Mon Language - Script

Script

The Old Mon script, which has been dated to the 6th century, with the earliest inscriptions found in Nakhon Pathom and Saraburi (in Thailand), is ancestral to the Burmese script and the Tai Tham script, a liturgical script used in Northern Thailand and Laos. The modern Mon script, however, utilises several different letters and diacritics that represent phonemes that do not exist in Burmese, such as the diacritic of the simplified medial 'l', which is placed underneath the letter. Furthermore, there is a great discrepancy between the written and spoken forms of Mon, with a single pronunciation capable of having several multiple spellings. The Mon script also makes prominent use of consonant stacking, to represent consonant clusters found in the language.

The Mon alphabet contains 35 consonants (including 1 vowel treated as a nominal consonant), 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, က, which belongs to the clear register, is pronounced /kaˀ/, while ဂ is pronounced /kɛ̀ˀ/, 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:

• က + ဳ → ကဳ, pronounced /kɔe/
• ဂ + ဳ → ဂဳ, pronounced /kì/
• က + ူ → ကူ, pronounced /kao/
• ဂ + ူ → ဂူ, pronounced /kù/

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/. Also, ဨ (/e/) is used instead of ဧ, as in Burmese.

The Mon language has 8 medials, as follows: ္ၚ (/-ŋ-/), ၞ (/-n-/), ၟ (/-m-/), ျ (/-j-/), ြ (/-r-/), ၠ (/-l-/), ွ (/-w-/), and ှ (/-hn-/). Consonantal finals are indicated with a virama (်), as in Burmese. Furthermore, consonant stacking is possible in Mon spellings, particularly for Pali and Sanskrit-derived vocabulary.