Mon (language)
| Mon | ||
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Spoken in |
 Myanmar , Thailand
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| Linguistic classification |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-3 |
mnw |
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Mon ( Burmese မွန် ဘာသာစကား Thai ภาษา มอญ ) is an Austro-Asian language spoken by the Mon living in Myanmar and Thailand . In contrast to most of the other languages in Southeast Asia , Mon, like the related Khmer , is not a tonal language . Mon is used by around a million speakers. In the last few decades the use of the Mon in the younger generation has steadily decreased. Many Mon today only speak the Burmese language . Most Mon speakers live in Mon State , followed by the Tanintharyi Division and the Kayin State .
The Mon script is derived from the Indian Brahmi script and served as the basis for today's Burmese script .
history
In the history of Burma, Mon was the dominant language of the Irawaddy Valley for a long time until the 12th century , from the Mon kingdoms of the lower river to Bagan on its upper reaches. This remained so even after the Mon kingdom of Thaton was subjugated by Bagan in 1057. King Kyanzittha of Bagan (ruled 1084 to 1112) was an admirer of the Mon culture and encouraged the use of the Mon language and in particular the Mon script, which he took as a model for his newly developed Burmese script. During this time, the Myazedi inscription was written , which was written in four languages: Pali , Pyu , Burmese and Mon. After Kyanzittha's death, the influence of Mon faded and the Old Burmese language replaced Mon and Pyu as the lingua franca .
In Thailand there are very many inscriptions from the Dvaravati era that are written in Mon, but the authors are usually not known (it can be Mon, Mon-Malay or Khmer). Later inscriptions of the Mon (for example in Lavo - Lop Buri ) show submissive texts to the Khmer.
After the fall of Bagan, the Mon language experienced a new heyday and became the lingua franca in what is now Lower Burma, especially in Bago ( Hanthawaddy, 1287 to 1539). Since these areas were mostly inhabited by Mon, Mon remained dominant until the middle of the 19th century. However, after the British had incorporated Lower Burma into their colonial empire in 1852, they encouraged the influx of other parts of the population into the Irawaddy Delta in order to promote agriculture and rice cultivation. These people brought their languages with them and the Mon was relegated to local meaning.
Under British colonial administration, the Mon bobbed by, and after independence the number of speakers decreased even more, as the respective governments of Burma offered little or no support for the minority languages of the country. Today the old Mon script in particular is almost exclusively dominated by monks. In the border areas between Burma and Thailand controlled by the Mon, there are schools in which the Mon is taught and used.
Dialects
There are three main dialects of the Mon in Burma, which can be assigned to the different areas inhabited by the Mon: the central, the Bago and the Ye dialect. The central dialect is spoken in the areas around Mottama and Moulmein , but the speakers of all three dialects understand each other. Slightly greater differences can be found in Thai-Mon, which is used by Mon in Thailand, but this dialect is also comprehensible by all Mon.
font
The old Mon script first appeared in the 6th century on inscriptions in Nakhon Pathom and Saraburi (both in Thailand) and served as the basis for the Burmese script and the Lan-Na script ( Tai Tham ) in northern Thailand and Laos used for Buddhist texts. The modern Mon script uses numerous diacritical marks and letters for phonemes that are unknown in Burmese. There is also a big difference between the spoken Mon and the written language.
The Mon alphabet has 35 consonants , including a vowel treated as a consonant .
literature
- Ashley South: Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma. The Golden Sheldrake. Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 0-7007-1609-2 .
- Christian Bauer: Language and ethnicity. The Mon in Burma and Thailand. In: Gehan Wijeyewardene: Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 1990, ISBN 981-3035-57-9 .
- Mathias Jenny: A Short Introduction to the Mon Language. MonCulture and Literature Survival Project (MCL), 2001 ( comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch [PDF; 217 kB]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Raymond G. Gordon Jr.: Mon. A language of Myanmar. In: Ethnologue. Languages of the world . 15th edition. SIL International, 2005 ( A language of Myanmar ( Memento of July 3, 2019 in the Internet Archive ), Ethnologue, accessed November 22, 2010).
- ↑ a b Dr. SM: The Mon Language (An Endangered Species). Monland Restoration Council ( mrc-usa.org ( memento April 7, 2013 on WebCite ) [accessed November 22, 2010]).
- ^ Ashley South: Mon Nationalism and Civil War in Burma. The Golden Sheldrake. Routledge, London 2003, ISBN 0-7007-1609-2 .
- ^ Christian Bauer: Language and ethnicity. The Mon in Burma and Thailand. In: Gehan Wijeyewardene: Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore 1990, ISBN 981-3035-57-9 , p. 17.
- ^ Mathias Jenny: A Short Introduction to the Mon Language. MonCulture and Literature Survival Project (MCL), 2001 ( comparativelinguistics.uzh.ch [PDF; 217 kB]).