Môn

Discovering the language

Member of the large Austroasiatic family, comprising khmer and vietnamese, Mon is still spoken today in Burma and Thailand by just under a million speakers. It is a non-tonal language but possesses two registers of voice.

Rich with a long history documented by epigraphy from the time of the Dvāravatī kingdom, but also by manuscripts on olles recopied in Buddhist monasteries, Môn literature was influenced by India and by sanskrit and pāli vocabulary.

While there is currently a Mon state within the Union of Myanmar on the Andaman Sea coast with Mawlamyaing (Moulmein) as its capital, Mon settlement extended and still extends over a much wider area, Mon kingdoms existed in central and northern Thailand and present-day Lower Burma before the arrival of Burmese and Thai populations, and Mon principalities lasted until the 16thcentury or even the 17thcentury before being absorbed by Burma.

Mone populations are currently found in Lower Burma and southern Burma, but also numerous groups in Thailand, descendants of successive waves of refugees from the XVIIthcentury to the present day.

The Mon have had a very strong cultural impact on Burmese and Thai cultures (Siamese, Shan, Thai Lanna and lao among others), but also khmer through the Siamese, transmitting theravāda Buddhism to them. They gave their script of Indian origin directly to the Burmese. The scripts of the northern Thai populations and the tham script of the Lao are also adaptations.

Influenced for some by Burmese, for others by Siamese depending on their geographical distribution, there are several Mon languages differing in pronunciation, but mutually intelligible, and orthography is a hyphen between all these languages. The study of the Mon language is therefore of great interest from a historical, cultural and linguistic point of view, and sheds light on Burmese Burmese and Siamese through the interplay of reciprocal borrowings.

Inalco offers, within the Southeast Asia and Pacific Department, two introductory courses to Mon culture and language, subject to availability. Please contact the ASEP secretariat to find out when this course will be available (Nota bene : teaching of Mon is currently closed).