On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 4:48 AM, Christopher Fynn <[email protected]> wrote: > On 28/03/2014, Ed Trager <[email protected]> wrote: > >> * Modern phonetically-based Lao lacks some of the traditional letters that >> are still preserved in Thai and other scripts. > > Are there old Lao characters (once) used for writing Pāḷi?
Historically no. But there was once an attempt to devise such characters by Lao Royal Institute before being dismissed by the communist revolution later. The writing principle was to use PHINTU in the same manner as Thai script, and the missing characters were borrowed from Tham script. See some sample text here: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/saixelamphao/16569530/7323/7323_original.jpg ( Source: http://saixelamphao.livejournal.com/1326.html ) The upper part is written in Tham script, and the lower part is in the extended Lao script. The writing system was in use during 1932-1948. And some North-Eastern Thai scholars are trying to revive it at present. The full character chart, demonstrated by a font created by a Thai scholar (Facebook login is needed, sorry): http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201049297248857 Regards, -- Theppitak Karoonboonyanan http://linux.thai.net/~thep/ _______________________________________________ Unicode mailing list [email protected] http://unicode.org/mailman/listinfo/unicode
