Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind

Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications

Page 421

420
THE ALPHABET
Thai Mao or Thai Khen Well up to the north of the British Shan States there are the Thai Mao or Thai Khc', who use a written character which is quite different from those of the other Shan tribes. Its origin and its affinities are still uncertain
Chan Lao of Tongking These tribes had a writing of their own, composed of about 36 letters, quite different from other Lao and Shan scripts. According to some scholars, it was apparently derived from the Siamese, as shown, for instance, by the characteristic forms of m and 2, the numerous vocalic diacaitical marks and the large number of letters.
"Chinese Shans" The Pai-i or "Chinese Shans," called also Yünnanese Shans, numbering about three million people, in the south-west of China, have two characters according to their geographical location. The tribes living in the vicinity of Burma have adapted the Burmese script to their language. The others, that is those living more to the north, as far as they can write, use the Chinese character, but they had previously an altogether different script, the Yunnanese Shan script, of which, according to Professor De Lacouperie, some specimens are still extant.
(The Shui-kia ("Water People") or Pu-shui, which is the indigenous term, a Shan tribe of S.-W. Kwei-chow, employed a character which according to De Lacouperie consisted of adaptations and contracted forms of ancient Chinese symbols mixed with non-Chinese pictorial signs.)
Indonesia Throughout all the Malay Archipelago, the natives speak languages of a single general stock known as Malayo-Polynesian, one of the most widespread linguistic families in the world. Its hundreds of branches extend all the way from Madagascar, off the coast of south-eastern Africa, through the East Indies and the Philippines to Formosa in the north and to New Zealand in the south, up through the Malay Peninsula to the borders of Burma and Siam, and across the Pacific to Hawaii and Easter Island. (In that vast oceanic area, only Australia, New Guinea and a few interior districts of the Melanesian islands have languages not belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian family.) All these languages are closely related. Moreover, nowadays the entire language problem in the Indies is simplified by the fact that there is a kind of basic" Malay, known as "bazaar" or "pidgin" Malay, a minimum language, strongly coloured by the influence of foreign languages (Indian, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Portuguese, English and Dutch). This lingua franca (bahasa Indonesia, Indonesian Language") is spoken in all except the interior districts of the larger islands.