There is a crew of Mon working a construction site in my soi. The language is unintelligible to me, of course, but I have picked up two words;

Ow, and jow (ao and jao) meaning "come" and "go".

This is identical to Hindi.

As far as I know, Mon are south eastern Myanmar and not west, thus close to what was formally India.

Does anyone know if there is there any similarity between the Mon language and Hindi?

Mon is in the Mon-Khmer language group. More similar to Khmer in regional languages.

Sure you would have read this, but might as well put the link anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon-Khmer_languages

Sure you would have read this, but might as well put the link anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mon-Khmer_languages

Thanks.

"Genetic studies of representatives from all branches of Austroasiatic indicate the ancestors of Austroasiatic speakers originated in present-day India and migrated into Southeast Asia from the Brahmaputra River Valley"

No doubt there will be other similarities, aswell as the fact that the language is non-tonal.