Lao script

Lao
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Lao and others
Time period	c. 1350–present
Parent systems	Proto-Canaanite alphabet Phoenician alphabet Aramaic alphabet Brāhmī Pallava Khmer Lao
Unicode range	U+0E80–U+0EFF
ISO 15924	Laoo
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

This article contains Lao text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Lao script.

The Lao script is used mainly to write the Lao language.

The minority languages of Laos are also written in the Lao script, and officially it is the only script to write them in Laos, but many speakers of Hmong prefer the Latin alphabet.

History

The Lao script is derived from the Khmer script, which explains the similarities between the Lao script and the Thai script. However, since the spelling reform carried out in the 1960s, the modern Lao script is more concise and more phonetic than the previous Lao script and the Thai script.

In the 1970's, the letter ຣ (ro), which had only been used in loan-words, was replaced with ລ (lo), and consonant clusters were removed.^[1]

Consonants

The table below shows the Lao consonant letters with their phonetic value in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and transcriptions according to the US Board on Geographic Names and the British Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (BGN/PCGN), the US Library of Congress (ALA/LC) and the transcriptions used in the Unicode names of the letters.

* Officially removed by the Ministry of Education in the 1970's (replaced with ລ), but still used by many
** A zero consonant, but also used for vowels.

Vowel nuclei

The table below shows the Lao vowel nuclei, combined with the consonant ກ. (provisional version)

* indicates variations no longer used in the reformed spelling

Lao compatibile software

Lao was not officially released for Windows until the Windows Vista.^[2] Although user generated fonts are freely avalible online, requiring the user to download the fonts, place them into the "Windows", "Fonts", folder, and then open a Internet Explorer window and select the following; "Tools", "Internet Options", and on the 'General' tab, they need to click on the "Fonts" option and then select the font that they downloaded.^[3]

Lao in Unicode

The Unicode range for Lao is U+0E80–U+0EFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points. Although there are many unassigned code points, the ones that are assigned for Lao characters match the relative positions of the corresponding Thai characters.

References

1. ^ Simmala & Becker, pp. 10 & 248
2. ^ Microsoft Windows help page
3. ^ AMERILAO.org site How to "Setup Internet Explorer to read Lao font"

• Simmala, Buasawan and Benjawan Poomsan Becker (2003), Lao for Beginners. Paiboon Publishing. ISBN 1-887521-28-3

External links

• Omniglot - Lao alphabet
• The Lao Alphabet at SEAsite
• Laos - language situation by N. J. Enfield
• Numerals in many different writing systems, which includes Lao numerals; retrieved 2008-11-12
• The Unicode Standard 5.0 Code ChartsPDF (90.4 KB) Lao Range: 0E80 - 0EFF, from the Unicode Consortium
• Free Lao script for Windows and Mac OS X

See also

• Romanization of Lao
• Brahmic family