The Shan script is a Brahmic

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

, used for writing the

Shan language Shan is the native language of the Shan people and is mostly spoken in Shan State, Myanmar. It is also spoken in pockets in other parts of Myanmar, in Northern Thailand, in Yunnan, in Laos, in Cambodia, in Vietnam and decreasingly in Assam an ...

, which was derived from the

Burmese script Burmese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Myanmar, a country in Southeast Asia * Burmese people * Burmese language * Burmese alphabet * Burmese cuisine * Burmese culture Animals * Burmese cat * Burmese chicken * Burmese (horse) ...

. Due to its recent reforms, the Shan alphabet is more phonetic than other Burmese-derived scripts.

History

Around the 15th or 16th centuries, the

Mon–Burmese script The Mon–Burmese script (, ; , , also called the Mon script and Burmese script) is an abugida that derives from the Pallava Grantha script of southern India and later of Southeast Asia. It is the primary writing system for Burmese, Mon, Sh ...

was borrowed and adapted to write a Tai language of northern Burma. This adaptation eventually resulted in the Shan alphabet, as well as the

Tai Le script The Tai Le script (ᥖᥭᥰ ᥘᥫᥴ, ), or Dehong Dai script, is a Brahmic scripts, Brahmic script used to write the Tai Nüa language spoken by the Tai Nua people of south-central Yunnan, China. (The language is also known as Nɯa, Dehong Da ...

Ahom script The Ahom script or Tai Ahom Script is an abugida that is used to write the Ahom language, a dormant Tai language undergoing revival spoken by the Ahom people till the late 18th-century, who established the Ahom kingdom and ruled the eastern pa ...

and Khamti script. This group of scripts has been called the "Lik Tai" scripts or "Lik" scripts, and are used by various Tai peoples in

northeastern India Northeast India, officially the North Eastern Region (NER), is the easternmost region of India representing both a geographic and political administrative division of the country. It comprises eight states—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, M ...

, northern Myanmar, southwestern

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

, and northwestern

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

.According to the scholar Warthon, evidence suggests that the ancestral Lik-Tai script was borrowed from the Mon–Burmese script in the fifteenth century, most probably in the polity of

Mong Mao Mong may refer to: People *A proposed original name for the Hmong people, based on the main group, the Mong community *Bob Mong (), American journalist and academic administrator *Henry Mong (), American surgeon and Presbyterian missionary *Mong M ...

. However, it is believed that the Ahom people had already adopted their script before migrating to the Brahmaputra Valley in the 13th century.Terwiel, B. J., & Wichasin, R. (eds.), (1992). ''Tai Ahoms and the stars: three ritual texts to ward off danger''. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program. Furthermore, the scholar Daniels describes a Lik Tai script featured on a 1407

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...

scroll, which shows greater similarity to the

than to the Lik Tho Ngok (Tai Le) script. Until the 1960s, Shan alphabet utilised vowel symbols and tone marks used in the Burmese script, which did not sufficiently distinguish all the phonemic distinctions in Shan. The alphabet was reformed to incorporate vowel signs, and additional tone markers to represent the high-falling creaky (ႉ), high-level (း), low (ႇ), and mid-level, mid-falling tones (ႈ) and the addition of the Thai

visarga In Sanskrit phonology, Visarga () is the name of the voiceless glottal fricative, written in Devanagari as '' . It was also called, equivalently, ' by earlier grammarians. The word ''visarga'' () literally means "sending forth, discharge". Visa ...

(ႊ) to represent the sixth tone used in northern Shan dialects.

Characteristics

The Shan alphabet is characterised by the circular letter forms of the Mon-Burmese script. It is an abugida, all letters having an inherent vowel /a/. Vowels are represented in the form of diacritics placed around the consonants. It is written left to right

Vowels

The representation of the vowels depends partly on whether the syllable has a final consonant. They are typically arranged in the manner below to show the logical relationships between the medial and the final forms and between the individual vowels and the vowel clusters they help form.

Consonants

The Shan alphabet is much less complex than those of related Tai-Kadai languages like Thai. Having been reformed recently, Shan lacks many of the historical spelling remnants in Thai and Burmese. Compared to the Thai alphabet, it lacks the notions of high-class, mid-class and low-class consonants, distinctions which help the Thai script to number 44 consonants. Shan has only 19 consonants. The number of consonants in a textbook may vary: there are 19 universally accepted Shan consonants () and five more which represent sounds not found in Shan, g, z, b, d and th . These five () are quite rare. The consonant ရ occurs only in loanwords, as the consonant has otherwise merged ႁ in Shan. In addition, most editors include a dummy consonant () used in words with a vowel onset. A textbook may therefore present 18-24 consonants. Like other

Brahmi script Brahmi ( ; ; ISO 15919, ISO: ''Brāhmī'') is a writing system from ancient India. "Until the late nineteenth century, the script of the Aśokan (non-Kharosthi) inscriptions and its immediate derivatives was referred to by various names such as ...

s, Shan consonants are typically arranged in rows based on

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

with columns based on aspiration and voicing ():

Tones

The tones are indicated by tone markers at the end of the syllable. Shan tonal markers are mostly unambiguous and phonetic. In the absence of any marker, the default is the rising tone. While the reformed script originally used only four diacritic tone markers, equivalent to the five tones spoken in the southern dialect, the Lashio-based Shan Literature and Culture Association now, for a number of words, promotes the use of the 'yak khuen' () to denote the sixth tone as pronounced in the north.

Numerals

There are differences between the numerals used by the Shan script in China and Myanmar. The numerals used by Shan in China are similar to the numbers in Tham script and

in China and the numbers in Burmese, while the Shan numerals in Myanmar form their own system, similar to the Burmese Tai Le numerals.

Punctuation

There are three main punctuation marks in Shan script with an addition mark for letter

reduplication In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The cla ...

, typically as shorthand.

Syllables

Below are charts with syllables showcasing how of Shan script vowels and consonants are combined.

Unicode

The Shan script has been encoded as a part of the Myanmar block with the release version of Unicode 3.0.

Gallery

File:Shan restroom sign in Chiangmai market.JPG, A sign written in Shan along with other languages in Chiang Mai, Thailand File:Shan sign in Chiamai store.JPG, A sign written in Shan in

Chiang Mai Chiang Mai, sometimes written as Chiengmai or Chiangmai, is the largest city in northern Thailand, the capital of Chiang Mai province and the List of municipalities in Thailand#Largest cities by urban population, second largest city in Thailan ...

, Thailand

References

{{list of writing systems Mon–Burmese script Shan language