The Lai Tay script, ( vi, Chữ Thái Lai Tay), is a writing system used by the Tai Yo people of Quỳ Châu District, to write the

Tai Yo language Tai Yo ( th, ไทญ้อ), also known as Tai Mène and Nyaw, is a Tai language of Southeast Asia. It is closely related to Tai Pao of Vietnam, where it may have originated. It was once written in a unique script, the Tai Yo script, but th ...

Names

The Lai Tay script means "the script of the Tai". It is also known by various other names such as the ''Yo Lai Tay'' script, ''Nge An script'', ''Tai Yo script'', ''Thai Lai Tay script'', ''Quy Chau script''.

Origin

The scholar Ferlus classifies the Lai Tay script as a part of the Khmer family of writing systems, which the scholar divides into two groups: the central scripts consisting of the ancient Sukhothai and Fakkham scripts, which developed into the modern

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

and Lao scripts, and the peripheral scripts of the Tai peoples of

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

, which include the Tai Dam, Tai Don, Tai Daeng, Lai Tay and

Lai Pao script Lai or LAI may refer to: Abbreviations * Austrian Latin America Institute (Österreichisches Lateinamerika-Institut) * ''Latin American Idol'', TV series * La Trobe Institute, Melbourne, Australia * Leaf area index, leaf area of a crop or ve ...

s. Ferlus suggest that the

Tai peoples Tai peoples are the populations who speak (or formerly spoke) the Tai languages. There are a total of about 93 million people of Tai ancestry worldwide, with the largest ethnic groups being Dai, Thais, Isan, Tai Yai (Shan), Lao, Tai Ahom, an ...

all adopted the same first model of writing borrowed from the Khmers, by simple contact during exchanges, without proper learning. Subsequently, the Tai migrated and occupied a large part of Southeast Asia. The peripheral scripts still retain many characteristics of the primitive Khmer-borrowed script, such as pre-Angkorian sound values of certain letters, a lack of alphabetical order and a lack of numerals. The scripts used by the Tai peoples of Vietnam arrived there as early as the 16th century.

Characteristics

The Lai Tay script has 29 consonants, of which 8 can occur in the syllable final position. The script has 13 vowel signs, which are placed below the consonant for most vowels, or to the right of the consonant for a few other vowels. Unlike other Tai writing systems, the Lai Tay script has remained a true

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; ...

, and consonants written without a vowel sign are pronounced with the inherent vowel , � The script contains 9 ligatures for vowel and final consonant combinations. The script is written vertically from top to bottom and horizontally from right to left on the model of

Chinese writing Written Chinese () comprises Chinese characters used to represent the Chinese language. Chinese characters do not constitute an alphabet or a compact syllabary. Rather, the writing system is roughly logosyllabic; that is, a character generally r ...

. This innovation, which is unique in southeast Asia, is very well explained by the influence of Chinese writing; Tai scholars who found it more convenient, when translating between Tai and Chinese, to adopt the same writing direction for both scripts. The outline of the Lai Tay script is very different from the neighboring scripts and the old type which served as a model for the verticalized type is no longer known. The Lai Tay script does not contain any tone markers. The script is mostly written without any punctuation marks, but they might be found in some manuscripts, where they are the same as traditional

Chinese punctuation Chinese punctuation has punctuation marks that are derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Although there was a long native tradition of textual annotation to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses, the concept of punctuation ...

marks. The script does not contain any numerals, and numbers were traditionally spelled out. File:Lai Tay script example.png, Text in the Lai Tay script File:Lai Tay manuscript.jpg, Excerpt from a Lai Tay manuscript File:Lai Tay manuscript 2.jpg, Manuscript written in the Lai Tay script

Usage

The Lai Tay script is now out of common use, but there are enough manuscripts to allow linguistic study. Some very old Tai Yo scholars can still read the manuscripts. Manuscripts are preserved in both private and in personal collections. The script is now being taught and studied by the Tai Yo community, with the support of the local government and teachers.

Unicode

The script has been proposed to be encoded by Unicode.

References

Brahmic scripts {{list of writing systems