu	ràu?
Tala Ong	wash	what	wh:q

'What did Tala Ong wash?'

Mon language

History

Dialects

Script

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Vocalic register

Nouns and noun phrases

Singular and Plural

Classifiers

Sentences

Affirmative sentences

Questions

Further reading

External links