Shan

Letters

Combining marks

Numbers

Punctuation

Other

Vowel sounds

Consonant sounds

	labial	dental	alveolar	post- alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stops	p b		t d			k ɡ	ʔ
aspirated	pʰ		tʰ			kʰ
affricates				t͡ɕ
fricatives	f	θ	s z				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.

Tone

Unchecked syllables can have 5 or 6 tones. The sixth tone, 108A, 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

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

Vowel summary table

Dashes are used to indicate whether the character represents a vowel sound in a closed or an open syllable.

The following table summarises the main vowel to character assigments.

ⓘ represents the inherent vowel. Open syllable vowels appear on the left, and closed syllable vowels to the right.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Inherent vowel

ၵ ka U+1075 LETTER SHAN KA

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. The first 2 syllables of the following word are inherent vowels.

ႁတရႃႉ

The inherent vowel occurs in both open and closed syllables, and is always short. The second syllable of the following example is closed with the inherent vowel.

ၵရမ်ႇ

Shan uses 103A to kill the inherent vowel after a final consonant, eg. ၵ် explicitly represents just the sound k. It is always visible, and it never causes stacking.

Most closed syllables end with this character, eg.

ႁိၼ်

Post-consonant vowels

ၵိ ki U+1075 LETTER SHAN KA, U+102D VOWEL SIGN I

Vowels other than the inherent vowel that follow a consonant are written using 12 dedicated combining marks (vowel signs), and composite vowel signs use these and 3 other diacritics and 2 consonant letters. There are no dedicated vowel letters.

Unlike Burmese, the pronunciation of the vowel sign doesn't depend on whether it appears in an open or closed syllable. Shan, instead, 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 that is positioned over the consonant, eg. compare မႄႈ မႅင်ႇ

With one exception, the vowel in closed syllables (ie. those ending with a consonant) is a short monophthong. In open syllables it is either a long monophthong or a diphthong.

Many monophthongs are written using a single combining mark, but many others have to be written using multiple characters (see compositeV).

Four vowel signs are spacing marks, meaning that they consume horizontal space when added to a base consonant.

All vowel signs are typed and stored after the base consonant, whether or not they precede it when displayed. The glyph rendering system takes care of the glyph 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.

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 an orthographic syllable, rather than just applied to the letter of the immediately preceding consonant. This means that pre-base vowel signs and the left glyph of circumgraphs appear before a whole consonant cluster if it is rendered as a conjunct (see prebase).

103A can be found in the combination 101D 103A to indicate a final -w sound in a diphthong.

107A 103A is likewise used to produce diphthongs ending with -j, although several use 1086 instead.

1082 103A creates the sound -aɰ in open syllables.

Standalone vowels

Shan standalone vowels all begin with a glottal stop.

The Shan orthography uses no independent vowel letters. Instead, standalone vowel sounds are written by attaching vowel signs to the letter ဢ, eg. ဢူၺ်းၵေႃႉ သူင်ႇဢွၵ်ႇ

On it's own, that character represents the standalone version of the inherent vowel, ?a.

ဢပုမ်ႇ

Tones

Tones in Shan are much easier to manage than those in Thai or Burmese. Apart from the first tone, each syllable is followed by a tone marker which explicitly indicates the tone to be applied to the syllable.

Tones 2-6 are marked using the following combining marks.

The tone mark for the 6th tone is promoted for use in a few words in northern usage.

Observation: It doesn't appear in any of the 2,500+ terms from Wiktionary or the Swadesh list used in the term list.

Vowel sounds mapped to characters

Consonant summary table

The following table summarises the main consonant to character assigments.

For additional details see vowel_mappings.

Basic consonants

Foreign sounds

The following letters are rare and used for non-native sounds.

Onsets

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.

Finals

Syllable-final consonant sounds are indicated by ordinary consonant characters with a visible 103A character, eg.

တွင်

ၵူပ်း

Syllable-final consonant sounds are p̚ t̚ k̚ m n ŋ.wsl,#Syllable_structure

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

Consonant sounds mapped to characters

Digits

Shan has native digits.

Sometimes Myanmar digits are used, instead.

Wikipedia uses ASCII digits.

The CLDR standard-decimal pattern is #,##,##0.###. The standard-percent pattern is #,##,##0%.

Dates

Context-based shaping & positioning

tbd

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.

1. An application uses a dictionary or smart algorithm to parse the text and determine word boundaries.
2. The author uses 200B between words when creating the content.

Graphemes

tbd

Phrase & section boundaries

Shan uses a mixture of ASCII and native punctuation.

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.

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

tbd

Observation: ꧦ appears to produce repetitive sounds. Here are some examples of usage.

ၵႃႈၵွၼ်ႇတွၼ်းဢွၼ် တႃႇတေပဵၼ်မႃး ပပ်ႉသႅၼ်သမ်ႇ ဢၼ်ဝႃႈၼၼ်ႉ ၽူႈလူင်ႉလႅၼ်ႇၶဝ်၊ ၸဝ်ႈၶူးမေႃၶဝ် လႆႈပၼ် ၶၢဝ်းယၢမ်းတင်းၼမ် တႅမ်ႈꧦမၢႆꧦသေ ႁဵတ်းပဵၼ်ပပ်ႉယဝ်ႉ။ ၵႃႈၶၼ်ပပ်ႉသႅၼ်သမ်ႇ ၼိုင်ႈထဝ်ႇၼၼ်ႉၵေႃႈ တေႃႈဢမ်ႇငၢႆႈꧦ။

Line breaking & hyphenation

tbd

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the Shan orthography.

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.