ABSTRACT
At the height of their power, the number and geographical spread of the Mon population was much greater than today. The conquest of the Mon lands by the Burmans, and later the British, together with the earlier - and somewhat less violent - rise of the Thai states of Sukhothai, Ayuthaiya and Bangkok, had a major impact on the cultural and linguistic orientation of the populations of lower Burma and Thailand. In time, large numbers of Mon speakers came to adopt the language of the new elite. In Thailand at least, Mon language use seemed destined to oblivion - the fate of minority languages across the world in the twentieth century.
