ศาลาชุมนุม

[nakriian]

Is ฉาน written in ไทย script or มอญ script?

How closely related are is ภาษาฉาน and ภาษาไทย as far as speaking? Has anyone in this forum been exposed to คนฉาน and heard them speak? If so, how did it compare to listening to someone speak ไทย?

[nakriian]

Kicking this thread up, never got a reply.

[Rikker]

Shan (ฉาน), also known to Thais as ไทใหญ่ (Tai Yai), is from the same branch of the Tai language family as Thai, namely Southwestern Tai. I don't know much more about the language than that. I'll see if I can find some samples from a book.

From what I've seen of Shan (ฉาน) script, it certainly looks very much like Burmese to my untrained eye. But Burmese script was based on the Mon script, so I'm not sure what the origin for the Shan script is. There is a book about it that I would like to read, to offset my ignorance on this issue:
Sai Kam Mong. The History and Development of the Shan Scripts. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2004. ISBN 9749575504

Again, I'll take a look around to see if I can't find out more. I suggest reading around on Wikipedia, for starters.

[mangkorn]

I don't think that ฉาน is much of a written language these days, or certainly in serious decline as such.

For all their other virtues, the Shan people are not very literary.

Depending on their circumstances, they read/write Burmese - or even Thai. Not many books or periodicals produced in the Shan State.

There are old religious and historical works in the language, but relatively few people read them any more, and far fewer actually write anything contemporary.

Such is the case with many languages around the world: spoken, but not generally written or read. (Even in the old days, the body of writing wasn't terribly extensive, usually limited to official and religious screeds, plus some poetry.)

[nakriian]

mangkorn, I think you are right. From what I have gathered, it is not much of a written language these days. I simply had an interest in it because I read where it was spoken in western Thailand near the southeastern ประเทศพม่า border.

The Burmese abugida used for writing ฉาน.