Lao script or Akson Lao ( lo, ອັກສອນລາວ, links=no ) is the primary script used to write the
Lao language
Lao, sometimes referred to as Laotian (, 'Lao' or , 'Lao language'), is a Kra–Dai language of the Lao people. It is spoken in Laos, where it is the official language for around 7 million people, as well as in northeast Thailand, where i ...
and other minority languages in
Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist ...
. Its earlier form, the
Tai Noi script
The Tai Noi (also spelled ''Thai Noi'') or Lao Buhan script is a Brahmic script that has historically been used in Laos and Isan since about 1500 CE. The contemporary Lao script is a direct descendant and has preserved the basic letter shapes ...
, was also used to write the
Isan language, but was replaced by the
Thai script
The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชน ...
. It has 27
consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
( ), 7 consonantal ligatures ( ), 33 vowels (/ ), and 4 tone marks ( ).
The Lao alphabet was adapted from the
Khmer script
Khmer script ( km, អក្សរខ្មែរ, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official la ...
, which itself was derived from the
Pallava script, a variant of the
Grantha script
The Grantha script ( ta, கிரந்த எழுத்து, Granta eḻuttu; ml, ഗ്രന്ഥലിപി, granthalipi) is a South Indian script, found particularly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Originating from the Pallava script, th ...
descended from the
Brāhmī script, which was used in southern India and South East Asia during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Akson Lao is a sister system to the
Thai script
The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชน ...
, with which it shares many similarities and roots. However, Lao has fewer characters and is formed in a more curvilinear fashion than Thai.
Lao is written from left to right. Vowels can be written above, below, in front of, or behind consonants, with some vowel combinations written before, over, and after. Spaces for separating words and punctuation were traditionally not used, but space is used and functions in place of a comma or period. The letters have no majuscule or minuscule (upper- and lowercase) differentiation.
History
The Lao script derived locally from the
Khmer script
Khmer script ( km, អក្សរខ្មែរ, )Huffman, Franklin. 1970. ''Cambodian System of Writing and Beginning Reader''. Yale University Press. . is an abugida (alphasyllabary) script used to write the Khmer language, the official la ...
of
Angkor
Angkor ( km, អង្គរ , 'Capital city'), also known as Yasodharapura ( km, យសោធរបុរៈ; sa, यशोधरपुर),Headly, Robert K.; Chhor, Kylin; Lim, Lam Kheng; Kheang, Lim Hak; Chun, Chen. 1977. ''Cambodian-Engl ...
with additional influence from the
Mon script
Mon, MON or Mon. may refer to:
Places
* Mon State, a subdivision of Myanmar
* Mon, India, a town in Nagaland
* Mon district, Nagaland
* Mon, Raebareli, a village in Uttar Pradesh, India
* Mon, Switzerland, a village in the Canton of Grisons
* A ...
. Both Khmer and Mon were ultimately derived from the
Pallava script of
South India
South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...
. The Lao script was slowly standardized in the
Mekong
The Mekong or Mekong River is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the third longest in Asia. Its estimated length is , and it drains an area of , discharging of water annual ...
River valley after the various Tai principalities of the region were merged under
Lan Xang
existed as a unified kingdom from 1353 to 1707.
For three and a half centuries, Lan Xang was one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The meaning of the kingdom's name alludes to the power of the kingship and formidable war machine of the ea ...
in the 14th century. It has changed little since its inception and continued use in the Lao-speaking regions of modern-day Laos and
Isan
Northeast Thailand or Isan ( Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 prov ...
. Although the Thai script continued to evolve, both scripts still bear a resemblance. However, this is less apparent today due to the communist party simplifying the spelling to be phonemic and omitting extra letters used to write words of Pali-Sanskrit origin.
Consonants
The twenty-seven consonants of the Lao alphabet are divided into three tone classes—high (ສູງ ), middle (ກາງ ), and low (ຕ່ຳ )—which determine the tonal pronunciation of the word in conjunction with the four tone marks and distinctions between short and long vowels. Aside from tone, there are twenty-one distinct consonant sounds that occur in the Lao language. Each letter has an
acrophonical name that either begins with or features the letter prominently, and is used to teach the letter and serves to distinguish them from other, homophonous consonants. The letter ອ is a special null consonant used as a mandatory anchor for vowels, which cannot stand alone, and also to serve as a vowel in its own right.
The letter ຣ (r) is a relatively new re-addition to the Lao alphabet. It was dropped as part of a language reform because most speakers pronounced it as "l", and had an ambiguous status for several decades. A 1999 dictionary does not include it when listing the full alphabet but does use it to spell many country names. A comprehensive dictionary published by a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Information and Culture did not include it. However, as the Lao vocabulary began to incorporate more foreign names (such as Europe, Australia, and America) it filled a need and is now taught in schools.
The letter ຣ can also be found in Unit 14 (ບົດທີ 14 ຮ ຫ ຣ) of a textbook published by the government. It is generally used as the first consonant of a syllable, or to follow a leading consonant, rarely as a final consonant.
Consonant chart
The table below shows the Lao consonant, its name, its pronunciation according to the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA), as well as various romanization schemes, such as the French-based systems in use by both the US ''Board of Geographic Names'' and the British ''Permanent Committee on Geographical Names'' (BGN/PCGN), the English-based system in use by the US
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
(LC),
Royal Thai General System of Transcription
The Royal Thai General System of Transcription (RTGS) is the official system for rendering Thai words in the Latin alphabet. It was published by the Royal Institute of Thailand.
It is used in road signs and government publications and is the cl ...
(RTGS) used in Thailand, and finally its
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
name. A slash indicates the pronunciation at the beginning juxtaposed with its pronunciation at the end of a syllable.
; Notes
Consonantal digraphs and ligatures
Lao also uses
digraphs based on combinations of the silent (unpronounced) ຫ ຫ່ານ with certain other consonants, some of which also have special
ligature
Ligature may refer to:
* Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure
** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry
* Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
forms that are optionally used.
In the Thai script, certain consonants are preceded by tone modifiers. This is because high consonants or low consonants cannot produce the full 5 tones of Thai. For instance, tone modifier ห can turn low consonants into high ones. This also explains why the Lao script reserved consonants with the same sounds (e.g. ຂ and ຄ /kʰ/, ສ and ຊ /s/). Both high and low consonants are needed to produce full five (or six) tones of Lao.
Such design also exists in Lao. Sonorants ງ, ຍ, ນ, ມ, ລ, ວ are originally low consonants, but when they're preceded by ຫ, they become high consonants.
The older versions of the script also included special forms for combinations of ພ (pʰ) + ຍ (ɲ), ສ (s) + ນ (n), and ມ (m) + ລ (l). In addition, consonant clusters that had the second component of ຣ (r) or ລ (l) were written with a special form ◌ຼ underneath the consonant. Since these were not pronounced in Lao, they were removed during various spelling reforms, and this symbol only appears in the ligature ຫຼ.
Phonetic
Lao characters in initial position (several letters appearing in the same box have identical pronunciation).
:
* Depends on the dialect.
Lao characters in final position. In the old documents, the letter ຽ could be found in place of ຍ.
Vowels
In its earlier form, Lao would be considered a full
abugida
An abugida (, from Ge'ez language, Ge'ez: ), sometimes known as alphasyllabary, neosyllabary or pseudo-alphabet, is a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant-vowel sequences are written as units; ...
, in which the ''inherent vowel'' is embedded in the consonant letters. With the spelling reforms by the communist
Lao People's Revolutionary Party
The Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) is the founding and sole ruling party of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. The party's monopoly on state power is guaranteed by Article 3 of the Constitution of Laos, and it maintains a unitar ...
, the main vowel is now written explicitly but the rest of vowel diacritics still apply. However, many Lao outside of Laos, and some inside Laos, continue to write according to former spelling standards. For example, the old spelling of ສເຫຼີມ 'to hold a ceremony, celebrate' contrasts with the new ສະເຫລີມ/ສະເຫຼີມ.
Vowels are constructed from only a handful of basic symbols, but they can be combined with other vowel forms and semi-vowels to represent the full repertoire of diphthongs and triphthongs used in the language.
Vowels cannot stand alone or begin a syllable, so the silent consonant, ອ, which can function as a vowel in its own right, is used as a base when spelling a word that begins with a vowel sound.
The names of the vowels are just as easy as saying sala (ສະຫຼະ, ) before the vowel sign.
Some vowels have unique names, and these are ໃ◌ (ໄມ້ມ້ວນ, , ''rolled stem''), ໄ◌ (ໄມ້ມາຍ, , ''unwound stem''), ◌ົ (ໄມ້ກົງ, . , ''straight stem''), ◌ັ (ໄມ້ກັນ, . , ''ear stem''), ◌ຽ (ວິລາມ, ), and ◌ໍ (ນິກຄະຫິດ, ).
Although a dotted circle ◌ is used on this page to represent the consonant, in standard Lao orthography a small x symbol is used for this purpose.
Traditionally this was a simple, stylized, sans-serif x and it was included in Lao fonts before Unicode became widespread.
Unicode does not make it available as part of the Lao alphabet set, and a lower-case sans-serif x is often used instead.
Some vowels change their forms depending on whether they appear in the final or medial position.
Short and long vowels
Special vowels
:
* In the Northern ( Luang Prabang) dialect of Lao, ໃ◌ is pronounced as rather than ; similarly, in the Northeastern (Houaphanh
Houaphanh province ( Laotian: ຫົວພັນ ; Romanization of Lao: ''Houaphan'') is a province in eastern Laos. Its capital is Xam Neua.
Houaphanh province covers an area of . The province is bordered by Vietnam to the north, east, and ...
) dialect, ໃ◌ is pronounced as .
As in the neighboring
Thai script
The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชน ...
,
◌ະ is used to represent a
glottal stop after a vowel.
Punctuation
Lao is traditionally not written with spaces between words. Spaces are reserved for ends of clauses or sentences. Periods are not used, and questions can be determined by question words in a sentence. Traditional punctuation marks include ◌໌, an obsolete mark indicating silenced consonants; ໆ, used to indicate repetition of the preceding word; ຯ, the Lao ellipsis that is also used to indicate omission of words; ฯ, a more or less obsolete symbol indicating shortened form of a phrase (such as royal names); and ฯລฯ, used to indicate ''et cetera''.
In more contemporary writing, punctuation marks are borrowed from French, such as exclamation point !, question mark ?, parentheses (), and «» for quotation marks, although "" is also common. Hyphens (-) and the ellipsis (...) are also commonly found in modern writing.
Numerals
Other languages in Lao script
According to Article 89 of the 2003 Amended Constitution of the
Lao People's Democratic Republic, the Lao alphabet, though originally used solely for transcribing the Lao language, is also used to write several minority languages.
#Additional Lao characters used to write
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...
/
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
, the
liturgical language
A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is any language that is cultivated and used primarily in church service or for other religious reasons by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.
Concept
A sacr ...
of
Theravāda Buddhism
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
, are now available with the publication of Unicode 12.0. The font ''Lao Pali (Alpha)'' can be downloaded from Aksharamukha.
#Additional Lao characters used to write
Khmu’ were also encoded.
#An older version of Lao, ''
Tai Noi'', was also used by the ethnic Lao of Thailand's
Isan
Northeast Thailand or Isan ( Isan/ th, อีสาน, ; lo, ອີສານ; also written as Isaan, Isarn, Issarn, Issan, Esan, or Esarn; from Pali ''īsānna'' or Sanskrit ईशान्य ''īśānya'' "northeast") consists of 20 prov ...
region before Isan was incorporated into Siam. Its use was banned by the Thai government and supplemented with the very similar Thai alphabet in 1871; however, the region remained culturally and politically distant until further government campaigns and integration into the Thai state (
Thaification
Thaification, or Thai-ization, is the process by which people of different cultural and ethnic origins living in Thailand become assimilated to the dominant culture of Thailand, that of central Thailand.
Thaification was a step in the creation ...
) were imposed in the 20th century. Attempts to encode Thai Noi in
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
have been made.
#The applicability of Lao script for other minority languages requires further evaluations.
Some minority languages use other writing systems. For example, the
Hmong
Hmong may refer to:
* Hmong people, an ethnic group living mainly in Southwest China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand
* Hmong cuisine
* Hmong customs and culture
** Hmong music
** Hmong textile art
* Hmong language, a continuum of closely related to ...
adopted the
Romanized Popular Alphabet to spell the
Hmong languages.
Lao compatible software
Linux has been available in Lao since 2005.
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
did not officially support Lao until
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
. User-generated fonts are freely available online.
In December 2011, the Lao Ministry of Science and Technology, in cooperation with the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, officially authorized the use of Phetsarath OT as the standard national font.
The Phetsarath OT font was already adopted by the government in 2009; however, Lao users were unable to use it, as international software manufacturers did not include the font in their software systems. Mobile devices were not able to use or show Lao language. Instead, mobile phone users had to rely on Thai or English as language.
The Laos Ministry of Post and Telecommunications asked local technicians to develop a software system of international standard that would enable the Phetsarath OT font to be like other font systems that local users could access.
In March 2011, the Lao company XY Mobile presented
the Phetsarath OT on mobile phones as well as tablet PCs using the mobile device operating system
Android.
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...
supports Lao script on
iPhones and
iPads
The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...
.
Obsolete consonants
![Buddhapanditsabhacandapuri](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Buddhapanditsabhacandapuri.jpg)
The consonant letters below are obsolete, due to spelling reforms. Characters for these obsolete letters are added in later versions of Unicode. For additional details, see the Thai script page's sections for the
alphabetic table and
usage for Sanskrit and Pali.
Unicode
The Unicode block for the Lao script is U+0E80–U+0EFF, added in Unicode version 1.0. The first ten characters of the row U+0EDx are the Lao numerals 0 through 9. Throughout the chart, grey (unassigned) code points are shown because the assigned Lao characters intentionally match the relative positions of the corresponding Thai characters. This has created the anomaly that the Lao letter ສ is not in alphabetical order, since it occupies the same code-point as the Thai letter ส.
See also
*
Romanization of Lao
Lao romanization systems are transcriptions of the Lao script into the Latin alphabet.
Tables Consonants
The table below shows the Lao consonant letters and their transcriptions according to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet,) BGN/PCGN ...
*
Lao Braille
Thai Braille () and Lao Braille () are the braille alphabets of the Thai language and Lao language. Thai Braille was adapted by Genevieve Caulfield, who knew both English and Japanese Braille. Unlike the print Thai alphabet, which is an abugida ...
*
Literature of Laos The people of Laos have a rich literary tradition dating back at least six hundred years, with the oral and storytelling traditions of its peoples dating back much earlier. Lao literature refers to the written productions of Laotian peoples, its ém ...
References
Further reading
*Lew, Sigrid.
A linguistic analysis of the Lao writing system and its suitability for minority language orthographies".Writing Systems Research ahead-of-print (2013): 1–1
Authors’s accepted manuscript* Simmala, Buasawan and Benjawan Poomsan Becker (2003), ''Lao for Beginners''. Paiboon Publishing.
External links
http://www.laosoftware.com/index.phpLaos – language situationby N. J. Enfield
which includes Lao numerals. Retrieved 2008-11-12
*http://unicode-table.com/en/sections/lao/
* Lao Range: 0E80 – 0EFF, from the Unicode Consortium
Free Lao script for Windows and Mac OS X
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lao Alphabet
Lao language
Brahmic scripts
Laotian culture
Writing systems without word boundaries
14th-century establishments in Asia