MON LANGUAGE

The 'Mon language' is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Myanmar and Thailand. In Myanmar, 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. 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 800s. 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. However, after Kyanzittha's death, usage of the Mon language declined among the Burmans.

Contents

Dialects

Written script

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Vocalic register

Notes

External links

Dialects

Mon has three primary dialects in Myanmar, 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.

Written script

The Mon script has many similarities 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]

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stops
Fricatives			1
Nasals
Sonorants

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

Notes

1. Mon: A language of Myanmar
2. The Mon Language (An endangered species) Dr. SM
3. Imperial Pagan: Art and Architecture of Burma, , Paul, Strachan, University of Hawaii Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8248-1325-1
4. Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma: The Golden Sheldrake, , Ashley, South, Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-7007-1609-2
5. Proposal for encoding characters for Myanmar minority languages in the UCS

External links

★ SEAlang Project: Mon-Khmer languages: The Monic Branch

★ Mon Language Project

★ Ethnologue report for Mon

★ Mon Language in Thailand: The endangered heritage