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Aside from tone, there are twenty-one distinct consonant sounds that occur in the Lao language. Each letter has an acrophonical name that either begins with or features the letter prominently, and is used to teach the letter and serves to distinguish them from other, homophonous consonants. The letter ອ is a special null consonant used as a ...
The table below shows the Lao consonant letters and their transcriptions according to IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet,) BGN/PCGN romanization (1966 system) and LC (US ALA-LC romanization,) as well as the transcriptions used in the Unicode names of the letters, and in official Lao government usage.
The Tai Noi consonants are written horizontally from left to right, while vowels are written in front, on top, at the bottom, and after the letter, depending on the vowel. The script does not have capital or lowercase letters. There are no spaces between words. Sentences are ended with a space.
The script is traditionally classified as an abugida, but Lao consonant letters are conceived of as simply representing the consonant sound, rather than a syllable with an inherent vowel. [45] Vowels are written as diacritic marks and can be placed above, below, in front of, or behind consonants. The script also contains distinct symbols for ...
Tai Tham has three medial letters to form a consonant cluster: medial La ( ᩖ a.k.a La Noi), medial Ra (ᩕ a.k.a Rawong), and medial Wa. Consonant cluster with medial Wa is the only true consonant cluster where both consonants are pronounced as one phoneme.
Both Thai, Lao and Isan only permit the final consonants /k/, /ŋ/, /t/, /n/, /p/, and /m/, with many letters beginning a syllable with one sound and ending a syllable or word with another. Spelling reforms in Laos restricted the final consonants to be spelled ກ , ງ , ດ , ນ , ບ and ມ which correspond to Thai letters ก , ง , ด ...
^1 Where alternative spellings once existed, only these consonants can end words in modern Lao. ^2 Used in pre-1970s Lao spelling as word-final letters. ^3 Glottal stop is unwritten but is pronounced at the end of short vowels that occur at the end of a consonant.
Lao speakers generally pronounce cognates of Thai with initial /w/ as the voiced labiodental approximant /ʋ/, similar to a faint 'v', enough so that the French chose 'v' to transcribe the Lao letter ' ວ ' /ʋ/. The letter is related to Thai ' ว ' /w/. The sound /ʋ/ is particularly noticeable in the Vientiane and Central Lao dialects, with ...