Shan script

Shan script လိၵ်ႈတႆး
Script type	Abugida
Direction	left-to-right
Languages	Shan language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Proto-Sinaitic alphabet[a] Phoenician alphabet[a] Aramaic alphabet[a] Brāhmī Tamil-Brahmi Pallava script[1] or Kadamba Pyu script[2] Burmese script Shan script
Child systems	Lik-Tai
Unicode
Unicode range	U+1000–U+109F Myanmar
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.

Graphical summary of the development of Tai scripts from a Shan perspective, as reported in Sai Kam Mong's Shan Script book.

The Shan script is a Brahmic abugida used for writing Shan language which was derived from the Burmese script.^[3]

History[]

The old Shan script used until the 1960s did not differentiate all vowels and diphthongs and had only one tone marker and a single form could represent up to 15 sounds. Only the well-trained were able to read Shan. This has been fixed, making the modern Shan alphabet easy to read, with all tones indicated unambiguously.

Characteristics[]

The Shan script is characterised by its circular letters, which are very similar to those of the Mon script. The standard Shan script is an abugida, all letters having an inherent vowel a. Vowels are represented in the form of diacritics placed around the consonants.^[3]

Vowels[]

The representation of the vowels depends partly on whether the syllable has a final consonant. They have been arranged in a manner 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 the Thai one and lacks the notions of high-class, mid-class and low-class consonants, distinctions which help the Thai alphabet to number some 44 consonants. Shan has only 19 consonants and all tones are clearly indicated with unambiguous tonal markers at the end of the syllable (in the absence of any marker, the default is the rising tone).

The number of consonants in a textbook may vary: there are 19 universally accepted Shan consonants (ၵ ၶ င ၸ သ ၺ တ ထ ၼ ပ ၽ ၾ မ ယ ရ လ ဝ ႁ ဢ) and five more which represent sounds not found in Shan, g, z, b, d and th ([θ] as in "thin"). These five (ၷ ၹ ၿ ၻ ႀ) are quite rare. In addition, most editors include a dummy consonant used to support leading vowels. A textbook may therefore present 18-24 consonants.

Tones[]

The tones are indicated by tone markers at the end of the syllable (represented by a dash in the following table), namely:

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 in Shan in China are similar to the numbers in Tham script and Tai Le script 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[]

Unicode[]

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

Gallery[]

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  A sign written in Shan along with other languages in Chiang Mai, Thailand

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  A sign written in Shan in Chiang Mai, Thailand

References[]