Mon language

Mon
ဘာသာမန်
Pronunciation	[pʰesa mɑn]
Native to	Myanmar Mon State Kayin State Tanintharyi Region
Region	Lower Myanmar
Ethnicity	Mon
Native speakers	1,900,000 (2014)
Language family	Austroasiatic Monic Mon
Writing system	Mon–Burmese (Mon alphabet)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Myanmar Thailand
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mnw – Modern Mon omx – Old Mon
Linguist List	omx Old Mon
Glottolog	monn1252  Modern Mon oldm1242  Old Mon
Monic languages distribution in Thailand and Myanmar where Mon is denoted by red area.

The Mon language (/ˈmoʊn/ ; Mon: ဘာသာမန်, [pʰesa mɑn]; Burmese: မွန်ဘာသာစကား ; Thai: ภาษามอญ ), formerly known as Peguan and Talaing, 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 1800,000 and 2 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 (r. 1084–1113) admired Mon culture and the Mon language was patronized.

The Mon Myazedi Inscription (AD 1113) is Myanmar's oldest surviving stone inscription.

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 (1287–1539) 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 (now Bago), 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 (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay) and Henzada (now Hinthada), 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 (e.g., increased tax burdens to the Burmese crown, British rice production incentives, etc.) 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 ("to give") 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 (NMSP) 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 (called Mon national schools) offering modules on the Mon language in addition to the government curriculum (called "mixed schools"). 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

Thai Mon and Thai scripts on a sign in Wat Muang, Thailand.

Thai Mon and Thai scripts on a sign in Wat Muang, Thailand.

Mon language in Thailand.

Mon language in Burma.

Southern Myanmar (comprising Mon State, Kayin State, and Tanintharyi Region), from the Sittaung River in the north to Myeik (Mergui) 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 (estimated to range between 60,000 and 80,000) 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 (Kanchanaburi, Phetchaburi, Prachuap Khiri Khan, and Ratchaburi). 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 (areas surrounding Mottama and Mawlamyine), Bago, and Ye dialects. All are mutually intelligible. Ethnologue lists Mon dialects as Martaban-Moulmein (Central Mon, Mon Te), Pegu (Mon Tang, Northern Mon), and Ye (Mon Nya, Southern Mon), 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."

Phonology

Explanation on the Mon alphabet

Explanation of the Mon-Thai or Thai-Raman alphabet

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop	unaspirated	p	t	c	k	ʔ
	aspirated	pʰ	tʰ	cʰ	kʰ
	implosive	ɓ~b2	ɗ~d2
Fricative			s	ç1		h
Sonorant		w	r	j
Lateral			l

1. /ç/ is only found in Burmese loans.
2. Implosives are lost in many dialects and become explosives instead.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ	ɐ	ɔ
Open	æ	a

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

One study involving speakers of a Mon dialect in Thailand found that in some syllabic environments, words with a breathy voice vowel are significantly lower in pitch than similar words with a clear vowel counterpart. While difference in pitch in certain environments was found to be significant, there are no minimal pairs that are distinguished solely by pitch. The contrastive mechanism is the vowel phonation.

In the examples below, breathy voice is marked with under-diaeresis.

Syntax

Pronouns

Mon	Translate
အဲ	I
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုအဲ	my, mine
ဟိုန်အဲ	Me
မိန်အဲ	By me
ကုအဲ	From me
ပိုဲ	We
ဟိုန်ပိုဲ	Us
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုပိုဲ	Our, ours, of us
ကုပိုဲ	To us
မိန်ပိုဲညးဂမၠိုၚ်	By us
နူပိုဲညးဂမၠိုၚ်	From us
တၠအဲ၊ ဗှေ်	You; thou
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုတၠအဲ	You, yours; thy, thine
ဟိုန်တၠအဲ	You; thee
မိန်တၠအဲ	By you (Sin); by thee
နူတၠအဲ	From you
ကုတၠအဲ	To you
ၚ်မၞးတံညးဂမၠိုၚ်	You
ဟိုန်မၞးတံ	You (Object)
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုမၞးတံ	Your, yours
ကုမၞးတံ	To you
မိန်မၞးတံ	By you
နူမၞးတံ	From you
ၚ်ညးဂှ်	He
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုညးဂှ်	His
ဟိုန်ညးဂှ်	Him
ကုညးဂှ်	To him
နူညးဂှ်	From him
ၚ်ညးတံဂှ်	They
ဟိုန်ညးတံဂှ်	Them
ဒဒက်တဴကဵုညးတံဂှ်	Their, theirs
ကုညးတံဂှ်	To them
မိန်ညးတံဂှ်	By them
နူညးတံဂှ်	From them
ၚ်ညးဗြဴဂှ်	She
ကုညးဗြဴဂှ်	Her, hers
မိန်ညးဗြဴဂှဲ၊ပ္ဍဲ	By her; in her
နူညးဗြဴဂှ်	From her
ၚ်ဗြဴတံဂှ်	They (feminine)
ဟိုန်ညးဗြဴတံဂှ်	There
ကုညးဗြဴတံဂှ်	To them
နူညးဗြဴတံဂှ်	From them
ပ္ဍဲညးဗြဴတံဂှ်	In them

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 (Pan Hla 1989:29):

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:

sɔt pakaw

apple

mo̤a

one

me̤a

CL

{sɔt pakaw} mo̤a me̤a

apple one CL

'one apple'

sɔt pakaw

apple

ba

two

me̤a

CL

{sɔt pakaw} ba me̤a

apple two CL

'two apples'

Adjectives

Adjectives follow the noun (Pan Hla p. 24):

prɛ̤a

woman

ce

beautiful

prɛ̤a ce

woman beautiful

'beautiful woman'

Demonstratives

Demonstratives follow the noun:

ŋoa

day

nɔʔ

this

ŋoa nɔʔ

day this

this day

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.

kaneh

pen

mo̤a

one

tanəng

CL

kaneh mo̤a tanəng

pen one CL

'one pen'

chup

tree

mo̤a

one

tanɒm

CL

chup mo̤a tanɒm

tree one CL

'one tree'

Prepositions and prepositional phrases

Mon is a prepositional language.

doa

in

əma

lake

doa əma

in lake

'in the lake'

Sentences

The ordinary word order for sentences in Mon is subject–verb–object, as in the following examples

အဲ

ʔoa

I

ရာန်

ran

buy

သ္ၚု

hau

rice

တုဲ

toa

COMPL

ယျ

ya.

AFF

 

 

အဲ ရာန် သ္ၚု တုဲ ယျ

ʔoa ran hau toa ya.

I buy rice COMPL AFF

'I bought rice.'

ညး

Nyeh

3

တံ

tɔʔ

PL

ဗ္တောန်

paton

teach

ကဵု

kɒ

to

အဲ

ʔua

1

ဘာသာ

pʰɛ̤asa

language

အၚ်္ဂလိက်

ʔengloit

English

 

 

ညး တံ ဗ္တောန် ကဵု အဲ ဘာသာ အၚ်္ဂလိက်

Nyeh tɔʔ paton kɒ ʔua pʰɛ̤asa ʔengloit

3 PL teach to 1 language English

'They taught me English.'

Questions

Yes–no questions are shown with a final particle ha

ဗှ်ေ

be̤

you

စ

shea

eat

ပုင်

pəng

rice

တုဲ

toa

COMPL

ယျ

ya

AFF

ဟာ

ha?

Q

 

 

ဗှ်ေ စ ပုင် တုဲ ယျ ဟာ

be̤ shea pəng toa ya ha?

you eat rice COMPL AFF Q

‘Have you eaten rice?’

အပါ

əpa

father

အာ

a

go

ဟာ

ha?

Q

 

 

အပါ အာ ဟာ

əpa a ha?

father go Q

‘Will father go?’ (Pan Hla, p. 42)

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:

တၠ နာဲ

Tala oa

You

ကြာတ်ကြဴမံင်

kratkraw

wash

မူ

mu

what

ရော

raw?

WH.Q

 

 

တၠ နာဲ ကြာတ်ကြဴမံင် မူ ရော

{Tala oa} kratkraw mu raw?

You wash what WH.Q

'What did you wash?'

Further reading

• Aung-Thwin, Michael (2005). The mists of Rāmañña: The Legend that was Lower Burma (illustrated ed.). Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 9780824828868.
• Bauer, Christian (1982). Morphology and syntax of spoken Mon (PhD dissertation). University of London (SOAS).
• Bauer, Christian (1984). A guide to Mon studies. Working Papers. Vol. 32. Monash University. ISBN 0867463481.
• Bauer, Christian (1986). "The verb in spoken Mon" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 15: 87–110. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-06-16.
• Bauer, Christian (Spring 1986). "Questions in Mon: Addenda and Corrigenda" (PDF). Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area. 9 (1): 22–26. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-01-24.
• Diffloth, Gerard (1984). The Dvarati Old Mon language and Nyah Kur. Monic Language Studies. Vol. I. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University. ISBN 974-563-783-1.
• Diffloth, Gerard (1985). "The registers of Mon vs. the spectrographist's tones". UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 60: 55–58.
• Ferlus, Michel (1984). "Essai de phonetique historique du môn" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 12: 1–90. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-06-16.
• Guillon, Emmanuel (1976). Some aspects of Mon syntax. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications. University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 407–421. JSTOR 20019165.
• Halliday, Robert (1922). A Mon–English dictionary. Bangkok: Siam Society.
• Haswell, J. M. (1874). Grammatical Notes and Vocabulary of the Peguan Language: To which are Added a Few Pages of Phrases, &c. American Mission Press.
• Huffman, Franklin (1990). "Burmese Mon, Thai Mon, and Nyah Kur: a synchronic comparison" (PDF). Mon-Khmer Studies. 16–17: 31–84. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-06-16.
• Jenny, Mathias (2005). The Verb System of Mon (Thesis). Zürich: Universität Zürich. ISBN 3-9522954-1-8.
• Lee, Thomas (1983). "An acoustical study of the register distinction in Mon". UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 57: 79–96.
• Lieberman, Victor B. (2003). Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80496-7.
• Pan Hla, Nai (1986). "Remnant of a lost nation and their cognate words to Old Mon Epigraph" (PDF). Journal of the Siam Society. 74: 122–155. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-18.
• Pan Hla, Nai (1989). An introduction to Mon language. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University.
• Pan Hla, Nai. 1992. 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.
• Shorto, H.L. 1962. A Dictionary of Modern Spoken Mon. Oxford University Press.
• Shorto, H.L.; Judith M. Jacob; and E.H.S. Simonds. 1963. Bibliographies of Mon–Khmer and Tai Linguistics. Oxford University Press.
• Shorto, H.L. 1966. "Mon vowel systems: a problem in phonological statement". in Bazell, Catford, Halliday, and Robins, eds. In memory of J.R. Firth, pp. 398–409.
• Shorto, H.L. 1971. A Dictionary of the Mon Inscriptions from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Centuries. Oxford University Press.
• Thongkum, Therapan L. (1987). "Another look at the register distinction in Mon". UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics. 67: 132–165.

External links

• A hypertext grammar of the Mon language Archived 2016-11-17 at the Wayback Machine
• SEAlang Project: Mon–Khmer languages: The Monic Branch
• Old Mon inscriptions database
  • The Ananda "Basement" Plaques
• Mon-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Mon Language Project
• Mon Language in Thailand: The endangered heritage
• "Monic". Archived from the original (lecture) on 2007-09-15. Retrieved 2007-09-21.