This page brings together basic information about the Myanmar script and its use for the Shan language. It doesn't address use of the orthography for writing Pali. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Shan using Unicode.
Sample
Select part of this sample text to show a list of characters, with links to more details. Source
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Shan is the native language of the Shan people and is mostly spoken in Shan State, Burma, but also in pockets of the Burmese Kachin State, and in Northern Thailand. Due to the civil war in Burma, few Shan today can read or write in Shan script.wsl,#Dialects
ၵႂၢမ်းတႆးkwáːm.tájShan language
Shan is written in the Myanmar script, a descendant of the Brahmi script, via Pallava and Old Mon, which dates back to around the 10th century. Two older orthographies were also used, and are still used to some extent.
The Shan script prior to the 1960s was difficult to read because it didn't clearly distinguish between sounds and tones. The reforms transformed the orthography to make it very readable.
The Shan orthography is an abugida. Consonants carry an inherent vowel which can be modified by appending vowel-signs to the consonant. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern orthography.
Shan text runs left to right in horizontal lines.
Spaces separate phrases, rather than words.
The script is syllable based. Syllables are regular in construction, and easy to parse.
The 18 consonant letters used for pure Shan words are supplemented by 5 more which are used for non-native sounds.
It is not clear that Shan stacks consonants or uses other conjunct features.
Syllable-initial clusters use 3 dedicated combining marks
for the medials r, j, and w.
The 6 syllable-final consonant sounds use ordinary characters with a visible mark called asat to indicate that the inherent vowel is killed.
The Shan orthography has an inherent vowel, and uses vowel-signs. Vowels use 15 combining marks (including 2 pre-base glyphs), and 3 consonants letters. Unlike Thai and Lao, all pre-base vowel-signs are combining marks, and are stored after the base character.
There are no independent vowels, and standalone vowel sounds are written using vowel-signs applied to ဢ [U+1022 MYANMAR LETTER SHAN A].
This section lists 18 composite vowels. Composite vowels can involve up to 4 glyphs, which can surround the base consonant(s) on up to 3 sides. There are no circumgraphs.
Shan is tonal, but indication of tones in the orthography is very simple, unlike Thai. Explicit tone marks occur after each syllable, except when the first tone is applied.
Shan has native digits, but may also uses Myanmar or ASCII digits.
Character index
Letters
Show
Basic consonants
ပ␣ၽ␣တ␣ထ␣ၵ␣ၶ␣ၸ␣ၾ␣သ␣ႁ␣မ␣ၼ␣ၺ␣င␣ဝ␣ရ␣လ␣ယ
Extended consonants
ၿ␣ၻ␣ၷ␣ႀ␣ၹ
Vowel
ဢ
Other
ꧦ
Combining marks
Show
Vowel-signs
ိ␣ီ␣ု␣ူ␣ေ␣ဵ␣ႄ␣ႅ␣ႃ␣ၢ␣ႆ␣ွ
Tones
ႇ␣ႈ␣း␣ႉ␣ႊ
Medials
ျ␣ြ␣ႂ
Pure killer
်
Numbers
Show႐␣႑␣႒␣႓␣႔␣႕␣႖␣႗␣႘␣႙၀␣၁␣၂␣၃␣၄␣၅␣၆␣၇␣၈␣၉
Punctuation
Show၊␣။
ASCII
?␣(␣)
Other
Show
Items to show in lists
Structure
Typical Shan words are monosyllabic. Multisyllabic words are mostly Pali loanwords, or Burmese words with the initial weak syllable /ə/.wsl,#Syllable_structure
The basic syllable structure is:wsl,#Syllable_structure
C(m)v(C)
The initial consonant may be followed by one of -w-, -y- and -r-, for which special characters are available.wsl,#Syllable_structure
In closed syllables (ie. those ending with a consonant) the vowel is a monophthong. In open syllables, it can be either a monophthong or a diphthong.wsl,#Syllable_structure
Syllable-final consonants are p̚ t̚ k̚ m n ŋ.wsl,#Syllable_structure
Phonology
These are sounds for the Shan language.
Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.
Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.
Vowel sounds
Plain vowels
Diphthongs
All but 1 of the diphthongs in Shan end in j or u/w.
Consonant sounds
labial
dental
alveolar
post-
alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
stops
pb
td
kɡ
ʔ
aspirated
pʰ
tʰ
kʰ
affricates
t͡ɕ
fricatives
f
θ
sz
h
nasals
m
n
ɲ
ŋ
approximants
w
l
j
trills/flaps
r
f is only found initially in eastern dialects, and is pronounced pʰ elsewhere.wsl,#Consonants
ʔ appears before standalone vowels, and after open syllables.wsl,#Consonants
r is very rare and mainly used in Pali and some English loan words, sometimes as a glide in initial consonant clusters. Many Shan speakers pronounce it as l.wsl,#Consonants
Shan doesn't natively have voiced stops or fricatives, however the following sounds may appear in loan or foreign words, and have dedicated consonant letters: b d g f θ z.
See also the dialectal differences described in Wikipedia.
Syllable-final
labial
dental
alveolar
post-
alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
stop
p
t
k
ʔ
nasal
m
n
ŋ
approximant
w
j
Vowels
Dashes are used to indicate whether the character represents a vowel sound in a closed or an open syllable.
Vowel sounds mapped to characters
This section maps Shan vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Myanmar orthography, grouped by open ( o ), or closed ( c ) syllables. Tonal variations are not taken into account. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
a following a consonant is not written, but is seen as an inherent part of the consonant letter, so ka is written by simply using the consonant letter ၵ [U+1075 MYANMAR LETTER SHAN KA].
An orthography that uses vowel-signs is different from one that uses simple diacritics or letters for vowels in that the vowel-signs are generally attached to the syllable, rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. This means that pre-base vowel-signs appear before a whole consonant cluster in syllable-initial position (see prescript_vowels). Vowel-signs may be used on their own, or in combination with others (see composite_vowels).
Shan vowel-signs are all combining characters. All vowel-signs are stored after the base consonant, and the glyph rendering system takes care of the positioning at display time. Some input systems may allow the user to type the pre-base vowel before the base consonant, but it is still stored after.
Four vowel-signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.
Combining marks used for vowels
Shan uses the following dedicated combining marks for vowels.
ီ␣ိ␣ူ␣ု␣ေ␣ဵ␣ႄ␣ႅ␣ွ␣ႃ␣ၢ␣␣ႆ
Unlike Burmese, the pronunciation of the vowel-sign doesn't depend on whether it appears in an open or closed syllable.
On the other hand, Shan generally uses different symbols for vowels in open and closed syllables. In some cases, the closed syllable vowel is a smaller version of the glyph used for open syllables, positioned over the consonant, eg. compare မႄႈမႅင်ႇ
Observation: The length of the open vowels appears to be variable.
Consonants & other symbols used for vowels
The following characters are also used to create vowel sounds, either alone or as part of a composite vowel.
Two vowel-signs appear before the base consonant letter or cluster, eg. မေး
These are combining marks that are always stored after the base consonant. The font places the glyph before the base consonant.
A consonant cluster is treated as a unit when it comes to vowel-signs, for example in the following word the pre-base vowel-sign is displayed to the left of the kj cluster, although it appears after the cluster in memory
ၵျေႃင်း
Some input methods may allow the user to type this vowel before the consonant, whereas others will expect it to be typed after, per the stored order.
Composite vowels
Vowels represented by combinations of the above characters. There are no circumgraphs in the Shan orthography, but several composite vowels surround the base on more than one side.
ို␣ိုဝ်␣ူဝ်␣ိူ␣ိူဝ်␣ေႃ␣ ␣ိဝ်␣ိုၺ်␣ုၺ်␣ဵဝ်␣ူၺ်␣ိူၺ်␣ႅဝ်␣ွႆ␣ၢႆ␣ၢဝ်␣ႂ်␣ဝ်Show which combinations contain a given character:
The Shan orthography uses no independent vowel letters. Instead, standalone vowel sounds are written by attaching vowel-signs to the letter ဢ [U+1022 MYANMAR LETTER SHAN A], eg.
ဢၢၼ်ႇဢေႇဢေႇ
On it's own, that character represents the standalone version of the inherent vowel, a, eg.
ဢပုမ်ႇ
Shan adds vowel-signs to the glottal stop consonant to indicate standalone vowels.
This is ဢၢၼ်ႇ.
Most closed syllables end with this character, eg.
ႁိၼ်
Tones
Tones in Shan are much easier to manage than those in Thai or Burmese. Each syllable is followed by a tone marker, apart from syllables with the first tone.
Tones 2-6 are marked using the following combining marks.
ႇ␣ႈ␣း␣ႉ␣ႊ
Unchecked syllables can have 5 or 6 tones. The sixth tone, ႊ [U+108A MYANMAR SIGN SHAN TONE-6], is treated as a standard tone in the north; elsewhere it is only used for emphasis.wsl,#Tones The following examples illustrate usage.
rising ၼႃ
low ၼႃႇ
mid ၼႃႈ
high ၼႃး
creaky ၼႃႉ
Checked syllables can have one of the following four tones.
low လၢၵ်ႇ
mid လၢၵ်ႈ
high လၵ်း
creaky လၵ်ႉ
Consonants
Consonant sounds mapped to characters
This section maps Shan consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Myanmar orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.
Sounds listed as 'infrequent' are allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, Sanskrit, etc.
The following letters are rare and used for non-native sounds.
ၿ␣ၻ␣ၷ␣ႀ␣ၹ
Consonant clusters
Consonant clusters in modern Shan are not stacked, as they would be in Burmese. Closed syllables in a multi-syllable word are typically followed by the asat and (apart from the first tone) a tone mark, eg.
ၽၵ်းၵၢတ်ႇမွၵ်ႇ
Onset consonants
Unicode has the following, dedicated combining characters for the second letter in a syllable-onset cluster. The virama should not be used with ordinary letters to produce these. Both of the first two letters appear to be used mostly for loan words.
ျ␣ြ␣ႂ
Final consonants
Syllable-final consonant sounds are indicated by ordinary consonant characters with a visible ် [U+103A MYANMAR SIGN ASAT] character, eg. တွင်
Syllable-final consonant sounds are p̚ t̚ k̚ m n ŋ.wsl,#Syllable_structure
This section brings together information about the following topics:
writing styles;
cursive text;
context-based shaping;
context-based positioning;
baselines, line height, etc.;
font styles;
case & other character transforms.
The orthography has no case distinction, and no special transforms are needed to convert between characters.
Font styling & weight
tbd
Graphemes
Grapheme clusters
tbd
Punctuation & inline features
Word boundaries
Words are not separated by spaces, nontheless double-clicking or other selection methods are expected to identify word boundaries. There are 2 alternative approaches for managing this.
An application uses a dictionary or smart algorithm to parse the text and determine word boundaries.
Observation: The question mark can be seen in Wikipedia, eg. ၵူႈၵေႃႉ ၶဝ်ႈႁဵတ်းသၢင်ႈၼႂ်း wiki ႁင်းၶေႃ ၸွင်ႇလႆႈ?
Observation: Wikipedia also very rarely uses a comma in Shan text (maybe only once on a page). A comma was also seen in the middle of embedded Latin text. It's not clear whether this is typical usage.
Bracketed text
(␣)
Shan commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.
This section looks at ways in which spacing is applied between characters over and above that which is introduced during justification.
Baselines, line height, etc.
tbd
Shan uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.
Counters, lists, etc.
You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.
The Shan orthography uses numeric styles.
Numeric
The shan numeric style is decimal-based and uses these digits.rmcs
႐␣႑␣႒␣႓␣႔␣႕␣႖␣႗␣႘␣႙
Examples:
႑␣႒␣႓␣႔␣႑႑␣႒႒␣႓႓␣႔႔␣႑႑႑␣႒႒႒␣႓႓႓␣႔႔႔
Prefixes and suffixes
The most common approach to writing lists in Shan puts the counters in parentheses.
Examples:
(႑) (႒) (႓) (႔) (႕)
Separator for Shan list counters.
Page & book layout
This section is for any features that are specific to thisScript and that relate to the following topics:
general page layout & progression;
grids & tables;
notes, footnotes, etc;
forms & user interaction;
page numbering, running headers, etc.
