Mon language
The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon people. Mon, like the related Khmer language, but unlike most languages in mainland Southeast Asia, is not tonal. The Mon language is a recognised indigenous language in Myanmar as well as a recognised indigenous language of Thailand.
Mon was classified as a "vulnerable" language in UNESCO's 2010 Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. The Mon language has faced assimilative pressures in both Myanmar and Thailand, where many individuals of Mon descent are now monolingual in Burmese or Thai respectively. In 2007, Mon speakers were estimated to number between 800,000 to 1 million. In Myanmar, the majority of Mon speakers live in Southern Myanmar, especially Mon State, followed by Tanintharyi Region and Kayin State.
History
Mon is an important language in Burmese history. Until the 12th century, it was the lingua franca of the Irrawaddy valley—not only in the Mon kingdoms of the lower Irrawaddy but also of the upriver Pagan Kingdom of the Bamar people. Mon, especially written Mon, continued to be a prestige language even after the fall of the Mon kingdom of Thaton to Pagan in 1057. King Kyansittha of Pagan admired Mon culture and the Mon language was patronized.Kyansittha 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 Kyansittha's death, usage of the Mon language declined among the Bamar and the Burmese language began to replace Mon and Pyu as a lingua franca.
Mon inscriptions from Dvaravati'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 Empire.
After the fall of Pagan, Mon again became the lingua franca of the Hanthawaddy Kingdom in present-day Lower Myanmar, which remained a predominantly Mon-speaking region until the 1800s, by which point, the Burmese language had expanded its reach from its traditional heartland in Upper Burma into Lower Burma.
The region's language shift from Mon to Burmese has been ascribed to a combination of population displacement, intermarriage, and voluntary changes in self-identification among increasingly Mon-Burmese bilingual populations in throughout Lower Burma. The shift was certainly accelerated by the fall of the Mon-speaking Restored Hanthawaddy Kingdom in 1757. Following the fall of Pegu, many Mon-speaking refugees fled and resettled in what is now modern-day Thailand. By 1830, an estimated 90% of the population in the Lower Burma self-identified as Burmese-speaking Bamars; huge swaths of former Mon-speaking areas, from the Irrawaddy Delta upriver, spanning Bassein and Rangoon to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome and Henzada, were now Burmese-speaking. Great Britain's gradual annexation of Burma throughout the 19th century, in addition to concomitant economic and political instability in Upper Burma also accelerated the migration of Burmese speakers from Upper Burma into Lower Burma.
The Mon language has influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma. In Lower Burmese varieties, the verb ပေး is colloquially used as a permissive causative marker, like in other Southeast Asian languages, but unlike in other Tibeto-Burman languages. This usage is hardly employed in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct.
In 1972, the New Mon State Party established a Mon national school system, which uses Mon as a medium of instruction, in rebel-controlled areas. The system was expanded throughout Mon State following a ceasefire with the central government in 1995. Mon State now operates a multi-track education system, with schools either using Mon as the primary medium of instruction offering modules on the Mon language in addition to the government curriculum. In 2015, Mon language courses were launched state-wide at the elementary level. This system has been recognized as a model for mother-tongue education in the Burmese national education system, because it enables children taught in the Mon language to integrate into the mainstream Burmese education system at higher education levels.
In 2013, it was announced that the Mawlamyine-based Thanlwin Times would begin to carry news in the Mon language, becoming Myanmar's first Mon language publication since 1962.
Geographic distribution
Southern Myanmar, from the Sittaung River in the north to Myeik and Kawthaung in the south, remains a traditional stronghold of the Mon language. However, in this region, Burmese is favored in urban areas, such as Mawlamyine, the capital of Mon State. In recent years, usage of Mon has declined in Myanmar, especially among the younger generation.While Thailand is home to a sizable Mon population due to historical waves of migration, only a small proportion speak Mon, due to Thaification and the assimilation of Mons into mainstream Thai society. Mon speakers in Thailand are largely concentrated in Ko Kret. The remaining contingent of Thai Mon speakers are located in the provinces of Samut Sakhon, Samut Songkhram, Nakhon Pathom, as well the western provinces bordering Myanmar. A small ethnic group in Thailand speak a language closely related to Mon, called Nyah Kur. They are descendants of the Mon-speaking Dvaravati kingdom.
Dialects
Mon has three primary dialects in Burma, coming from the various regions the Mon inhabit. They are the Central, Bago, and Ye dialects. All are mutually intelligible. Ethnologue lists Mon dialects as Martaban-Moulmein, Pegu, and Ye, with high mutual intelligibility among them.Thai Mon has some differences from the Burmese dialects of Mon, but they are mutually intelligible. The Thai varieties of Mon are considered "severely endangered."
Alphabet
The Old Mon script has been dated to the 6th century, with the earliest inscriptions found in Nakhon Pathom and Saraburi. It may be the ancestral script of the modern Mon script, although there is no extant evidence linking the Old Dvaravati Mon script and the Burma Mon script.The modern Mon alphabet is an adaptation of the Burmese script; it utilizes several letters and diacritics that do not exist in Burmese, such as the stacking diacritic for medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter. There is a great deal of discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several spellings. The Mon script also makes prominent use of consonant stacking, to represent consonant clusters found in the language.
Consonants
The Mon alphabet contains 35 consonants, as follows, with consonants belonging to the breathy register indicated in gray:k | kh | g | gh | ṅ |
c | ch | j | jh | ñ |
ṭ | ṭh | ḍ | ḍh | ṇ |
t | th | d | dh | n |
p | ph | b | bh | m |
y | r | l | w | s |
h | ḷ | b | a | mb |
In the Mon script, consonants belong to one of two registers: clear and breathy, each of which has different inherent vowels and pronunciations for the same set of diacritics. For instance,, which belongs to the clear register, is pronounced, while is pronounced, to accommodate the vowel complexity of the Mon phonology. The addition of diacritics makes this obvious. Whereas in Burmese spellings with the same diacritics are rhyming, in Mon this depends on the consonant's inherent register. A few examples are listed below:
- + →, pronounced
- + →, pronounced
- + →, pronounced
- + →, pronounced
Consonantal finals are indicated with a virama, as in Burmese: however, instead of being pronounced as glottal stops as in Burmese, final consonants usually keep their respective pronunciations. Furthermore, consonant stacking is possible in Mon spellings, particularly for Pali and Sanskrit-derived vocabulary.
Vowels
Mon uses the same diacritics and diacritic combinations as in Burmese to represent vowels, with the addition of a few diacritics unique to the Mon script, including , and , since the diacritic represents. Also, is used instead of, as in Burmese.Main vowels and diphthongs
Other vowels and diphthongs
| Diacritic | Transcription and notes |
| ို | iu |
| ာံ | āṃ |
| ုံ | uṃ |
| ေံ | eṃ |
| ောံ | oṃ |
| ီ | aṁ |
| ီု | uṁ |
| ာဲ | āai |
| ုဲ | uai |
| ေဲ | eai |
| ောဲ | oai |
| ိုဲ | iuai |
| ဵု | uew |
Punctuation
၊ is used for a comma, and ။ is used for a period.Phonology
Consonants
1 is only found in Burmese loans.Vowels
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 voice, analyzed by various linguists as ranging from ordinary to creaky
- Breathy voice, vowels have a distinct breathy quality
In the examples below, breathy voice is marked with a grave accent.
Syntax
Verbs and verb phrases
Mon verbs do not inflect for person. Tense is shown through particles.Some verbs have a morphological causative, which is most frequently a /pə-/ prefix :
| Underived verb | Gloss | Causative verb | Gloss |
| chɒt | to die | kəcɒt | to kill |
| lɜm | to be ruined | pəlɒm | to destroy |
| khaɨŋ | to be firm | pəkhaɨŋ | to make firm |
| tɛm | to know | pətɛm | to inform |
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:'one apple'
'two apples'
Adjectives
Adjectives follow the noun :'beautiful woman'
Demonstratives
Demonstratives follow the noun:Classifiers
Like many other Southeast Asian languages, Mon has classifiers which are used when a noun appears with a numeral. The choice of classifier depends on the semantics of the noun involved.'one pen'
'one tree'
Prepositions and prepositional phrases
Mon is a prepositional language.Sentences
The ordinary word order for sentences in Mon is subject–verb–object, as in the following examples'I bought rice.'
'They taught me English.'
Questions
Yes-no questions are shown with a final particle ha‘Have you eaten rice?’
‘Will father go?’
Wh-questions show a different final particle, rau. The interrogative word does not undergo wh-movement. That is, it does not necessarily move to the front of the sentence:
'What did you wash?'