12 Facts About Lao script

Lao alphabet was adapted from the Khmer script, which itself was derived from the Pallava script, a variant of the Grantha script descended from the Brahmi 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, with which it shares many similarities and roots.

However, Lao script has fewer characters and is formed in a more curvilinear fashion than Thai.

Lao script derived locally from the Khmer script of Angkor with additional influence from the Mon script.

The Lao script was slowly standardized in the Mekong River valley after the various Tai principalities of the region were merged under Lan Xang in the 14th century.

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Twenty-seven consonants of the Lao script alphabet are divided into three tone classes—high, middle, and low —which determine the tonal pronunciation of the word in conjunction with the four tone marks and distinctions between short and long vowels.

However, as the Lao script vocabulary began to incorporate more foreign names it filled a need and is taught in schools.

Lao script uses digraphs based on combinations of the silent ? ??? with certain other consonants, some of which have special ligature forms that are optionally used.

Older versions of the Lao script included special forms for combinations of ? + ?, ? + ?, and ? + ?.

Since these were not pronounced in Lao script, they were removed during various spelling reforms, and this symbol only appears in the ligature ?.

Unicode does not make it available as part of the Lao script alphabet set, and a lower-case sans-serif x is often used instead.

Phetsarath OT font was already adopted by the government in 2009; however, Lao script users were unable to use it, as international software manufacturers did not include the font in their software systems.