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A number of Mon stone inscriptions have been found in [[Thaton Kingdom|Thaton]] and its environs, [[Lower Myanmar|Lower Burma]]. All of them have no date. [[Harry Leonard Shorto|H. L. Shorto]] and other scholars assigned them to the eleventh century but could possibly be earlier. By linguistic analyses of the inscriptions all of them belong to Old Mon. Especially the inscription on the robe of a statue at Kawgun Cave and two important inscriptions Trāp and Panḍit. Its writing style is very similar to the Dinaya inscription of 760 CE, written in Sanskrit, with the Kawi script of Old Java. Those inscriptions grammatically and linguistically belong to Old Mon. Old Mon is dated ca. 5th to 12th century CE. During this period the Mon writing characters can similarly be divided into two or three types, but the language was not much different. For example, the word for seven from Phra Pathom inscription (6th century is duṁpoh, from Pagan (12th century) also (duṁpoh). In the period from the late 12the to the early 13th century, Old Mon gradually transformed through language contact into Middle Mon. Middle Mon was characterized by the Great Vowel Shift where the long vowels of Old Mon changed to short vowels. For example, the word 'duṁpoh' (for seven) became 'thapah'. The long vowel 'uṁ' was shifted.<ref name=Monzel/>
A number of Mon stone inscriptions have been found in [[Thaton Kingdom|Thaton]] and its environs, [[Lower Myanmar|Lower Burma]]. All of them have no date. [[Harry Leonard Shorto|H. L. Shorto]] and other scholars assigned them to the eleventh century but could possibly be earlier. By linguistic analyses of the inscriptions all of them belong to Old Mon. Especially the inscription on the robe of a statue at Kawgun Cave and two important inscriptions Trāp and Panḍit. Its writing style is very similar to the Dinaya inscription of 760 CE, written in Sanskrit, with the Kawi script of Old Java. Those inscriptions grammatically and linguistically belong to Old Mon. Old Mon is dated ca. 5th to 12th century CE. During this period the Mon writing characters can similarly be divided into two or three types, but the language was not much different. For example, the word for seven from Phra Pathom inscription (6th century is duṁpoh, from Pagan (12th century) also (duṁpoh). In the period from the late 12the to the early 13th century, Old Mon gradually transformed through language contact into Middle Mon. Middle Mon was characterized by the Great Vowel Shift where the long vowels of Old Mon changed to short vowels. For example, the word 'duṁpoh' (for seven) became 'thapah'. The long vowel 'uṁ' was shifted.<ref name=Monzel/>


== Alphabet ==
The most of Mon inscriptions from Old Burma are not dated or dated by palaeographical and historical points of view. The earliest Mon inscriptions (in Burma) were the four plaques of votive tablets that were excavated from the brick structures in Winka, about 28km northwest of ancient city Thaton, (Burma), by U Myint Aung from the Department of Archaeology (Burma) in 1974-78. They were dated to the sixth century CE by Dr. Nai Pan Hla. It was the same


The modern Mon alphabet has several letters and [[diacritic]]s that do not exist in Burmese, such as the stacking diacritic for medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lwinmoe.friendsofburma.org/doc/myanmar_extension.pdf |title=Proposal for encoding characters for Myanmar minority languages in the UCS |access-date=2006-07-09 |date=2006-04-02 |publisher=International Organization for Standardization |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060723083627/http://lwinmoe.friendsofburma.org/doc/myanmar_extension.pdf |archive-date=2006-07-23 }}</ref> There is a great deal of discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several spellings.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Jenny|first1=Mathias|year=2001|title=A Short Introduction to the Mon Language|url=http://www.uzh.ch/spw/aboutus/jenny/downloads/mon_language_intro1.pdf|url-status=dead|publisher=Mon Culture and Literature Survival Project (MCL)|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718071509/http://www.uzh.ch/spw/aboutus/jenny/downloads/mon_language_intro1.pdf|archive-date=2011-07-18|access-date=2010-09-30}}</ref> The Mon script also makes prominent use of consonant stacking, to represent [[consonant cluster]]s found in the language.
The modern Mon alphabet has several letters and [[diacritic]]s that do not exist in Burmese, such as the stacking diacritic for medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://lwinmoe.friendsofburma.org/doc/myanmar_extension.pdf |title=Proposal for encoding characters for Myanmar minority languages in the UCS |access-date=2006-07-09 |date=2006-04-02 |publisher=International Organization for Standardization |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060723083627/http://lwinmoe.friendsofburma.org/doc/myanmar_extension.pdf |archive-date=2006-07-23 }}</ref> There is a great deal of discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several spellings.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Jenny|first1=Mathias|year=2001|title=A Short Introduction to the Mon Language|url=http://www.uzh.ch/spw/aboutus/jenny/downloads/mon_language_intro1.pdf|url-status=dead|publisher=Mon Culture and Literature Survival Project (MCL)|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718071509/http://www.uzh.ch/spw/aboutus/jenny/downloads/mon_language_intro1.pdf|archive-date=2011-07-18|access-date=2010-09-30}}</ref> The Mon script also makes prominent use of consonant stacking, to represent [[consonant cluster]]s found in the language.

Revision as of 09:16, 25 August 2022

Mon script
အက္ခရ်မန်, အခဝ်မန်
Script type
LanguagesMon language
Related scripts
Parent systems
Child systems
Tai Tham
Unicode
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.
Brahmic scripts
The Brahmi script and its descendants
Northern Brahmic
Southern Brahmic

The Mon script (Mon: အက္ခရ်မန်, Burmese: မွန်အက္ခရာ, Thai: อักษรมอญ) is a Brahmic abugida used for writing Mon language which was derived from the Grantha script which is usually called Pallava or Kadamba script.[2]

History

The earliest Mon inscriptions have been dated to the 6th century CE,[3]which are found in Nakhon Pathom and Saraburi (in Thailand) and ancient Mon city Thaton (in Burma/Myanmar) with terracotta votive tablets.[4][5] The inscriptions were written in Grantha script. Grantha script is useally called Pallava or Kadamba. It is one of the scripts from the southern part of India from the sixth century and was the most influential script used from early Burma. The script was used in writing Pāli inscriptions, generally of the Buddhist canon, that had been found in bothe Mon ancient city Thaton and Pyu ancient city Śrī Kşetra.[2] The modern Mon and Burman script nowadays was evolved from this Grantha script. The way of its development was very similar with the early Kawi script in Old Java. [2] The Pallava-Grantha script in Java was developed to the so-called early Kawi script in eighth century CE[6] But Aung-Thwin means there is no extant evidence linking the Old Dvaravati Mon script and the Burma Mon script.[7]

A number of Mon stone inscriptions have been found in Thaton and its environs, Lower Burma. All of them have no date. H. L. Shorto and other scholars assigned them to the eleventh century but could possibly be earlier. By linguistic analyses of the inscriptions all of them belong to Old Mon. Especially the inscription on the robe of a statue at Kawgun Cave and two important inscriptions Trāp and Panḍit. Its writing style is very similar to the Dinaya inscription of 760 CE, written in Sanskrit, with the Kawi script of Old Java. Those inscriptions grammatically and linguistically belong to Old Mon. Old Mon is dated ca. 5th to 12th century CE. During this period the Mon writing characters can similarly be divided into two or three types, but the language was not much different. For example, the word for seven from Phra Pathom inscription (6th century is duṁpoh, from Pagan (12th century) also (duṁpoh). In the period from the late 12the to the early 13th century, Old Mon gradually transformed through language contact into Middle Mon. Middle Mon was characterized by the Great Vowel Shift where the long vowels of Old Mon changed to short vowels. For example, the word 'duṁpoh' (for seven) became 'thapah'. The long vowel 'uṁ' was shifted.[2]

Alphabet

The modern Mon alphabet has several letters and diacritics that do not exist in Burmese, such as the stacking diacritic for medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter.[8] There is a great deal of discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several spellings.[9] The Mon script also makes prominent use of consonant stacking, to represent consonant clusters found in the language.

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 ဴ (/ɛ̀a/), and ဳ (/i/), since the diacritic ိ represents /ìˀ/.[10] Also, ဨ (/e/) is used instead of ဧ, as in Burmese.

Main vowels and diphthongs

Syllable-initial
letter		 Consonant
diacritic		 Value after
clear consonant		 Value after
breathy consonant[4][10]
အ none (inherent vowel) /aˀ/ /ɛ̀ˀ/ (/ɛ̤ˀ/)
အာ ာ (written ါ after
certain consonants)		 /a/ /ɛ̀a/ (/ɛ̤a/)
ဣ ိ /ɔeˀ/ /ìˀ/ (/i̤ˀ/)
ဣဳ ဳ /i/ /ì/ (/i̤/)
ဥ ု /aoˀ/ /ùˀ/
ဥူ ူ /ao/ /ù/ (/ṳ/)
ဨ ေ /e/ /è/
အဲ ဲ /oa/ /òa/
ဩ ော (written ေါ after
certain consonants)		 /ao/ /ɜ̀/
အဴ‌‍‍ ဴ /ao/ /ɛ̀a/ (/ɛ̤a/)
အံ‌‍‍ ံ /ɔm/, /ɔˀ/ /òm/, /òˀ/
အး း /ah/ /ɛ̀h/ (/ɛ̤h/)

Other vowels and diphthongs

Consonant
diacritic		 Value after
clear consonant		 Value after
breathy consonant
ို /ɒ/ /ə̤/, /a̤/
ာံ /am/ /èm/
ုံ /um/ /ùm/
ေံ /em/, /eˀ/, /eh/ /èm/, /èˀ/
ောံ /om/ /òm/
ီ /ɛm/ /ìm/
ီု /ɒm/ /ɜ̀m/
ာဲ /ai/
ုဲ
ေဲ /ea/ /ɛ̀a/
ောဲ ?
ိုဲ /oj/
ဵု /ɒ/ /ɜ̀/

Consonants

The Mon alphabet contains 35 consonants (including a zero consonant), as follows, with consonants belonging to the breathy register indicated in gray:[11][12]

က
k (/kaˀ/)		 ခ
kh (/kʰaˀ/)		 ဂ
g (/kɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဃ
gh (/kʰɛ̤ˀ/)		 ၚ
ṅ (/ŋɛ̤ˀ/)
စ
c (/caˀ/)		 ဆ
ch (/cʰaˀ/)		 ဇ
j (/cɛ̤ˀ/)		 ၛ
jh (/cʰɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဉ / ည
ñ (/ɲɛ̤ˀ/)
ဋ
ṭ (/taˀ/)		 ဌ
ṭh (/tʰaˀ/)		 ဍ
ḍ (/ɗaˀ/~[daˀ])		 ဎ
ḍh (/tʰɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဏ
ṇ (/naˀ/)
တ
t (/taˀ/)		 ထ
th (/tʰaˀ/)		 ဒ
d (/tɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဓ
dh (/tʰɛ̤ˀ/)		 န
n (/nɛ̤ˀ/)
ပ
p (/paˀ/)		 ဖ
ph (/pʰaˀ/)		 ဗ
b (/pɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဘ
bh (/pʰɛ̤ˀ/)		 မ
m (/mɛ̤ˀ/)
ယ
y (/jɛ̤ˀ/)		 ရ
r (/rɛ̤ˀ/)		 လ
l (/lɛ̤ˀ/)		 ဝ
w (/wɛ̤ˀ/)		 သ
s (/saˀ/)
ဟ
h (/haˀ/)		 ဠ
ḷ (/laˀ/)		 ၜ
ṗ (/ɓaˀ/~[baˀ])		 အ
a (/ʔaˀ/)		 ၝ
ḅ (/ɓɛ̤ˀ/~[bɛ̤ˀ])

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, က, which belongs to the clear register, is pronounced /kaˀ/, while ဂ is pronounced /kɛ̤ˀ/, to accommodate the vowel complexity of the Mon phonology.[13] 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:

  • က + ဳ → ကဳ, pronounced /ki/
  • ဂ + ဳ → ဂဳ, pronounced /ki̤/
  • က + ူ → ကူ, pronounced /kao/
  • ဂ + ူ → ဂူ, pronounced /kṳ/

The Mon language has 8 medials, as follows: ္ၚ (/-ŋ-/), ၞ (/-n-/), ၟ (/-m-/), ျ (/-j-/), ြ (/-r-/), ၠ (/-l-/), ွ (/-w-/), and ှ (/-h-/).

Consonantal finals are indicated with a virama (်), as in Burmese: however, instead of being pronounced as glottal stops as in Burmese, final plosives usually keep their respective pronunciations. Furthermore, consonant stacking is possible in Mon spellings, particularly for Pali and Sanskrit-derived vocabulary.

Punctuation

Diacritic Transcription and notes[4][10]
၊ comma
။ period

Unicode

The Mon script has been encoded as a part of the Myanmar block with the release version of Unicode 3.0.

Myanmar[1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
U+100x က ခ ဂ ဃ င စ ဆ ဇ ဈ ဉ ည ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ
U+101x တ ထ ဒ ဓ န ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ ယ ရ လ ဝ သ ဟ
U+102x ဠ အ ဢ ဣ ဤ ဥ ဦ ဧ ဨ ဩ ဪ ါ ာ ိ ီ ု
U+103x ူ ေ ဲ ဳ ဴ ဵ ံ ့ း    ္  ် ျ ြ ွ ှ ဿ
U+104x ၀ ၁ ၂ ၃ ၄ ၅ ၆ ၇ ၈ ၉ ၊ ။ ၌ ၍ ၎ ၏
U+105x ၐ ၑ ၒ ၓ ၔ ၕ ၖ ၗ ၘ ၙ ၚ ၛ ၜ ၝ ၞ ၟ
U+106x ၠ ၡ ၢ ၣ ၤ ၥ ၦ ၧ ၨ ၩ ၪ ၫ ၬ ၭ ၮ ၯ
U+107x ၰ ၱ ၲ ၳ ၴ ၵ ၶ ၷ ၸ ၹ ၺ ၻ ၼ ၽ ၾ ၿ
U+108x ႀ ႁ ႂ ႃ ႄ ႅ ႆ ႇ ႈ ႉ ႊ ႋ ႌ ႍ ႎ ႏ
U+109x ႐ ႑ ႒ ႓ ႔ ႕ ႖ ႗ ႘ ႙ ႚ ႛ ႜ ႝ ႞ ႟
Notes
1.^ As of Unicode version 15.1

Four types of Mon writing

  • Thai Mon language and Thai language
    Thai Mon language and Thai language
  • Thai Mon language and Thai language in Wat Muang
    Thai Mon language and Thai language in Wat Muang

References

  1. ^ Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet a key to the history of mankind. p. 411.
  2. ^ a b c d Monzel, Bee Htaw (2019). Epigraphy as a source for history of Old Burma, Advancing Southeast Asian Archaeology 201, Selected Papers from the Third SEAMEO SPAFA International Conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology. Thailand: SEAMEO SPAFA Regional Centre for Archaeology and Fine Arts. p. 54 -57.
  3. ^ Bauer, Christian (1991). "Notes on Mon Epigraphy". Journal of the Siam Society. 79 (1): 35.
  4. ^ a b c Omniglot
  5. ^ Hla, Dr. Nai Pan (1992). The Significati Role of the Mon Language and culture in Southeast Asia, Part I. Japan: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). p. 55.
  6. ^ de Casparis, J. G. (1975). Netherlands: Leiden/Köln E. J. Brill. p. 28. ISBN 90 04 04172 9 https://books.google.dk/books?id=cLUfAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=da&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  7. ^ Aung-Thwin, Michael A. (2005). The Mon Paradigm and the Origins of the Burma Script. University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 154–178. ISBN 9780824828868. JSTOR j.ctt1wn0qs1.10.
  8. ^ "Proposal for encoding characters for Myanmar minority languages in the UCS" (PDF). International Organization for Standardization. 2006-04-02. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-07-23. Retrieved 2006-07-09.
  9. ^ Jenny, Mathias (2001). "A Short Introduction to the Mon Language" (PDF). Mon Culture and Literature Survival Project (MCL). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-18. Retrieved 2010-09-30. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  10. ^ a b c Dho-ong Jhaan (2010-05-10). "Mon Vowels Characters". Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  11. ^ Dho-ong Jhaan (2010-05-09). "Mon Consonants Characters". Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  12. ^ Dho-ong Jhaan (2009-10-01). "Romanization for Mon Script by Transliteration Method". Retrieved 12 September 2010.
  13. ^ "Mon". Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world. Elsevier. 2009. pp. 719–20. ISBN 978-0-08-087774-7.
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