thumb| Shan paper manuscript bound with a patterned cotton cloth cover and a felt binding ribbon, [[Shan State, first half of the 20th century. British Library]]

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, Northern Thailand, Yunnan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and decreasingly in Assam and Meghalaya. Shan is a member of the Kra–Dai language family and is related to Thai. It has five tones, which do not correspond exactly to Thai tones, plus a sixth tone used for emphasis. The term Shan is also used for related Northwestern Tai languages, and it is called Tai Yai or Tai Long in other Tai languages. Standard Shan, which is also known as Tachileik Shan, is based on the dialect of the city of Tachileik.

In 2019, Ethnologue estimated there were 3.3 million Shan speakers, including 3.2 million in Myanmar.

Influence from Burmese

By the same token, Shan has been significantly influenced by Burmese, mediated by centuries of historical and ongoing contact and exchange between Burmese and Shan speakers, especially between the Burmese royal court and Shan principalities. As a result of ongoing language contact, Thai has increasingly become a competing source of loanwords into Shan, especially for scientific and political concepts.

  1. Northern — Lashio, Burma; contains more Chinese influences
  2. Southern — Taunggyi, Burma (capital of Shan State); contains more Burmese influences
  3. Eastern — Kengtung, Burma (in the Golden Triangle); closer to Northern Thai and Lao

Prominent divergent dialects are considered separate languages, such as Khün (called Kon Shan by the Burmese), which is spoken in Kengtung valley. Chinese Shan is also called Tai Mao, referring to the old Shan State of Mong Mao. Tai Long is used to refer to the Southern Shan State dialect spoken in southern and central regions west of the Salween River, the Northern Shan State dialect, and the dialect spoken in Laos. There are also dialects still spoken by a small number of people in Kachin State, such as Tai Laing, and Khamti spoken in northern Sagaing Region.

Phonology

Consonants

Shan has 19 consonants. Unlike Thai and Lao (Isan) there are no voiced plosives /d/ and /b/.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"

|-

! colspan="2" |

! Labial

! Dental/<br>Alveolar

! (Alveolo-)<br>Palatal

! Velar

! Glottal

|-

! colspan="2" | Nasal

|style="background: #ccf;"|<br />

|style="background: #cfc;"|<br />

|style="background: #fcf;"|<br />

|style="background: #fcc;"|<br />

|

|-

! rowspan="2" | Plosive

!<small>unaspirated</small>

|style="background: #ccf;"|<br />

|style="background: #cfc;"|<br />

|style="background: #fcf;"|<br />

|style="background: #fcc;"|<br />

|style="background: #ccc;"|<br />

|-

!<small>aspirated</small>

|style="background: #ccf;"|<br />

|style="background: #cfc;"|<br />

|

|style="background: #fcc;"|<br />

|

|-

! colspan="2" | Fricative

|style="background: #ccf;"|()<br />

|style="background: #ffc;"|<br />

|

|

|style="background: #ccc;"|<br />

|-

! colspan="2" | Trill

|

|style="background: #cff;"|()<br />

|

|

|

|-

! colspan="2" | Approximant

|

|

|style="background: #cff;"|<br />

|style="background: #cff;"|<br />

|

|-

! colspan="2" | Lateral

|

|style="background: #cff;"|<br />

|

|

|

|}

Vowels and diphthongs

Shan has ten vowels and 13 diphthongs:

{| class="wikitable" style=text-align:center

|-

!

! Front !! Central !! Back

|-

!Close

| || ~ ||

|-

!Mid

| || ~ ||

|-

!Open

| || <br /> ||

|}

Shan has less vowel complexity than Thai, and Shan people learning Thai have difficulties with sounds such as "ia," "ua," and "uea" . Triphthongs are absent. Shan has no systematic distinction between long and short vowels characteristic of Thai.

Tones

Shan has phonemic contrasts among the tones of syllables. There are five to six tonemes in Shan, depending on the dialect. The sixth tone is only spoken in the north; in other parts it is only used for emphasis.

Contrastive tones in unchecked syllables

The table below presents six phonemic tones in unchecked syllables, i.e. closed syllables ending in sonorant sounds such as [m], [n], [ŋ], [w], and [j] and open syllables.

{| class="wikitable"

! No. !! Description !! IPA !! Description !! colspan="2" | Transcription<sup>*</sup>

|-

| 1 || rising (24) || || Starting rather low and rising pitch || || a (not marked)

|-

| 2 || low (11) || || Low, even pitch || || a,

|-

| 3 || mid-falling (32) || || Medium level pitch, slightly falling in the end || (not marked) || a;

|-

| 4 || high (55) || || High, even pitch || || a:

|-

| 5 || high-falling and creaky (42) || || Short, creaky, strongly falling with lax final glottal stop || , || a.

|-

| 6 || emphatic (343) or middle (33) || / || Starting mid level, then slightly rising, with a drop at the end (similar to tones 3 and 5) || || a-

|}

:<sup>*</sup> The symbol in the first transcription column corresponds to conventions used for other tonal languages; the second is derived from the Shan orthography.

The following table shows an example of the phonemic tones:

<!-- The whole point of this table is to illustrate phonetic detail of the tones. This doesn't occur anywhere else, and is from the IPA Handbook. -->

{| class=wikitable

!Tone!!Shan!!IPA!!Transliteration!!English

|-

|rising||||||na||thick

|-

|low||||||na,||very

|-

|mid-falling||||||na;||face

|-

|high||||||na:||paddy field

|-

|high-falling and creaky||||||na.||aunt, uncle

|-

|emphatic or middle||||||na-||(for interjection / transcription)

|}

The Shan tones correspond to Thai tones as follows:

  1. The Shan rising tone is close to the Thai rising tone.
  2. The Shan low tone is equivalent to the Thai low tone.
  3. The Shan mid-tone is different from the Thai mid-tone. It falls in the end.
  4. The Shan high tone is close to the Thai high tone. But it is not rising.
  5. The Shan falling tone is different from the Thai falling tone. It is short, creaky and ends with a glottal stop.

Contrastive tones in checked syllables

The table below presents four phonemic tones in checked syllables, i.e. closed syllables ending in a glottal stop [ʔ] and obstruent sounds such as [p], [t], and [k].

{| class=wikitable style="text-align:center"

!Tone!!Shan!!Phonemic!!Phonetic!! Transliteration !!English

|-

|high || ||||||lak:||post

|-

|creaky|| ||||||lak.||steal

|-

|low|| ||||||laak,||differ from others

|-

|mid|| ||||||laak;||drag

|}

Syllable structure

The syllable structure of Shan is C(G)V((V)/(C)), which is to say the onset consists of a consonant optionally followed by a glide, and the rhyme consists of a monophthong alone, a monophthong with a consonant, or a diphthong alone. (Only in some dialects, a diphthong may also be followed by a consonant)

The glides are: -w-, -y- and -r-.

There are seven possible final consonants: , , , , , , and .

Some representative words are:

  • CV also
  • CVC market
  • CGV to go
  • CGVC broad
  • CVV far
  • CGVV water buffalo

Typical Shan words are monosyllabic. Multisyllabic words are mostly Pali loanwords, or Burmese words with the initial weak syllable .

Pronouns

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center"

|-

!Person||Pronoun || IPA || Meaning

|-

! rowspan=6|first

| || || I/me (informal)

|-

| || || I/me (informal)

|-

| || || I/me (formal) "servant, slave"

|-

| || || we/us two (familiar/dual)

|-

| || || we/us (general)

|-

| || || we/us (formal) "we servants, we slaves"

|-

! rowspan=5|second

| || || you (informal/familiar)

|-

| || || you (formal) "master, lord"

|-

| || || you two (familiar/dual)

|-

| || || you (formal/singular, general/plural)

|-

| || || you (formal/singular, general/plural) "you masters, you lords"

|-

! rowspan=5|third

| || || he/she/it (informal/familiar)

|-

| || || they/them two (familiar/dual)

|-

| || || he/she/it (formal), or they/them (general)

|-

| || || he/she/it (formal), or they/them (formal) "they masters, they lords"

|-

| || || they/them, others

|}

Resources

Given the present instabilities in Burma, one choice for scholars is to study the Shan people and their language in Thailand, where estimates of Shan refugees run as high as two million, and Mae Hong Son Province is home to a Shan majority. The major source for information about the Shan language in English is Dunwoody Press's Shan for English Speakers. They also publish a Shan-English dictionary. Aside from this, the language is almost completely undescribed in English.

References

Further reading

  • Sai Kam Mong. The History and Development of the Shan Scripts. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2004.
  • The Major Languages of East and South-East Asia. Bernard Comrie (London, 1990).
  • A Guide to the World's Languages. Merritt Ruhlen (Stanford, 1991).
  • Shan for English Speakers. Irving I. Glick & Sao Tern Moeng (Dunwoody Press, Wheaton, 1991).
  • Shan – English Dictionary. Sao Tern Moeng (Dunwoody Press, Kensington, 1995).
  • Shan phonology and morphology. Aggasena Lengtai. (MA thesis, Mahidol University, 2009).
  • Loss, Daniel (2017). A Comparison of Grammaticalization in Shan and Thai. Master's thesis, Payap University. Available online
  • An English and Shan Dictionary. H. W. Mix (American Baptist Mission Press, Rangoon, 1920; Revised edition by S.H.A.N., Chiang Mai, 2001).
  • Grammar of the Shan Language. J. N. Cushing (American Baptist Mission Press, Rangoon, 1887).
  • Myanmar – Unicode Consortium [https://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1000.pdf]
  • An English-Shan dictionary translator
  • Shan-language Swadesh vocabulary list of basic words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
  • SIL Padauk Font (Shan Unicode)
  • SEAlang Library Shan Dictionary
  • Titles of Shan-foreign language dictionaries