Mon language

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Mon
မဩန 
Pronunciation: /pʰesa mɑn/
Spoken in: Burma, Thailand, United States (California) 
Region: Southeast Asia
Total speakers: Myanmar: 742,900, Total: 850,530[1]
Language family: Austro-Asiatic
 Mon-Khmer
  Monic
   Mon 
Writing system: Burmese alphabet (itself derived from the Old Mon Indic-based script) 
Official status
Official language in: none, recognised as a minority language in Burma and Thailand
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: –
ISO 639-3: mnw
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
This article is about Mon language, spoken in southeastern Burma and western Thailand. For the northeastern Thai, northwestern Lao, and northern Vietnamese language of the Hmong, see Hmong language.

The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Burma and Thailand. In Burma, the majority of speakers lives in Mon State, followed by Tanintharyi Division and Kayin State.[2] In recent years, usage of Mon has declined rapidly, especially among the younger generation.[1] Many ethnic Mon, like the Shan, are monolingual in Burmese. Mon, unlike most languages in the Southeast Asian region, is not tonal.

Mon is considered an important language in Burmese history. It was the lingua franca in the beginning of the Pagan Kingdom, during the 9th Century. Old Burmese began to replace Mon and Pyu as lingua franca[3] During the reign of Burman king Kyanzittha, who ruled from 1084 to 1112 and admired the Mon culture, the Mon language was patronised. He left many inscriptions in Mon. During this period, the Myazedi inscription, which contains identical inscriptions of a story in Pali, Pyu, Mon, and Burmese on the four sides was carved.[3] However, after Kyanzittha's death, usage of the Mon language declined among the Burmans.

Contents

[edit] Dialects

Mon has three primary dialects in Burma, coming from the various regions the Mon inhabit. They are the Central (areas surrounding Mottama and Mawlamyaing), Bago, and Ye dialects.[4] All are mutually intelligible. Thai Mon has some differences from the Burmese dialects of Mon, but is almost mutually intelligible.

[edit] Written script

The Mon script is ancestral to the Burmese script, but utilises several different letters and diacritics that represent phonemes that do not exist in Burmese, such as the diacritic of the medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter.[5]

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Consonants

Bilabial Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Stops p pʰ ɓ t tʰ ɗ c cʰ k kʰ ʔ
Fricatives s ç 1 h
Nasals m n ɲ ŋ
Sonorants w l, r j

1/ç/ is only found in Burmese loans.

[edit] Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ɛ ʌ ɔ
Open a

[edit] Vocalic register

Unlike the surrounding Burmese and Thai languages, Mon is not a tonal language. As in many Mon-Khmer languages, Mon uses a vowel-phonation or vowel-register system in which the quality of voice in pronouncing the vowel is phonemic. There are two registers in Mon:

  1. Clear (modal) voice, analyzed by various linguists as ranging from ordinary to creaky
  2. Breathy voice, vowels have a distinct breathy quality

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (2005). Mon: A language of Myanmar. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. SIL International. Retrieved on 2006-07-09.
  2. ^ Dr. SM. The Mon Language (An endangered species). Monland Restoration Council. Retrieved on 2006-07-12.
  3. ^ a b Strachan, Paul (1990). Imperial Pagan: Art and Architecture of Burma. University of Hawaii Press, 66. ISBN 0-8248-1325-1. 
  4. ^ South, Ashley (2003). Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake. Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1609-2. 
  5. ^ Proposal for encoding characters for Myanmar minority languages in the UCS (PDF). International Organization for Standardization (2006-04-02). Retrieved on 2006-07-09.

[edit] Further reading

  • Diffloth, Gérard. The Dvaravati Old Mon Language and Nyah Kur. Monic language studies, vol. 1. Bangkok, Thailand: Chulalongkorn University Print. House, 1984. ISBN 9745637831
  • Jenny, Mathias. The Verb System of Mon. Arbeiten des Seminars für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Zürich, Nr 19. Zürich: Universität Zürich, 2005. ISBN 3952295418
  • Panʻʺ Lha. The Significant Role of the Mon Language and Culture in Southeast Asia. Tokyo, Japan: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1992.
  • Shorto, H. L. A Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

[edit] External links