| Mon | |
|---|---|
| ဘာသာမန် | |
| Pronunciation | [pʰɛ̤ːsaːmɔ̤ːn] |
| Native to | Myanmar |
| Region | Lower Myanmar |
| Ethnicity | Mon |
Native speakers | (1.1 million cited 2000–2014)[1] |
| Mon–Burmese (Mon alphabet) | |
| Official status | |
Recognised minority language in | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:mnw – Modern Monomx – Old Mon |
omx Old Mon | |
| Glottolog | monn1252 Modern Monoldm1242 Old Mon |
 | |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
TheMon language,[a] formerly known asPeguan andTalaing, is anAustroasiatic language spoken by theMon people. Mon, like the relatedKhmer language, but unlike most languages inmainland Southeast Asia, is not tonal. The Mon language is a recognised indigenous language in Myanmar as well as an indigenouslanguage of Thailand.[2]
Mon was classified as a "vulnerable" language inUNESCO's 2010Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.[3] 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 1,800,000 and 2 million.[4] In Myanmar, the majority of Mon speakers live in Southern Myanmar, especiallyMon State, followed byTanintharyi Region andKayin State.[5]
Mon is an important language in Burmese history. Until the 12th century, it was thelingua franca of theIrrawaddy valley—not only in the Mon kingdoms of the lower Irrawaddy but also of the upriverPagan Kingdom of theBamar people. Mon, especially written Mon, continued to be aprestige language even after the fall of the Monkingdom of Thaton to Pagan in 1057. KingKyansittha of Pagan (r. 1084–1113) admired Mon culture and the Mon language was patronized.
Kyansittha left many inscriptions in Mon. During this period, theMyazedi inscription, which contains identical inscriptions of a story inPali,Pyu, Mon and Burmese on the four sides, was carved.[6] However, after Kyansittha's death, usage of the Mon language declined among the Bamar and theBurmese language began to replace Mon and Pyu as alingua franca.[6]
Mon inscriptions fromDvaravati's ruins also litterThailand. However it is not clear if the inhabitants were Mon, a mix of Mon and Malay or Khmer. Later inscriptions and kingdoms likeLavo were subservient to theKhmer Empire.
After the fall of Pagan, Mon again became the lingua franca of theHanthawaddy kingdom (1287–1539) in present-dayLower Myanmar, which remained a predominantly Mon-speaking region until the 1800s, by which point, theBurmese language had expanded its reach from its traditional heartland inUpper Burma intoLower 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.[7] The shift was certainly accelerated by the fall of the Mon-speakingRestored 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.[8] 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 theIrrawaddy Delta upriver, spanning Bassein (now Pathein) and Rangoon (now Yangon) to Tharrawaddy, Toungoo, Prome (now Pyay) and Henzada (now Hinthada), were now Burmese-speaking.[7] 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.[9]
The Mon language has influenced subtle grammatical differences between the varieties of Burmese spoken in Lower and Upper Burma.[10] 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.[10] This usage is hardly employed in Upper Burmese varieties, and is considered a sub-standard construct.[10]
In 1972, theNew Mon State Party (NMSP) established a Mon national school system, which uses Mon as amedium of instruction, in rebel-controlled areas.[11] The system was expanded throughout Mon State following a ceasefire with the central government in 1995.[11] 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").[11] In 2015, Mon language courses were launched state-wide at the elementary level.[12] This system has been recognized as a model formother-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.[13][11]
In 2013, it was announced that theMawlamyine-basedThanlwin Times would begin to carry news in the Mon language, becoming Myanmar's first Mon language publication since 1962.[14]
Southern Myanmar (comprisingMon State,Kayin State, andTanintharyi Region), from theSittaung River in the north toMyeik (Mergui) andKawthaung in the south, remains a traditional stronghold of the Mon language.[15] However, in this region, Burmese is favored in urban areas, such asMawlamyine, the capital of Mon State.[15] In recent years, usage of Mon has declined in Myanmar, especially among the younger generation.[16]
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 toThaification and the assimilation of Mons into mainstream Thai society.[17] Mon speakers in Thailand are largely concentrated inKo Kret.[18][17] The remaining contingent of Thai Mon speakers are located in the provinces ofSamut Sakhon,Samut Songkhram,Nakhon Pathom, as well the western provinces bordering Myanmar (Kanchanaburi,Phetchaburi,Prachuap Khiri Khan, andRatchaburi).[17] A small ethnic group in Thailand speak a language closely related to Mon, calledNyah Kur. They are descendants of the Mon-speakingDvaravati kingdom.[19]
Mon has three primary dialects in Burma, coming from the various regions the Mon inhabit. They are the Central (areas surroundingMottama andMawlamyine),Bago, andYe dialects.[17] 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."[19]
| 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 | |||||
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɔ |
| Open | æ | a |
Unlike the surrounding Burmese andThai languages, Mon is not atonal 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:
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.[20] While difference in pitch in certain environments was found to be significant, there are nominimal 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.
| 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 |
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 |
Mon nouns do not inflect for number. That is, they do not have separate forms for singular and plural:
Adjectives follow the noun (Pan Hla p. 24):
prɛ̤a
woman
ce
beautiful
prɛ̤a ce
woman beautiful
'beautiful woman'
Demonstratives follow the noun:
ŋoa
day
nɔʔ
this
ŋoa nɔʔ
day this
this day
Like many other Southeast Asian languages, Mon hasclassifiers which are used when a noun appears with a numeral. The choice of classifier depends on the semantics of the noun involved.
Mon is a prepositional language.
doa
in
əma
lake
doa əma
in lake
'in the lake'
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
အဲရာန်သ္ၚုတုဲယျ
ʔoa ran hau toa ya.
I buy rice COMPL AFF
'I bought rice.'
ဗ္တောန်
paton
teach
ကဵု
kɒ
to
ဘာသာ
pʰɛ̤asa
language
အၚ်္ဂလိက်
ʔengloit
English
ညးတံဗ္တောန်ကဵုအဲဘာသာအၚ်္ဂလိက်
Nyeh tɔʔ paton kɒ ʔua pʰɛ̤asa ʔengloit
3 PL teach to 1 language English
'They taught me English.'
Yes–no questions are shown with a final particleha
ဗှ်ေ
be̤
you
စ
shea
eat
ပုင်
pəng
rice
ဗှ်ေစပုင်တုဲယျဟာ
be̤ shea pəng toa ya ha?
you eat rice COMPL AFF Q
‘Have you eaten rice?’
Wh-questions show a different final particle,rau. The interrogative word does not undergowh-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
တၠ နာဲကြာတ်ကြဴမံင်မူရော
{Tala oa} kratkraw mu raw?
You wash what WH.Q
'What did you wash?'
.svg) Mon Consonants | ||
|---|---|---|
Mon Consonants(Thirty-five) | ||
| Mon Consonant (First) |  | |
| Mon Consonant (Second) | ||
| The Mon Consonant(Two) | ||
| The Mon Vowels | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
