Lao script

Lao script, also called Akson Lao, is the main way people write the Lao language and some other languages in Laos. It has special letters called consonants, vowels, and marks that show sounds. There are 27 consonants, 33 vowels, and 4 tone marks that help show how words sound.

The Lao script came from an older script called Tai Noi and was changed from the Khmer script. The Khmer script itself came from scripts used in southern India a long time ago. Lao script looks a bit like the Thai script but has fewer letters and more rounded shapes.

When people write in Lao, they write from left to right like English. Vowels can be placed above, below, in front of, or behind the consonants. There are no big or small letters like in the English alphabet, and spaces are used to separate words instead of punctuation marks.

History

Further information: Tai Noi script

The Lao script started from a version of the Old Khmer script from Angkor, and came through the Sukhothai script. By the late 1400s, this script reached the Mekong River area and began to change, creating different forms for Thai and Lao languages.

In the 1930s, a Buddhist scholar named Maha Sila Viravong added new Lao letters to help write Pali and Sanskrit words. However, these new letters were not used much and stopped being used by 1975. In the 1960s, the Lao People's Revolutionary Party made the spelling simpler and removed some extra letters. In 2019, the extra letters were added to Unicode 12.

Consonants

The Lao alphabet has twenty-seven consonants. These consonants are grouped into three classes—high, middle, and low—which help decide how a word sounds. Along with tone marks and the length of vowels, these classes shape the pronunciation of words.

Each consonant has a special name used when learning the alphabet. One special consonant, ອ, acts like a helper for vowels that cannot stand alone. The letter ຣ was once removed from the alphabet because many people said it like "l", but it was brought back to help write foreign words like those from Europe or America. It is now taught in schools and used mostly at the start of syllables.

The Lao script also uses combinations of certain consonants together, sometimes creating special joined forms. Some older forms of the script had special ways to write certain pairs of consonants, but these are no longer used in modern writing.

Vowels

Lao script used to have a special way of writing words where the vowel sound was hidden inside the consonant letters. But in 1975, the Lao government changed this. Now, the main vowels are written clearly, but some special marks are still used. Some people still use the old way of writing.

Vowels in Lao are made from a few basic symbols. They can be mixed with other sounds to make many different vowel sounds. Vowels cannot start a word by themselves, so a special silent consonant is used when a word starts with a vowel sound.

Some vowels have special names, like "rolled stem" or "unwound stem". In writing, a small symbol is used to show where the vowel goes, but it looks different depending on the font.

^* In some areas, like Luang Prabang, certain vowel sounds are pronounced a little differently. Just like in nearby Thai script, a special mark ◌ະ is used to show a break in the sound after a vowel.

Punctuation

Lao writing does not usually include spaces between words. Spaces are used only to show the end of a clause or sentence. Instead of periods, questions are understood by special words in the sentence.

Old Lao writing had special marks like ◌໌ for showing quiet sounds, ໆ for repeating a word, and ຯ for leaving out words. Modern Lao writing often uses punctuation from French, such as exclamation points (!), question marks (?), and parentheses (). Quotation marks «» or "" are also used. Hyphens (-) and the ellipsis (...) are common in today’s 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 just for the Lao language, is now also used to write several minority languages.

Additional Lao characters used to write Pali/Sanskrit, the liturgical language of Theravāda Buddhism, 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. The script has also been adapted for Katu, while Tai-speaking groups in Viet Nam including the Tai Dam and White Tai use a similar script (called Tai Viet).

An older version of Lao, Tai Noi, was also used by the ethnic Lao of Thailand's Isan 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) were imposed in the 20th century. Attempts to encode Thai Noi in Unicode 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 adopted the Romanized Popular Alphabet to spell the Hmong languages.

Pali

The modern Lao alphabet cannot be used to transcribe Pali, due to spelling reforms. In the 20th century, Maha Sila Viravong designed the additional characters to transcribe Pali, based on research into various epigraphic sources, including precursor characters that can be traced back to the Tai Noi script. Extended characters to support Lao Pali were added to Unicode 12 in 2019.

The extended characters are listed below:

Lao compatible software

Linux has supported the Lao language since 2005.

Windows officially added Lao support with Windows Vista, though people could already find fonts online to help.

In 2011, the Lao government chose Phetsarath OT as the main font for the country. Before this, many phones and tablets could not show Lao words and used Thai or English instead. Local experts worked to make Phetsarath OT work better on devices.

By March 2011, a Lao company called XY Mobile made Phetsarath OT work on phones and tablets using Android.

iOS also supports Lao script on iPhones and iPads.

Unicode

Main article: Lao (Unicode block)

The Lao script has a special place in Unicode, from U+0E80 to U+0EFF, and was added when Unicode started. The first ten symbols in one part of this block are the Lao numbers from 0 to 9. Some spaces in this block are left empty on purpose, so the Lao letters line up with similar Thai letters. This means one Lao letter, ສ, is not in the usual order of the alphabet because it shares its spot with a Thai letter.