Lao

ອັກສອນລາວ

Abugida · 27 letters

Each consonant carries an implied vowel — ka, not k — and marks hung above, below or around it change that vowel. You learn the consonants, then the vowel marks, then the combinations: three steps instead of one. Every script of India, plus Thai and Khmer.

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What pays off on the road

• Not mistaking it for Thai: a single border separates the two countries. Lao is rounder and airier, and its towns are mostly written without Latin.
• ເມືອງ city, ບ້ານ village, ຖະໜົນ street, ແຂວງ province: four words that cut up a sign.
• Reading a name: the thirteen low consonants first — ງ and ວ, the two commonest signs of our names, are among them.

How it works

Thai, made simpler

Lao and Thai descend from the same script and note languages understood on both sides of the border. Whoever reads one recognises the other in an evening.

Lao has twenty-seven consonants where Thai has forty-four. This is no loss: Thai keeps letters whose only job is to recall that a word comes from Pali or Sanskrit, and which sound like their neighbours. Lao threw them out and writes what is said.

The consequence for a reader: Lao is more regular, and once the alphabet is known, reading holds almost no more surprises.

Telling them apart at a glance

This is the skill that pays most here, because a single border separates the two countries and getting the side wrong costs a whole round.

Lao is rounder and barer. Thai has double loops and two-storey letters that Lao lacks; Lao has open curves and many filled circles. A Lao text looks airier, a Thai text denser.

The rest of the sign helps as much: Laos usually writes its town names in Lao alone, where Thailand nearly always doubles them in Latin.

Three classes, and why two letters make one sound

ຂ and ຄ both read "kh". This is no duplicate: consonants are sorted into three classes — high, mid, low — and the class decides the syllable's tone.

An outsider does not hear the tones and does not need to in order to read a sign: they are not transliterated. What matters is knowing they exist, without which you hunt between ຂ and ຄ for a difference of sound that is not there.

ຫ has a role of its own: placed before a low consonant it raises it to the high class and is not pronounced. ຫຼ, ຫນ, ຫມ read "l", "n", "m".

Vowels written before their consonant

As in Thai, five vowels are drawn to the left of the consonant pronounced before them: ເ ແ ໂ ໃ ໄ.

And unlike Khmer, this is not only a matter of drawing: Lao really stores them first, as Thai does. ເມືອງ begins with a ເ read after the ມ — transliterating in the order of the marks would give "emuang", a word that does not exist.

Lao writes no spaces between words. These fronted vowels are therefore one of the few landmarks telling you where a syllable begins.

Cheat sheet

The eight mid consonants

The middle class. These are the unaspirated consonants — dry k, t, p —, the ones an outsider hears worst and needs least in order to read.

The six high consonants

The high class, and ຫ which raises others into it. Five of them have a sound-twin in the low class.

The thirteen low consonants

The largest of the three classes. Several note the same sound as a high consonant: not a duplicate — the tone is what changes.

The fronted vowels

They are read after the consonant that follows them in writing. Lao really stores them that way, as Thai does: it is the order of the text and not only of the drawing.

The other vowels

Set above, below or after the consonant. Length matters to the ear and is not transliterated on signs.

Tones and marks

Tones are not transliterated: ignore them to read, and know they exist so you stop hunting for them among the letters.

The words on signs

Countries

Laos

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