The Mon alphabet ( mnw, အက္ခရ်မန်, my, မွန်အက္ခရာ, th, อักษรมอญ) is a
Brahmic
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
used for writing the
Mon language
The Mon language (, mnw, ဘာသာမန်, links=no, (Mon-Thai ဘာသာမည်) ; my, မွန်ဘာသာ; th, ภาษามอญ; formerly known as Peguan and Talaing) is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon peopl ...
. It is an example of the
Mon-Burmese script, which derives from the
Pallava Grantha script of southern India.
History
The earliest Mon inscriptions, all undated, have been paleographically dated to the 6th century CE; they are found in
Nakhon Pathom
Nakhon Pathom ( th, นครปฐม, ) is a city (''thesaban nakhon'') in central Thailand, the former capital of Nakhon Pathom province. One of the most important landmarks is the giant Phra Pathommachedi. The city is also home to Thailand's ...
and
Saraburi
Saraburi City (''thesaban mueang'') is the provincial capital of Saraburi Province in central Thailand. In 2020, it had a population of 60,809 people, and covers the complete ''tambon'' Pak Phriao of the Mueang Saraburi district.
Location
Sa ...
(in Thailand). Terracotta votive tablets found in Lower Burma have been paleographically dated to either the 6th century CE or the 11th century CE.
[(Pan Hla 1992: 55) dates them to the 6th century. (Stadtner 2008: 201): Luce and Shorto dated them to the 11th century.] The inscriptions were written in Grantha script. Grantha script is useally called
Pallava
The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The dynasty rose to prominence after the downfall of the Satavahana dynasty, with whom they had formerly served as fe ...
or
Kadamba. It is one of the scripts of the southern part of India in the sixth century and was the most influential script used in early Burma. The script was used in writing
Pāli
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
inscriptions, generally of the Buddhist canon, that had been found in both the Mon ancient city
Thaton
Thaton (; mnw, သဓီု ) is a town in Mon State, in southern Myanmar on the Tenasserim plains. Thaton lies along the National Highway 8 and is also connected by the National Road 85. It is 230 km south east of Yangon and 70 km ...
and Pyu ancient city
Śrī Kşetra.
[ The modern Mon and Burman scripts evolved from this ]Grantha script
The Grantha script ( ta, கிரந்த எழுத்து, Granta eḻuttu; ml, ഗ്രന്ഥലിപി, granthalipi) is a South Indian script, found particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Originating from the Pallava script, t ...
. The way it developed was very similar to the early Kawi script
The Kawi or or Old Javanese script is a Brahmic script found primarily in Java and used across much of Maritime Southeast Asia between the 8th century and the 16th century.Aditya Bayu Perdana and Ilham Nurwansah 2020Proposal to encode Kawi/ ...
in Old Java. [ The Pallava-Grantha script in Java developed into the so-called early Kawi script in the 8th century CE But Aung-Thwin argues that there is no extant evidence or linguistic proof linking the Old Dvaravati Mon script and the Burma Mon script.
A number of Mon stone inscriptions have been found in Thaton and its environs, ]Lower Burma
Lower Myanmar ( my, အောက်မြန်မာပြည်, also called Lower Burma) is a geographic region of Myanmar and includes the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta (Ayeyarwady Region, Ayeyarwady, Bago Region, Bago and Yangon Regions), as we ...
. They are all undated. H. L. Shorto and other scholars assigned them to the eleventh century,[Stadtner 2008: 201] but they could possibly be earlier. According to 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 to around the 5th to the 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 ဒုံပေါဟ်). In the period from the late 12th to the early 13th century, Old Mon gradually transformed through language contact into Middle Mon. Middle Mon was characterized by the Great Vowel Shift, in which the long vowels of Old Mon changed to short vowels. For example, the word 'duṁpoh ဒုံပေါဟ်' (for seven) became 'thapah ထပဟ်'. The long vowel 'uṁ' was shifted.[
]
Alphabet
The calligraphy of modern Mon script follows that of modern Burmese. Burmese calligraphy originally followed a square format but the cursive format took hold in the 17th century when popular writing led to the wider use of palm leaves and folded paper known as ''parabaik
Folding-book manuscripts are a type of writing material historically used in Mainland Southeast Asia, particularly in the areas of present-day Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. They are known as ''parabaik'' in Burmese,; . ''samut thai'' in Tha ...
s''.[Lieberman 2003: 136] The script has undergone considerable modification to suit the evolving phonology of the Burmese language, but additional letters and diacritics have been added to adapt it to other languages; the Shan and Karen alphabets, for example, require additional tone markers.
The modern Mon alphabet has several letters and diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s 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 cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fie ...
s 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 (), and (), since the diacritic represents . Also, () is used instead of , as in Burmese.
Main vowels and diphthongs
Other vowels and diphthongs
Consonants
The Mon alphabet contains 35 consonants (including a zero consonant In orthography, a zero consonant, silent initial, or null-onset letter is a consonant letter that does not correspond to a consonant sound, but is required when a word or syllable starts with a vowel (i.e. has a null onset). Some abjads, abugidas ...
), as follows, with consonants belonging to the breathy register indicated in gray:
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
The Mon language has 8 medials, as follows: (), (), (), (), (), (), (), and ().
Consonantal finals are indicated with a virama
Virama ( ्) is a Sanskrit phonological concept to suppress the inherent vowel that otherwise occurs with every consonant letter, commonly used as a generic term for a codepoint in Unicode, representing either
# halanta, hasanta or explicit virā ...
(), 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
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
and Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
-derived vocabulary.
Punctuation
Unicode
The Mon script has been encoded as a part of the Myanmar block with the release version of Unicode 3.0.
Four types of Mon writing
File:Four types of Mon writing 1.jpg
File:Four types of Mon writing 2.jpg
File:Four types of Mon writing 3.jpg
File:Four types of Mon writing 4.jpg
File:Four types of Mon writing translate.jpg
Gallery
File:Mon Thai alphabet in Wat Muang.jpg, Thai Mon language and Thai language
File:Mon Thai alphabet.jpg, Thai Mon language and Thai language in Wat Muang
Notes
References
Bibliography
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{{Mon alphabet
Brahmic scripts