Mon Language Alphabet

Mon is the language of the Mon people of southern Myanmar and of Mon communities in Thailand. It belongs to the Austroasiatic family, which makes it a relative of Khmer and, more distantly, Vietnamese, not of Burmese or Thai. Its script, though, is one of the oldest in the region: like the other scripts of Southeast Asia it descends from a Brahmic script of southern India, and Old Mon inscriptions from the Dvaravati kingdoms in what is now central Thailand are among the earliest writing on the mainland.

The Myanmar writing system derives from a Brahmi-related script brought from South India to write Mon, and the Myazedi inscription of 1113 at Bagan carries the same text in four languages: Pali, Old Mon, Old Burmese and Pyu. Mon today is written with the characters of the Unicode Myanmar block, plus a handful of letters and signs of its own.

Like Burmese, Mon is an abugida. Every consonant carries a built-in vowel, other vowels are added as signs around it, and words run on without spaces: a space ends a phrase, ၊ works like a comma and ။ ends a sentence. Mon is not a tonal language. It has two registers instead, a clear voice and a breathy voice, and which one a syllable takes is shown by its first consonant.

Mon consonants: 35 letters in two registers

The Mon alphabet has 35 consonants, learned in the old Indian order by place in the mouth: က ခ ဂ ဃ ၚ, စ ဆ ဇ ၛ ည, ဋ ဌ ဍ ဎ ဏ, တ ထ ဒ ဓ န, ပ ဖ ဗ ဘ မ, then ယ ရ လ ဝ သ ဟ ဠ ၜ အ ၝ. The clear-register letters are read with an a vowel, က ka; most letters that were voiced in Old Mon, in the third, fourth and nasal columns and ယ ရ လ ဝ, are now read in the breathy register with an e-like vowel, ဂ kè. Each vowel sign is pronounced differently after the two kinds, much as Khmer reads its vowels after its two consonant series.

Four consonants are Mon's own letters. ၚ is the Mon nga, where Burmese writes င. ၛ is the Mon jha, where Burmese writes ဈ. ၜ is an implosive b, a b said while drawing the voice inward, and ၝ is a rarer companion letter. Mon also uses ဍ for its implosive d, and အ is the vowel carrier that can also represent an initial glottal stop.

Many Mon words are a light first syllable followed by a full one, so Mon stacks consonants far more than Burmese does. The second consonant is written below the first, typed with the invisible virama ္ in between: တ + ္ + ၚ gives တ္ၚ, as in တ္ၚဲ (day). Medials hang on the consonant too. ျ ြ ွ ှ are shared with Burmese; Mon also uses ၞ ၟ ၠ for medial n, m and l, plus the virama-plus-ၚ form for medial ng.

Mon vowels and signs, and how they differ from Burmese

The vowel signs ာ ါ ိ ီ ု ူ ေ ဲ sit after, above, below or before the consonant, and Mon adds signs of its own: ဳ and ဴ, encoded for Mon alone, and ဵ, written above the letter. However a sign looks, it is typed after the consonant, its stacked consonant and its medials, in the order the syllable is said. ေ is the classic trap: it is drawn to the left of the consonant but always typed after it, so in a Unicode text မေ is stored as မ then ေ.

The independent vowels ဣ ဤ ဥ ဦ ဩ ဪ are shared with Burmese, while Mon writes its own e letter ဨ, where Burmese uses ဧ. The asat ် kills the vowel of a final consonant, as in မန် (Mon) and ဘာသာမန် (the Mon language), and ံ and း close a syllable with a nasal and with a breath.

A Burmese reader can recognise most Mon letters but cannot pronounce Mon from them: the shared characters stand for different sounds, and Mon has registers where Burmese has tones. Fonts made only for Burmese may also lack ၚ ၛ ၜ ၝ ၞ ၟ ၠ ဳ ဴ ဨ, which then show as empty boxes.

How to type Mon: Unicode, fonts and keyboards

All the letters on this page are standard Unicode. The Mon-specific characters joined the Myanmar block in Unicode 5.1 in 2008, together with letters for Shan and the Karen languages, so Mon, Burmese, Shan and Karen text can share one font. Fonts that cover the whole block, such as Noto Sans Myanmar and SIL's Padauk, show every Mon character here. Like Burmese, Mon long circulated in older fonts that put letters at non-standard codes; text typed that way looks right only in its own font, so copy from a Unicode source such as this page.

On a phone or computer, install a Mon Unicode keyboard: Mon keyboard apps for phones and Mon layouts for PCs are available, and some Myanmar keyboards for Android, such as Bagan Keyboard, include Mon. Type the consonant first, then the virama and any stacked consonant, then medials, then vowel signs, and the font arranges them. In Microsoft Word you can type a code and press Alt+X: 105A gives ၚ, 105C gives ၜ, 1028 gives ဨ. On the web, the HTML entities ၚ and ၜ do the same. Or simply copy the letters from the grid above.

Where Mon is spoken

CLDR estimates about 980,000 Mon speakers. Roughly 860,000 of them live in Myanmar, above all in Mon State around Mawlamyine and in neighbouring Kayin State, Tanintharyi and the Bago area, the heartland of the old Mon kingdoms of Thaton and Hanthawaddy, whose capital was Bago. About 120,000 live in Thailand, in communities descended from Mon families who settled there centuries ago, around Bangkok, on Ko Kret island in Nonthaburi, in Pathum Thani and in Sangkhlaburi in Kanchanaburi; Thai is the language of schooling there.

The hintha, a mythical bird of the hamsa family, is the Mon national emblem, and Hanthawaddy itself means the city of the hamsa; people use 🦢 for it online. Most Mon are Theravada Buddhists, and monasteries have long been centres of Mon learning, and many still teach the Mon script. For the scripts around Mon, see our Burmese, Shan, Thai and Khmer collections.